Hotel Sex

It's the final days of April here on the prairie and before I know it, I'll be turning the page over to a new month on the calendar.  Remember how slowly time seemed to pass when we were all kids?  December especially used to be this giant death march, each minute tick-tock-tick-tocking slowly until Santa finally arrived.  But as I age, it seems that each year swirls by faster and faster.  Right now I've been hurled into the eye of a hurricane that's called Spring.  The pea and the spinach seeds were planted two weeks ago and the forecast is looking warm enough for me to consider adding beets, onions and leaf lettuce to the mix.  Oh, I can taste them already.    

Here's the blue sky and that gorgeous sunset which I snapped yesterday.   You can't HELP but feel good when Mother Nature is knocking at your door with such beauty.  There's so much to love during this time of year.  There's the garden, getting my hands in the dirt and watching things grow.  I love watching the spring weather swirl around me and feeling hope for days where I can go outside in my shirtsleeves.  I love all of the birds that show up here.  Naturally, this includes the eternal font of geese. 

Here on the prairie, we have thirty-five acres and two ponds.  When a Canada goose and his mate fly overhead, I'm convinced that he sees a giant flashing "Ramada Inn" sign.  He is, after all, FRENCH-Canadian and right below him lies the possibility for some great hotel sex.  With one eye glued to the pond, Pierre looks over at Monique and before you can say, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?", he honks out the suggestion, "Oh, LOOK, Sweetheart, they have water beds!!!"   And down they swoop down into the pond and here they stay.  
  

Yup, sex is pretty much rampant here on the prairie in April.  To your left is Exhibit #1: four of the cutest little yellow puffballs that you shall ever see.  And to the right, four beautiful bluebird eggs that hopefully will hatch, any day now.  If we're really, really lucky, in a few short weeks, we will have trained those baby bluebirds to come up to our front porch and feast on mealworms, which we raise in our basement.  We set the worms out in a little terra cotta dish and from our living room, we watch Mommy and Daddy bluebird feed their young.  It's a sight to behold here, all unfolding as another month of the calendar is about to embark upon us, swirling at the speed of light.  From the looks of things around here, it's time to switch on the sign that says "No Vacancy." We're full up at the inn.

Fairy Tale Friend

I am a passionate person.  There is so much in my life that has the ability to make my heart feel as if it's going to literally burst out of its cavity from within my chest.  It can be something that seems so simple, like the flower that I studied last Tuesday in watercolor class.  The picture was of an iris, my mother's favorite flower, and I was so taken aback by its absolute loveliness.  That flower didn't have a clue of the beauty it possessed, the power which it held over me.  Before the brush even touched the paper, my painting didn't stand a chance; it was doomed.  I was too busy thinking of my mother, of the unblemished miracle in each petal of the flower.

Oh, and the music!!!!!  Music, with melodies so gorgeous that tears can come to my eyes.  Truth be known, there have been times when one solitary note can choke me up.  My passion can lie within the wonder of watching a clutch of bird eggs, or the sight of a baby as he turns his lips up to smile. And there's my favorite heart-swell, the sound of my husband telling me that he loves me.  Yes, that is the best.

One of my most cherished passions is friendship.  I know so very many people, hundreds and probably even thousands. As a retired teacher, each school year opened its door to allow even more people to enter my life.  Every student that I taught had siblings and parents and even grandparents who came to concerts and watched their child as I waved my baton up on stage, more people to recognize me on the streets or in the grocery store.  My husband used to joke that we couldn't go anywhere, out of town or out of state, without someone calling out my name.  Add to that the neighbors past and present, other multitudes of community members, all of the groups and organizations to which I belong.  It adds up.  Still, out of those throngs of people that I know as acquaintances, there are few that are considered close, trusted friends. The value that I place upon them is immeasurable, as precious and miraculous to me as the petals of that iris.   

