A nephew

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again. I have many nephews by marriage, I have one nephew by blood.  All grew up in different households, different parents, some in great environments, some in adequate in environments, and some in stark environments, and of course all have turned out differently.  Of course as the years have passed I wished them all well, and for some of their moments I'd wish their lives could have been changed with the wave of wand, but when so many of other parties were involved what I wished for them was not always what shaped, and slowly they all survived and made it to adulthood.
But as adult who are they?
A few still have a chance for being what they see lacking in others, or for being the best part of who they think they should live life out as.  Will they be givers, or will they just see their own small sphere?  Can they reach out and give to others, can they communicate something to others that will help someone else grow past the damaged arenas being reared brought them.  Can they blossom?
They can if they truly want to.  just because you were reared in a box, does not mean you can't go live your life in a star-shaped multi-diamond.
You do still have time, and opportunity to grow beyond the chaos, and become something better: A giving Human, who goes out into the world and helps it become a better place one person at a time. Being able to do this takes humilty as we must see our own weak areas, we must see our own failings in order to help others we encounter, we must admit that we are all simple humans and no one should just be allowed to slip through the cracks without there being a chance at redemption of path.
And this would be a gift for you*

Age and relevance, and of course the passage of time

Yesterday I visited with a segment of the family, my ister in laws side of the family, it was a girls day, dip, chips, sandwiches an lots of fast paced conversation and inter-changes that would keep you smiling.
Gelisa (Jelly) came and got me and wanted me to color on the floor, laying bellies down we traced our hands and colored them, and experimented with some drafting apparatus trinagles, squares and half circles someone had left in the crayon bag, and Jelly announced "I'm 4", and I told Jelly back " I'm 54, Krissie out in the kitchen stated she just turned "34", and a few minutes later Jelly told me next year she'd be 5, and after that 6, and after that 7, and each time I countered her with I'd be 55, 56, 57 and as we traced eachothers hands and colored and made butterflies from the drafting triangles I was faced with a moment of "the passage of time" , it was a simple time frame and yet I sensed that Gelisa knew she's starting out and I am finishing, we are at light years polar spheres in a humans life span.
And it's ok, as I've done the rest, I've had my 4, 5, 6, 7., 20, 21, 22, 23, 35, 36, 37, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 53, and so we're rolling along.............And our Krissie who brushed my long hair when she was four, my Krissie I first saw in spring of 76 on the front porch swathed in blankets, my Krissie who so love my brothers and I playing guitar the night the families met lying on the floor listening to guitars being strummed, my Krissie who's wedding I was at, we'll she's moving along with us, and she had her 4, 5, 6, and 14, 15, 16, and 20, 21, 22, and 30, 31, 32 and as we go we take the time for the young'uns, we try to mend a heart or two as they shine in our paths, we try to live up to something someone requires of us, and such is life.  We humans remember where we've been, and yet we all know where we're going in the wide expanse of the statement.

Wakes, Memorials, and Cultures: Oz's Grandpa: Frenchie

 My son's best friend growing up was a young man we call OZ, I first met him as a young child, I'm thinking 1st grade for the two of them, I was a room Mom on and off through Grammer school, hosted the Halloween Parties, saw all of these little creatures we call children dressed up as their favorite idols, monsters, or larks of personality, Oz had crystal clear blue eyes and ash blond hair, the eyes won my memory.
Another time we'd see him at the pool as he'd coax Justin into diving for rocks on the bottom, no easy feat as my child did not like the water, but Oz won.
Another time at school I hosted a book fair in the hallway with a mom unknown to me who chatised a child for being a quarter short, she refused him his book...oh that child eyes filled up with tears.....and I recognized our little cherub and spotted him his quarter which made his heart happy....and all of these years this child's life has interacted within my own and within my families:   Youthful bailouts from underage drinking done by these two culprits, my spouse and I milded mooded with 3am phone calls from police stations driving to fetch one or the other or both, proms, their dreams, schooling years, 4am in our kitchen offering to cook us breakfasts, long talks about what's right and what's wrong in life.  His mom had been very similar to I in approach at one point of life, and then she chose another path & why at mid-life I'll never know but she chose the life of crack a place she's never been able to come back from, calls to us at 3am when he couldn't handle the strangers in his own home anymore and chose to go away to school so he could escape.  And we'd see his Grandpa & Grandma (Olma) at football games when they played that in high school and have a few laughs in the stands together.   They lived within a few blocks from his own house and had always been a land of rescue from any of life unpleasantries.
And so with a sadness we know, we went last night to Oz's grandpa's wake, appropriate on Veterans Day as his Grandpa had been in the army and many award letters and honorable mentions from the army on display, his grandpa will be buried at Arlington National Cemetary in about a week, waked where my own Dad had been waked a few blocks from our home.
Wakes are never easy as each of us only knows what we've seen for previous wakes we've been to, sometimes there is sadness over the loss, sometimes there is pain in our hearts from the cancer's that claim our loved ones, worn down from hospice stage, and sometimes there is anger held in that this happened at all, each person of an immediate family drifting through this on their own emotional level.
So we hope when we stop to pay our respects to a family that they know we love some of them, that we stop because we do care, and we hope they gain some strength from a moment of seeing an old friend.
And so each family will experience the pain death of a family member can bring us, mingled with all of the best memories we can retrieve of better days, and for OZ of a Grandpa he was proud of and loved by.

