Dec 24

Merry Christmas, in Spite of the Warm Weather

D3 is off to work, Papa is driving her today.  She is plenty old enough to drive herself, but her place of employment is 10 miles in the direction we’re doing after she finished work.  It makes sense for us to pick her up on the way.  And, she won’t have a car sitting in the lot there till we get home later.

It’s supposed to be fifty (50!)degrees today.  I that’s too warm for Christmas, even in Detroit.  In the 80’s sometime, we had a Christmas day when it was quite warm, so warm we all went outside and had our picture taken.  I think Papa took the picture, but not sure.  Whenever I find it I’ll post it.

I hope it will be a tad cooler tomorrow, but there isn’t really any hope for snow.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Dec 23

The Night Before the Night Before

Today is the 23rd, usually a busy day.  But we didn’t have a thing to do.  We removed our tree and packed Christmas away for another year.  We cleaned.  We packed our car for the trip to Jekyll on the 26th, and packed our van for our Christmas with grandma up North.  We visited some friends and picked up some flyers to take on our trip.

I watched a very funny video that Sista Smiff had posted on YouTube. And another one!  That woman is funny, and creative.

Now, it’s football.  Oh, ya, we hooked up on-line access for GS2’s playstation 2.  We’re paying for this great DSL, might as well use as much of it as we can.

We’re missing GS1.  I hope he has enough friends at Great Lakes and they keep it together for Christmas.  It’s his first year away from family rituals–and he’s so young.  D1 is looking forward to seeing him at his graduation in January.  I’m just missing him, and crying about it sometimes.

Dec 21

Now what?

The year is almost over.  Papa is working his last day of the year today.  We will be heading down to Jekyll Island on the 26th,for the Adams and Anderson bluegrass show.  We kind of take it easy going down, but we should be there in time for a walk on the beach on Wednesday, the 27th.  We’ll be driving home on the 31st and 1st. We enjoy going to Jekyll Island and the festival each year.

We already had our “Christmas” with our children, grandchildren and my Mom and step-dad.  We’ll have family gatherings on the other site Christmas Eve and Christmas afternoon.  There’s no snow to shovel, there are no gifts to buy, and it’s too late to send cards to the address list Papa brought home from work.  Most of them already got one, but a few have moved and theirs were returned.

I’m going to get some pictures printed.  When we saw the Lewis Family at Pigeon Forge a couple of weeks ago, Janis said they didn’t have even one photograph of the Hall of Honor presentation at the IBMA awards!  We have a few, not to close up, but at least something to remember that great occasion by.  There are quite a few of our photographs on the Lewis Family site.  We’ll take a set for each family (Janis and Earl, Polly and Leon, Roy and Bonnie, Lewis and Laney, Scot and Heather, and Miggie).

I’m going to clean the house (again) and wash (again).  Those are the things that never get done. I’m going to take Gs2 over to my Mom’s to hook up the VCR/DVD combination we got for the for Christmas.  I’ve got some work to do, and I’ll probably leave that till later.  Off to the races!

Dec 20

Watch out for the Stool

Granddaughter 2 is a lovely child, about 2-1/2 years old.  She is heavily influenced by living in a home filled with words, books and 2 older siblings.  Never, not even in her first months, was she satisfied to be little, younger, less able unable.  She has simply grown up reaching for tasks that are normally allocated to older children.

D2 reported that several weeks ago there was an accident involving her need to be taller.  As background information, my sister-in-law owns a store in which she sells, among other things, oak furniture.  Ever since grandsons 1 and 2 were small, a round coffee table and matching stools have been used as a kids area, a sort of table and chairs for short people.  GD2 picked up a stool and headed out, but somehow dropped it on her big toe.  That action was not without consequence.  She had a tough couple of days, according to D2, including an emergency room visit, a day home from daycare, and about a week in which she needed a sock on the injured foot to cover up her mistake. During her visit last week and weekend, every time she looked at the toe, she would say, very seriously, “Watch out for the stool”.  Her mom would  ask, “Why? and she would give a long answer about the toe, the injury and so on. 

Dec 15

Granny’s Family Christmas

In case you didn’t guess, the granddaughters are here, and I couldn’t blog much, even if I wanted to.  But they are too much fun.  It’s 40 degrees here, very unusual.  We’re making pie and rolls and then we’ll make the dressing for tomorrow’s turkey.