I've lost friends before.  One of my dearest died after a short bout with cancer.  Enough time has passed that whenever I think of my Evelyn, it can bring a smile to my face because I realize that I was and am blessed to have had her in my life at all.  Not everyone was fortunate enough to have known her.  Another friend is not lost; our friendship has simply transformed.  Kim lives clear across the country now but our hearts remain bonded and we never have to search for that unity that joins us.  We may have lost that day-to-day contact but our love for each other is still easily found.

No, this isn't about either of those people.  The loss of this particular friendship is confusing and has me befuddled, in a center stage funk.  It's the reason why I'm not sleeping very well, why I've been prone over the past few weeks to fluctuating moods.  You certainly don't need to worry about me, it's nothing at all like that.  But it all just leaves me feeling hurt.  Hurt and sad and tired.  Losing a friend is like having your hormones being thrown back into a time warp machine, back to the roller coaster ride of being thirteen.  High, low, forward, back, friend, gone.

My husband and close friends tell me to accept the parting, to let the bottle that contains the message, "I don't value you anymore" to go over the waves and out to the sea of blue.  After a couple of months of anguishing over the loss, I will take the advice of those people who care for me the most; I will try harder to let go.  I need to look at this through different eyes, to dust off the fairy tale that began so long ago, Once Upon A Time, and to finally allow myself to reach the last page where it says The End.  Close the book gently.  Friendships come and friendships go, but this one; this was a really, really good story.  

     

 

Washing Windows: Ode to Lil

   So earlier this week I was washing the windows of our home, a semi-annual event here on the prairie that brings about as much excitement to me as does flossing my teeth.  And while on a break from the drudgery, I received a dare from one of my Facebook pals: to write a blog about window washing.  I thinked and I thanked and I thunked and the only thing that I could sputter out of this feeble little brain of mine was to write about my grandmother, Lillian, Her Royal Highness of Vinegar.

I loved my grandmother very, very much.  My childhood years were turbulent and there were periods of time while I was growing up when I temporarily lived with her, my grandfather and my aunt.  My other aunt, uncle and cousin lived downstairs.  There are so many things that remind me of Grandma to this day, besides seeing a bottle of vinegar: 

• The Lawrence Welk Show.  I believe that she must have carried a secret torch for one of the performers, or maybe even for Larry himself, because heaven help the person or event that kept her from watching this show.  
• Thunderstorms.  Oh, how Lil hated thunder and lightning.  At the very first rumble, she would grab her purse and then wait it out in the stairwell of her home.  This wasn't a one-shot deal.  This occurred every single time.  If she was going to become a crispy critter in any electrical storm, she wanted to have her identification handy.     
• Bat Wings.  Gosh, when I think about what I put that poor woman through.  As a child, I would sneak up behind her, grab her bat wings and flap them.  I would then run away as fast as my pudgy little legs could go, screaming "Pudding arms!" at the top of my lungs.       
• Hair Nets.  As essential to the total ensemble package as her pair of shoes. 
• Doilies.  Lordie, that woman LOVED to tat.  I still have my mother's pillowcases with the tatted edges that Grandma made for her as a wedding present. 
• The Dupa.  I don't even know if this is a real word; I couldn't find it in the dictionary, but this is what the family called it.  I DO know that come Thanksgiving Day, no one dared to touch the turkey until after the dupa was ceremonially placed on the dinner plate in front of Lil.  The dupa is that little fatty triangular-shaped thing that's down there.  You know where- down THERE, at the end of the tailbone.

See those deep set eyes and that devilish little smirk?  Meet Lillian, on her wedding day.  Many people have told me that I look like her.  Ya think?  In the way I act, in my expressions, in my work ethic which just doesn't seem to want to quit, the deadpan sense of humor; it would seem that I scream of her.  God knows I have her ultra-thick naturally-wavy hair, the same bone structure that resembles a football linebacker, and yes, I was given her bat wings as payback for when I traumatized her with my childhood antics. When connections are made between my grandmother and me, I take that as a huge compliment.  She was, and still is, sky-high up there on my most sacred of pedestals. 