Veterans Day Thoughts

Have you ever seen the sunrise?  How often in those war torn years did he wonder if he'd see another.
How many other things happened that he chose not to discuss, holding old memories and scars close to the vest?
The photographs in black and white taken Texas and it's camp, and other southwestern states training bases were always of interest, his little dog adopted during his time at the camp, but his pictures of Europe so mall in size compared with what we have now, well they were spectacular.  So much old beauty captured, so many hillsides, and cathedrals photographed, you'd get spoiled and think and here's another, another, and at time speed up thinking they were the same.
I didn't see the album until 2002 12 years after his own death, I found it with my precious childhood pennies placed in a bigger box, mislabled by error or on purpose. Oh my God, what he captured was the beauty of World War II Europe pre-bombing, and he captured the devastation of the very same areas on his way back out of Europe, he captured the men he fought along side of, their equipment, their responsibilities, and then as the war ended he capture all of the destruction of Chateau's, Cathedrals, War Camps photographed, and some very special ones that now housed the Nazi's instead of the Polish Jews, French Jews, German Jews, and any others Hiltler had captured because they were beneath his sick and scared brains concept of who should live and who should die, who had rights, and who he didn't think should have rights, all of those denied a very simple freedom, freedom to live wherever and however they chose and to live at all.
Yes to me, my father and his men who fought in that particular war were very good Hero's of Mankind.  And for his photography he's let me glimpse a very real and personal story of his years in Europe.

Lonliness, Alone and Lone

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again., mode of operandi.
Lonliness is a place we are caste off to by other humans, there are many influencing factors involved, but the most severe forms are rejection by a loved one as in loss of love, another would be the death of a loved one, the latter is devestating as there is no more them, and the former is horrible as they have told you you mean nothing to them anymore they do not want to be with you in any capacity you would wish for.
So you find yourself alone.  It is a very isolated feeling, you do a lot of thinking, if you are lucky you have some friends or family to lend some small semblance of support, and you slowly get to a different place: Lone.
Lone is the oneness you have slowly emerged back to, it is who you were light years ago before you started being a couple....when you find it, embrace it, and grow back into it, it is a good enough place to be, it is a place where growth can start over, old traits be taken out and dusted off, strengthened, and built upon.
Lone can be fair and good, much better than alone, with little of the feelings lonliness brings.
Lone wins.

Astrology and planetary alignments impacting mere humans

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again.....Astrology is a subject whereby you have to do a lot of sifting to come up with some semblance of truth, in fact it might be the most ancient of truths, the planets and sun and moon phases and star constellations were the first clocks for mankind.  Eventually patterns were observed season to season of where different solar system items were placed relative to the times of year, add gravity into the mix and this all might have been the most accurate of our religions with the passage of time we have lost much as we replaced the various meanings of the three wise men, Sun for Son, but the heavens do yield some powerful shape shifters as a year progresses, each year slightly unique as all of the items out there do not have the same cycle.
For a girl born at the Old St. Joseph's Hospital in Chicago on February 15th 1955 at 1:25am all of this shapes differently for me than it would for you or any of our other people.
So with some truths and some humors it is said that this week is a rocky week for relationships, and that I try to keep giving but indicates there will not be enough to keep from bottoming out at the end of a weeks time, at which time I will be faced with re-thinking it all.   So as I observe some of my own monkeys I can believe this is truth coming my way, they are on edge and not themselves....
Now think about it, if when the moon is full we observe people doing incredibly brazen things like erratic driving on expressways full of people, and we understand that gravity forces impact the ocean which is fluid, can you not understand that the same gravity could affect the fluids our own brains are housed in?
Now filter out to the bigger scope of the universe and it's affects on humans.
Just some 1/2 playful, 1/2 not truths my mind wanders on...... 