The presents under my tree and killing them, they want to open them NOW.  Tomorrow will have to do.  See you all on Monday!

Dec 12

Left Over Biscuits

RIP,  Dempsey Young

(Photos from the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival, June 2006 –copyright, 2006 candidpix.info)

Sometimes, there is nothing to say that really helps or expresses one’s thoughts.  Lots of people have tried:

Lost and Found guestbook

Dempsey Young Story

Dempsey Young Guestbook

Dec 12

Just Another busy day

Our car needed some repairs, so I took it in yesterday.  Papa drives the car for work, and it gets a lot of miles put on it.  It took us to Pigeon Forge, and it will also take us to Jekyll Island later this month.  We have a long-standing relationship with the car repair man, we used his services a lot when we had college student daughters.  College age people generally have cars that need a lot of doctoring.

Today, GS1 has to go to the dentist, in about 5 minutes.  Then I’m shopping, so I can feed GDs 1 and 2 when they arrive.  It’s like a treadmill around here.

Dec 11

The Real World

So, we’re home from Tennessee.  We had a great time at the Larkin family’s Christmas in the Smokies.  We slept in, talked to a bunch of nice people, looked at the great light displays in Pigeon Forge, all the Fudgie stuff.

On the way home we noted some changes in the scenery since our last drive home.  One barn had completely collapsed, and another was headed in the same direction.

We talked with great anticipation of a visit from GS3 and his sisters, GD’s 1 & 2.  Oh ya, their mom is coming, too.

I got up this morning with a huge list of things to do to get caught up.  The first e-mail I read this morning told of the passing of Dempsey Young.  This is the saddest thing.  God bless his wife, family and friends.  I’m totally frozen and can’t accomplish a thing.

Dec 08

What Planet are you from?

So, we’ve been to the flea market again.  I say again, because they seem the same everywhere.  The vinyl banners, the refurbished computers, the cheap jewelry, the candles, and the rejected household goods seem to clone themselves from location to location.  Of interest this year is the trend of groups of boxes of dollar items sitting on the floor or ground in narrow rows.  The items are the same in Florida, Ohio, and where we found today, Tennessee.  The most interesting think is that we’ve been to enough of these establishments to find the similarities.  Talk about being cost driven – we must be.

I need to tell about one unique experience at a flea market, which hasn’t repeated itself, and I hope it won’t.  We were in Ohio a couple of weeks ago, and predictably made our way to one of the local flea markets.  After a hour of viewing merchandise we didn’t need, don’t have room for and couldn’t use, throw away or give away we exited into a large outdoor area.  Not too far away was a delivery van, with 5 or 10 pallet boxes sitting on the parking lot near it.  People were taking things out to the boxes, as far as we could see.  There was quite a crowd.  We were drawn magnetically toward the scene. 

Near the back of the truck stood a man, yelling aand hollering the same couple of phrases over and over.  “Hold it up, I’ll give you a price!”  “Most things under $5.” “Another truck is on the way.”  The guy maintained nearly constant chatter, and held a wad of small bills.

I approached a box and looked in.  Various boxes, broken, smashed and other wise shopworn were inside.  At the next box a woman tore the side down to reach something inside.  The ground was littered with rejected items.  I pulled a mostly intact carton up, and read the notice on the “reject” label on the top, “broken, doesn’t run.”  My mind completed the circuit.  These boxes were filled with returned goods.  Another truck was on the way.

I looked at Papa, and he looked at me.  We continued toward the car, dodging the items that, by now, littered the ground.  I related the scene to someone last weekend, and her words still echo in my ears, “ Are we living on the same planet?”  Good question.

Dec 07

Up this Hill and Down

The above title of a old Osborne Brothers song really didn’t mean a lot to me until I began to travel around the United States over the past 15 years.  Perhaps I hadn’t even heard the song before then.

We drove down to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee yesterday in the process we went up and down a bunch of hills.  Although driving up down the carefully engineered hills and valleys of our modern highways doesn’t quite compare with walking “up this hill and down, up this hill again”, it was enough to remind us of the song, which we both started humming.