Lil's folks were fresh off the boat from Germany, and if there's one country that appreciates a good bottle of vinegar, it's Deutschland.  My grandmother's house smelled of the stuff, but in a good way. Her place oozed clean.  I still don't understand how she could take a bottle of vinegar and make her sinks and toilet sparkle like diamonds, and then turn around and with the same bottle, cook the most FANTASTIC sauerbraten and red cabbage that I have ever tasted.  I have tried many a time to replicate that recipe. I even inherited the bowl that she used for serving up her sauerbraten, but my gravy just never comes out quite as good as hers.  No, let's be honest; it's not even close.  I can't imagine why, what with her recipe calling for a 'chunk of beef or venison', 'some peppercorns' and to make the gravy, you take 'not too much flour'.  To this day, she remains the most fantastic cook that I have known.     

I would find little pudding cups, filled to the brim with vinegar, hidden in nooks and crannies throughout her house.   She said that the vinegar kept the place from smelling like smoke from my grandpa's cigarettes.  Ha, did my grandmother think I was born yesterday?  She was a closet smoker.  I saw the pack once, inside of her purse.  My aunt later told me that she allowed herself one cigarette a day.

She threw a cup of vinegar in with the laundry (always done on Mondays because duh, Tuesday was ironing day).  She said that it helped everything come out cleaner and kept Pa's socks smelling fresh as a daisy rather than the cow poop that was out in the garden. Grandma was a stickler for schedules.  You could set your watch to her meal times: the main meal of the day was served as the noon whistle blew, and your butt had better be at the table at 5:00 for supper.  Don't be late. 

Grandma also used vinegar to promote good health.  She would dole out spoonfuls whenever I had hiccups. I think a spoonful of sugar would have tasted better, personally.  Nothing beat the feeling of one of her homemade tatted washcloths rubbing my back down with vinegar after I found myself with a bad sunburn from the beach. Plus, she kept a bottle on the shelf in her tub, next to the Prell shampoo and the Zest soap.  She used it as a hair rinse to make her hair shine.


Pa, her husband, was a farmer and thus my grandmother became a master at the art of canning.  She taught everything that she knew about food preservation to my aunt, and in turn, my aunt taught me.  Grandma's root cellar was full of pickled beets, bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, chili sauce, sweet dilly beans, pickled relish, pickled watermelon rind and other jars of things swimming in vinegar.  She had four huge canners, a stove in the kitchen and one in the basement for those years when the crops were especially generous.  Crocks of homemade sauerkraut were down there, too.  To this day, I carry on her tradition. I  do the canning of our garden bounty, and I always think of my grandmother whenever I hear the little "ping" when the lid on the jar tells me that it has sealed properly.

Oh, and in case you haven't guessed by now: Lil also washed her windows with vinegar.  Her recipe: "Just pour some vinegar in some water.  NO, I don't know how much.  Just some.  That's how you do it.  No streaks."  And that's just how I did it, Grandma, that's just how I did it.    





   

The Price of Gas

This is getting exciting.  I just looked at my Super Man blog that I posted yesterday and I see that I've had 996 visitors.  Gosh, I wish, I wish, I wish (insert red ruby slippers, heels madly clicking), I wish I had something great that I could give away to the one-thousandth person, like a brand new car that has a giant pink ribbon on the top of the hood.  Or an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii.  Plus have a whole bunch of confetti fall down from the sky.  I like confetti.  But alas, if you are the lucky one who looks at this blog as counter trips over into Four Digit Land, you'll have to find your rewards from deep within yourself.  I suppose if I could find out who you were, I could send you a five dollar gift certificate to McDonald's and you could buy a Happy Meal. Maybe the toy in the meal box would be a really, really good one.   