This lady writes the IRS and THe White House

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again.....so last week I wrote the IRS, I am signed up for newsletters relative to plans being implemented for housing (my Realtor curiosity), for Penalty's on 401K Plans of 20% off the top = 10% for the Fed IRS only(taken at income tax time...and then the State Taxes which will be levied at income tax time some months up, so I explain to them why people would cash out their plans early to try to live while un-employed and to try and save a home they've lived in since the early 80's.
I will probably fo onto a black list of some sorts as I did tell them this is a legal loan shark practice and that they need to look hard at easy up on the common man who is solely trying to survive and protect what they've worked a lifetime for, and I did point out they were not the ones who worked for this 401K savings, we did.
And then this morning via whitehouse.gov I did write once again to our President to ask him for BANK ACCOUNTABILITY and FINANCIAL MARKET Houses to be made accountable as in no bonuses for the god old boys club, and to make them accountable for showing the bailout money was used for the proper ear-marked items, instead of the Chase and Citibank new machines I keep seeing placed on the street and within their banks, so in essence no more bonuses or toys as this years fall out on households of the common man is much worse than last years even if they think the markets are better, the households are not.
I also asked him to still nail down the other legal loan shark entity of credit card companys (owned by those poor banks) who fleece the American public of 33%+ interest anytime money is owed by the peoples of the country.
And I did ask him to addressed the IRS and their stiff penalties of 30% on the 401K Plans for early withdrawals needed to support un-employed households which would as any of these above points mentioned help supremely to keep foreclosures at bay.
If I didn't need to work I'd be out picketting with a glorious sign in my hand, but I am the only one in this with a job left, so I use my words to express my desires for the USA, and to GET THE POINT ACROSS THAT THE BANKS ARE STILL A BIG PART OF THIS PROBLEM, AND THAT THE STOCK MARKET COMPANIES WANTING THEIR BONUSES, AND GOLDEN PARACHUTES AT RETIREMENT STILL.......IN LIGHT OF WHAT THESE LEGALIZED CROOKS HAVE DONE TO AN ECONOMY, WELL THEIR FINGERS, WRISTS AND ARMS SHOULD FALL OFF FIRST, THEY SHOULD NEVER SEE A DIME OF BONUS FOR THE ECONOMY IS NOT FIXED YET, NOT BY MORE THAN A SPECK OF DUST! 

Each Human is Unique

 At an earlier point someone accused me of hypocrasy, I guess we'd all be capable of that culprit, although some of us try to live the talk as well as we can.....so on that note I righted some Karmas this weekend, I have a few I care for deeply and needed to know we were on as good of a path as possible, and I walked away feeling hope, and warmth.

Some do not get it, but we have family on both sides which I love tremendously, some of our components are faulty, similar to wiring we get close to having an electrical meltdown at times, but the depth of the love involved for so many critters keeps us trying when others would despair and write it off as a loss, there is a core group of us that cannot throw in the towel.

I keep your rose and card in front of me, as I do my mother's blue rose, co-pilots keeping this girl out of trouble and somedays making her do the right things.

Yesterday one man spoke of his girls, and his love for them, he sees no separation of blood, his daughters by law are his daughter in heart, and that was so refreshing that it still lives on, he may be very very capable of unconditional love, and that is the warmth I left with., his love of us.

Days fly by us, yet I couldn't have loved you better

I'll start with my own, I've done the other side in 2006:

I couldn't have loved you better father than the night you told us how you drove backwards/transmission failure to keep your word and see her at the hospital, nor the day you brought the city christmas tree home on a borrowed sled as the snow was hip high, nor the day you stood in the back of the church and asked me if I was ready to walk down the aisle, nor the day a week before you surprisingly died standing together at the cemetary and you telling me two facts you never forget them no matter how many years and that family members fighting is a terrible thing and a waste of time.

I couldn't have loved you better Mom than the day after the turkey fight, when you seemed to have gotten somewhat better as all of us tried to clean up the wreakage from the fight and started to gain some measure of control as we tried to put things to rights. I couldn't have loved you better than the day you stood in the white dress with a rose from our garden on your lapel your green eyes sparkling with happiness that you'd moved on from a horrible time period. I couldn't have loved you better than the day I was in labor and I picked you up to go to the hospital with me cause I had no way to call Rick on a jobsite. I couldn't have loved you better than when you decided Dad could be laid to rest in the family cemetary closest to us where my own daughter rested. The cemetary war drawn to a close. I couldn't have loved you better than the day in the hospital when you were pissed off and told me in front of Juice that you were planing your funeral during idle time and I got you back by telling you didn't have to plan it, I would. The defiance and understanding in those green eyes that day ∧ the boys left for Canada as I interviewed hospice, what a gem.

I couldn't have loved you better than when you called Robby back to say a goodbye one last time, your first born so hard to do.

Robby, I couldn't have loved you better than all of the childhood days you helped us escape for awhile to gladstone park for skating, for all the times you saved us when big kids wanted to beat us up, for all the sports you guys introduced to me so I could figure out what I liked and didn't, for all of the rides to the holiday, for all of the times gone to dinner or lunch when you were home from the army, for Juice's first christmas tree here and the rocking chair to rock him in his first christmas when we were so broke, and all of the strengthening trips to Laguna to see that magnificent beautiful beastly ocean in all of it's glory and the mending it always gives.