Speaking of McDonald's, I've been trying to lose weight, lots of it.  And last week, I hit the sixty pound loss column.  I was ecstatic!!!!  So imagine my dismay when I stood on the scale this morning and saw that the number that popped up on the screen was THREE pounds higher than last week's scale reading.  Uh-ohhhhhhhh.

Let's discuss a calorie, shall we?   A calorie is the amount of heat that it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius.  I gotta say, for the average Joe America, this is a pretty worthless piece of information.  Gram?  Celsius?  I stunk in science when I was a kid, and besides, I didn't gain a kilogram; I gained a pound.  So it takes roughly 3,500 calories to make one pound.  That, I can understand.  And that means that somehow or another, I consumed an extra 10,500 calories this week, and THAT, my friends,  means that during the past six days, I somehow or another ate an extra SEVENTY-FIVE pieces of bread.

Maybe what I need to do is go to the bathroom.

Right now, my friend Ginnie is howling, "TMI! TMI! TMI!"  If you listen closely, you can hear her.  She lives on top of a hill and her voice is echoing through the entire countryside.  The last time I got constipated and wrote about it, she emailed me back these three little alphabet letters (complete with smiley face), and I had to look it up on Google.  I didn't know what it stood for.  Out here on the prairie, it's easy to get out of the loop.  But I found out that it stands for Too Much Information.  I don't want to upset Ginnie, so I won't type the word 'poop' today.

I don't have a stinking clue how I get this constipated.  Since dieting, I eat a barrel full of fiber each and every day- oatmeal, fruit, high fiber breads, salads.  Plus, I drink buckets of coffee, and not that foo-foo stuff, either. Black coffee.  But it seems as if, once again, I shall have to depend upon my trusty Fiber One Bars that I keep stashed in the back of my pantry.  Or, as one of my facebook friends calls them, Fart Bars.  I wonder if Ginnie gets upset if I say the word 'fart'?  

All I know is that by the time I officially weigh in tomorrow at Fat Ass Club, I need to dump ten thousand five hundred calories and then let the Tidy Bowl Man deal with the consequences of my actions.

So today, Chocolate Mocha gets the nod.  Stand back.

   

 

Super Man

Have you ever taken the time to REALLY contemplate men?  No, I'm not talking about anatomy or anything like that.  I'm talking about thoughts on men in general: what they value, what they think about and how in the blue blazes do they think that way?  Are all of those grunts from different planets?  Why does a man break out into hives when he is forced to answer the sentence, "I feel ______", especially when told 'horny' is not an acceptable response?  Have you ever noticed?  Immediately after a baby boy gushes out the words Mama and Dada, it's only a matter of time before BAM! and POW! overtake his vocabulary.  Along those same lines, why, when men get together and form a bevy of manhood, WHY do they like to blow things up?  Observe:

These are grown men.  I didn't hear any high heels clicking their way across the concrete, did you?  Why would anyone even LOOK at a pumpkin and say to the guy next to him, "Gee, Gomer, let's blow this thing up?"  Where does that idea COME from?!?  Thinking about blowing up a car engine?  I just watched the video; it's already been done. I know that if I ever DID blow up a pumpkin, my husband would think that I was the coolest wife ever on this planet Earth. 

I get dizzy when I blow up a beach ball.  


They have shows on the Discovery Channel that are solely about making things implode and explode, all in the name of science.  I've caught my husband mesmerized by the television screen, watching some five hundred pound squash that looks like Buddha with giant warts being catapulted across some poor farmer's field. One would think that he is above all of this nonsense, being a specimen with abundant intelligence.  But he is Man, and proudly waves his membership card high in the air, HUZZAH!  Wait...... that's TWO syllables.

Our absolute favorite television series of all-time is "Northern Exposure."  That show ran for seven, count 'em, SEVEN seasons.  We own all of the DVDs and regularly watch them throughout the winter months to help us get through the blahs and the doldrums.  They are incredibly funny, and often thought-provoking, artistic, and sensitive.  From the entire series, would you like to glean the two to three minutes that define Hubby's absolute favorite "Northern Exposure" moment?  

You would think that by now, men would have figured out that women are NOT attracted by things that blow up or explode.  Do you know what attracts me?  Pink.  I like a man who is secure enough with himself and his ego to put on a pink shirt and wear it as if it has WWE emblazoned across the front of it.

Birds have it all figured out.  Women not only like pink, we like to dance.  Women like men who dance, and birds know it:

My husband has danced twice with me in my entire life.  Both time were at weddings and both times it was to the same Elvis song.  I'm not fond of Elvis, but at least it was to "Can't Help Falling In Love" rather than  "Hound Dog."  Don't get me wrong: I am ever so grateful for those two dances, and I treasure their memories.  If I am supremely lucky, maybe there will be more dances yet to come.  But please, dear Lord, make it to someone else other than Elvis.  And Lord, by the way, if you're still dialed in, not to Weird Al Yankovic, either. That would probably appeal to my husband.

The other day, I thought that my husband was working on stuff for the IRS, but I couldn't find him.  He wasn't in the living room in front of the mounds of paperwork, and I figured that he was finished with his task. I found him out in the sunroom.

             "Are you done doing the taxes?"
            "Nope, been watchin' the birds.  Turkey vultures come and go, but taxes are forever."

And so we too shall be forever.  He's been watching things go boom and he's been watching the birds.  It seems as if he's learned a thing or two along the way and so have I.  Maybe it's not in the blowing up or in the strut; maybe it's the flight that everything takes in this life that is the ultimate attraction.  My husband might not wear pink or like to dance, but he speaks my language, even if it is primarily monosyllables.  When he smiles at me, my heart flies higher than any ol' piano, and when he says my name, my heart literally explodes. He is my Superman.

    

The Big Six-Zero

Good morning,

Today's blurb will have to be short, and in fact, it will just be all newsy and such, no morals or stories or whatever.  I have a bunch of things to get done here if I'm going to make it to the pool on time.  And I know what you're thinking:  "Right, like THAT'S gonna happen; Prairie Woman is going to write something SHORT."  I know, I know.  But I can't be crossing stuff off from a list if my fingers are occupied, flying across a keyboard.

So it's 26 degrees here this morning and there's tons of frost on the ground and two deer just romped playfully through the backyard.  They're not fooling me; I knew what THEY were thinking, too.  Must be I'm clairvoyant this morning, knowing what's going through everyone's mind.


       Marv:  "Wish those Prairie People could get off their big butts and plant something in this garden so that we could have a nice breakfast.  Some fresh, tender pod peas would be kinda nice."
      Harriet:  "I know.  These rose bushes are getting kinda stale."

They will have to wait until this weekend.  The horse poopie is all tilled under and the only thing left to do is to put the fence around the garden.  We shall be planting peas and spinach on Saturday.

So yesterday was a busy one.  I spent the vast majority of the day at the nursing home where I volunteer.  I was kind of a frustrating day for me but we won't get into that.  Let's just say that when an employee wants me to do something, I wish that the proper materials were accurate and ready for me.  Otherwise, my time is wasted, and I seem to waste a lot of time there lately.  Waiting and waiting and waiting..... and I don't like that.     

The BIG news is that I went to Fat Ass Class (what I affectionately call my weight loss club), where I stood on that stinking scale and lost yet another pound and a half.  That makes for SIXTY and three-quarters  pounds lost.  I can hardly believe it.  No surgeries or whatever, just plain ol' shutting my mouth, saying "No, thank you, I don't think that I would like any of that molten lava chocolate cream fudge pie today," and exercising.  It has taken me almost nineteen months to accomplish and I won't kid you, it's been tough.  But I'm not in any race, and in fact, I think that the way I'm approaching this is going to work for me for the rest of my life this time.  I have just about anything that I want; I just have a lot less of it than what I used to cram into my pie hole.  I can do this.  Seventeen more pounds to go and I reach my goal.  I don't care how long it takes as long as it's reached.  I repeat, I can do this.

So I'd better get at it.  I need to get the Fat Ass banking ready (I'm treasurer for the group.).  Cleaning the bathroom is always a treat.  I still have my Easter bunny theme going on in the kitchen and I know that I need to disassemble it all and get things back to normal.  Going to the pool to swim off a few calories.  Then my friend Lynnie is coming over and we're going to go grab a salad somewhere and then go for a walk in the local park.  Sounds like a good one, doesn't it?  All except that bathroom part. 

Have a great day.

Decision Making 101

Good morning,
It's a drizzly start to the day out there on the prairie.  This is okay with me, as we are WAY behind the magic eight ball in our precipitation so far this year.  We are almost a hundred inches less in our season snowfall this year.  We are also a third of the way through April and that's what we have so far for a monthly rainfall total- a third of an inch.  Such a paltry little amount.  Mother Nature can't seem to make up her mind on how she wants to rule the world.  Trust me, she's not alone.

Over the past couple or three months, I have become the Queen of Wafflers.  I seem to be unable to make a decision about a very personal dilemma that's going on in my life right now.  Back and forth, forth and back.  The waffling is at least providing me with entertainment, although I'm a bit dizzy most of the time.  I'm never bored because each day provides a fresh approach, a new attitude.  Yes, I will.  No, I won't.  I need to do this.  I need to do that.  Doing nothing obviously is doing nothing to solve the problem, but hey, it's an option.  And it's the road that I'm chosen to take, at least up to today.  I COULD change my mind.  All of this is driving me bonkers.

This morning, I decided that enough was enough.  Pretty good, huh? Did you notice?  I made a decision that I need to make a decision.  I got online and  googled "Decision Making."  Holy Mother of Ouija Boards.  There are like THOUSANDS of sites about decision making.  How in the heck am I supposed to decide which one to choose?  It's so complicated.

I sat down this morning and made a list of how I could reach a decision, based upon my history, and this is what I came up with.  At the very least, each idea spawned some action from me in the past:

• Spin the Bottle:  Wow, this is a GREAT one.  How come I haven't thought about this earlier?  This certainly used to spawn LOTS of action.

• Rabbit's Foot:  Hold on just a minute.  There's no way that I could ever do this.  No, my mind is made up on this.  I'm surprised these things ever made it past the PETA people.    

• Make a List:  This might work, one side of the paper being FOR a particular stance, the other AGAINST, with a line drawn down the middle of the paper.  Heck, I'm making a list right now.  But it is way too thought provoking.  Plus it doesn't go with the latest flow of "Decision Making by Consensus." It seems in the decision making world that reaching consensus is a real biggie. 

• Rock Paper Scissors:  After all of these years, I STILL don't get this game.  

 As you can see, I'm not very good at this, am I?  So as a last resort, I talked about my current dilemma with a trusty old friend this morning, and this is what I got as a response:

Sigh.  It's going to be yet another fun day in Eggo Land.

  

A Bunny Tale

It's a sunny day to revel in the Easter holiday weekend across the prairie.  The temps aren't that far from the norm, although the wind makes it feel chillier.  There are hyacinths and daffodils galore outside.  I made a nice arrangement and will use the flowers as part of a centerpiece for Easter dinner. I'll put them smack dab in the middle of the table, nestled in among my bunny collection.  And now, a warning:  Today's entry is going to be serious and personal in nature.  Heartfelt, yes.  Funny, no.  A bit of drama to boot.

So what's up with them bunnies?  My kitchen table has on it two Jim Shore rabbits and also a cheap felt bunny that I found this year at the Christmas Tree Shop for $2.99.  What a deal!  The tablecloth is full of bunnies.  My kitchen towels are adorned with bunnies, along with the potholders. Even my profile pic on Facebook smacks of Bunny Land.  If you were to come to our house and knock on the front door right now, these bunnies would greet you.  Take a good look at them, because this floppy- eared trio is responsible for quite The Bunny Tail  Tale. 


It was discovered quite by accident, six years ago.  As are many band directors who have been at the job for decades, I had started to develop hearing problems.  And by the way, it seems that the odds of hearing impairment greatly increase if a teacher gives drum instruction in a room that used to be a public school lavatory.  The proof was provided not only by the garish yellow tiles, but also in that large cylinder that jutted out from the wall.  I was thankful for the custodians who removed the toilet that once was connected to the pipe.       

Anyway, all I could hear out of my left ear was my heartbeat so I went to the ear/nose/throat guy in town. He wanted to make sure that the problem wasn't caused by the carotid artery so he ordered an MRI.  Half-way through the test, I was brought out of the machine and injected with dye.  "We might see something," was all that was said.  A few minutes later, I was standing in front of the director of the imaging center, who showed me the images.  I didn't say anything.  Didn't move.  Just stood there and listened as he told me I had a brain tumor.  

I numbly walked out to my car and sat in Fabio (the name of my ultra sharp-looking navy blue Taurus at the time) and had myself a good cry.  Called my husband at work and shared what I knew, which really wasn't much but which seemed to me at the time to be more than I could handle.  Then I pulled myself together because I knew I had to go across the street to the nursing home where my mom lived and pretend that everything was peachy-keen. I was able to pull it off without my mother suspecting a thing.       

The next day, I was back in the ENT's office, where he told me that he was good buddies with the head of the neurology department at an area teaching hospital.  He added that although his friend was booked solid, the guy had agreed to see me as a favor.  So at 7:30 on a Monday morning, I was sitting in the office of a Dr. Hodge, who confirmed what we already knew.  I had a brain tumor.  And due to its size, surgery was really the only option.  I was told that the prognosis looked good but to get my affairs in order, just in case. 

Not being an emergency, I had to wait three weeks for the operation.  Talk about misery and stress.  I continued to work and found that school became my savior, a place where I could temporarily forget how terrified I was feeling.  The music faculty and students became my crutch.  On my final day at school, every member of the middle and high school bands formed a line and gave me hugs and kisses as I got prepared to leave the building.  I will never, ever forget the love and sensitivity that those kids showed me on that day.  So very scared, I felt so very blessed.

I was standing on the front porch of our home on April 2nd,  one day prior to my surgery.  Fabio was primping himself for the big trip into the city, and my husband was standing beside me.  We had to leave.  I reached out for him and looked out at the beautiful countryside that surrounds our home and I told him that I would be back to see those three bunnies hanging on our front door.  I would come back home.

I remember very little about my time in the hospital, but I remember as Fabio entered our driveway, I saw those bunnies and I cried and cried.  And it was during my recovery that I discovered more than I ever thought possible, mostly of the pureness of life that once was perhaps taken for granted.  There's my husband, who answered the "in sickness and in health" bit with "I do" and as it turns out, he really meant it.  Forever it will be him and me.  There's the incredible community in which I live.  The middle school teachers who kept a caravan of hot dinners coming to the house for a solid month, including an Easter ham dinner with all of the trimmings, topped off with a cake shaped in the form of a bunny.  Every church in the area had me on a prayer list, irregardless of denomination.  Flowers, books, puzzles and other get-well thoughts and kind gestures.  Two huge grocery bags full of cards, many from people who didn't know me but ".... heard about you from a neighbor."  Friends came to my house to keep an eye on me, to clean and to do laundry so that my husband could keep his business afloat.  Small town stuff, but tremendously rich in so many ways.  This is why I hold bunnies so dear.  Bunnies represent the goodness that is offered to us without being asked, the love and hugs that our hearts are capable of holding and sharing.

The bunnies hang, heralding in the springtime and the hope eternal that flows with the season.  Happy Easter.  

The Survivor

Good morning,

It's 26 degrees here on the prairie, clear skies prevail,  and there's a bit of frost on the ground.  The humidity is high at 90 degrees, which wasn't the case last night.  A weak disturbance was pushing through our area at dinnertime, but the ultra-low humidity kept the sprinkles at bay, with just a few drops making it to the ground.  A mere trace of rain was reported this morning as a result.

Speaking of weather, did you see the video that came in of the tornado that swept through the Dallas/Fort Worth area yesterday?  Scary stuff.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: We may have the occasional blizzard or flooding situation here, but it's squat compared to the devastation that occurs in other portions of this country.  We are very fortunate here on the prairie.

So I just got back from the gulf coast of Florida, visiting the father for the past week. I had an excellent time, most of it spent either at the pool or preferably on the beach.  I read "The Hunger Games" with my toes sticking in the warm sand.  The weather was fantastic for my entire stay.  Pops splurged with tickets to the Jays/Twins game at their spring training camp in Dunedin and that, too, was lots of fun.   

When my dad isn't in Florida, he's living here on the prairie with my husband and me.  I think that Dad's take on the world stems from the fact that he was orphaned at a very early age, raised in a series of foster homes and running away from most.  Being born a few years before the Great Depression, he was seen by his foster 'families' as cheap farm labor and wasn't treated very well in most cases.  It's almost an obsession with him, this desire to please others and yet to be wary of ulterior motives at the same time.  He is a survivor in the toughest of situations, which would include being a snowbird in the Sunshine State.  

 My father was outside, sitting in a lawn chair when I arrived at his condo last week.  I told him to stay seated and I would put my suitcase inside and be right back to begin our week-long visit.  I walked into the living room and there, on the floor, sat a paper clip.  I really didn't think anything of it.  I put my bag onto the bed and on the way back through, I picked up the paper clip and took it outside to my father.

"Here, Pops," I said, handing it to him.  "I found this on the floor."

"Oh, let me show you the idea I came up with," he replied.

Uh-ohhhhhhh.

Back inside we went. Strategically sitting on the floor were OTHER paper clips, placed just so in the grooves of the ceramic tiles. 

"A GREAT idea of mine," he explains.  "This way, if one of my paper clips is disturbed, I can tell if someone's been in here."

Trust me.  The only thing that's going to go wandering through my dad's condo is one of those stupid, pesky chameleons.  There are millions of them scurrying about, everywhere you look.  It would seem that their troops are well fortified.    

Okay, back to the paper clips.  But let's not call them paper clips.  They are highly technically-engineered tracking devices and land mines, rolled up into one.  Yessir, it's downright dangerous in that Over-55 Condo Association and it would seem that my dad's unit is particularly at risk.  Maybe it's because it sits around the corner from that perilous shuffleboard court.  And who knows what lurks behind that palm tree?

Next he shows me this long curly-Q wire that he has sticking out from under the television cart.

"Same idea.  That's the wire that holds a spiral notebook together.  You really wouldn't notice it, would you?  But if someone's in here, his shoe is going to brush against it and the wire will move.  Clever, huh?"  I begin to wonder if there are other devices in the house that could detonate.  Maybe I will fall into a deep pit when I sit on the john, my butt being impaled by a giant spear.  And here I am, silly me: I forgot to pack my camouflage.

 Yup, he's a survivor, that one.  Eighty-six years young, Pops is still slicing his way through this dog-eat-dog world with a paper clip.  Really, I'm so glad that I went down to check up on him.  I had been concerned about him a little bit, but I can easily see that everything is normal.

At the same time, I have decided that it would be best that I keep my copy of "The Hunger Games" out of his hands.  He doesn't need any more ideas floating around in that head of his.