Frankie I couldn't have loved you better than when you included a young girl into the fishing world, or spent tons of time with her as she studied the guitar and tried to find her paths as a young lady, I couldn't have loved you better than for the introduction you gave to my soulmate and me, I certainly couldn't have found him without you. I couldn't have loved you better than the open love you showed to Dad and all your fishing trips he looked to, or how well you nursed and cared for Mom during the final frontier, or the music you played for her to ease her out into the portal. I couldn't have loved you better than all the days you showed me tenderness as I lost all three of them, you held me up, made me move through till I reached some sort of auto pilot again.

Ricky, I couldn't have loved you better. You have been the light and laughter in so many of my days. You are special, and that quality which spins out onto all you know and all you do has carried me far. You are my rainbow on earth. You are at my side when I falter.

Juice, I couldn't have loved you better than all of your childhood, you are the best of each one of us, you have great capability to give people light and hope and warmth. I couldn't have loved you better than all of the days you gave love and light to us, nor on your graduation day from Roosevelt , or all the times you've popped into a room with your wild descriptions of the people and places you have just encountered. I couldn't have loved you better than all the nights you drove to see Uncle Mike, most children torn between duties and cravings of a young man, and no you just came cause it was the only place you wanted to be, love of him, love of family held no questions for you on what you wanted to do or where you wanted to be. I couldn't have loved you better than all the times you ended up at the diner to see your cousins, to keep in touch on your own.

There are a hundred thousand ways I couldn't have loved you better.

Lauren: I couldn't have loved you better, a spirit, a wisp of who I carried inside, I felt I knew your personality and ways, a gentle being for a Leo, your aura the color of your birthstone the peridot.  I have seen you grow in my mind, I saw you at every step  your were denied.  Had you made it you would have been a solidly good human.

Our differences and where we get to: Undone

I Shall pass this way but once.....like life doesn't have enough problems these days, giving off with a steady rythym, we run on a threadmill that gives the feel of stopping completely should we falter in step.

And now all of the people's trying to understand others different than them, all of us reading into someone else's priorities, finding them unacceptable, questioning someone else's decisions made on their own life.

How many time's have I been isolated because something I did was different or something one of mine did was different. And really how times have we been judged, and why do the judges feel they must be judges, yikes I didn't even like most of the one I ever saw in court, if Doctors have God complexes, please tell me what judges have????????How much fairness is there, versus a power push knowing they can manipulate and change anothers life.

Oh well so I am judged for being as open minded as I possibly can be, and I am in the shitter because I won't force feed another "What I would do", and Who I wish they associated with", down into the proverbial toilet I slide, so plagued by my newest quandry that it ruins my sleep, reversed vampire rest is at hand.

And all along I understood what wasn't understood as I can see the sides of the coins, yet I have no controls, and I must let it play through casuse the path involved is not my primary path.....it is not my shoes walking it, I have my own path sometime parallel, sometimes jaunting off west or south, it is not the same precise path., the other walks.

So yet again I understand, and yet I do not understand the extreme angers that rob us of all of the good times had when one on one. I wish perspective and tolerances could be broadened, and yet obviously everyone can't be as tolerant as I am, if we were all the same it would become very boring.

To lay down your head

Days of 3, and 4 and 5 were the days of early learning. So much to see and do through the days, it teaches us our balance.
Days of 6, and 7 and 8 learned riddicule from our surrounding adults, and tried to apply a logic to the encounters to strenghten our surroundings.
Days of 9 and 10 and 11 brought peers who scorned us to spitting, and whipping at us any chance they got, the hell years where indeed plenty.
Days of 12, 13, and 14 brought us into some sunlight and laughter, as we jelled and meshed with some new friends, and found a sense of ourselves remaining.
Days of 15, 16, and 17 brought more outside interests for discovering, ourselves to hanve withstood the childhood years, and to want for time in learning.
Days of 18, and 19, and 20 brought first jobs, and a new crop of learning, survival skills to carry us through the rest of our adult life time earnings.
In hindsite the pain has diminished, from the actual grueling pained days, and a fair, giving girl was created, who has tried to forgive all lifes wrongs, and to pass on a kindness where she sees a space in others lives who need filling, but the years have worn on and when the final beat comes, I believe this tired older woman will be willing.
To lay down her head, know she did what she did, and accomplished as much as she could, and get weary and tired like getting ready for bed, and go along through the portal pretty willing.

The economic recovery and logical paths not followed.....

HealthCare Bill passes-might have some protections for the huddled masses.

Credit card rate/terms disclosure laws pass earlier than expected=all it means is they have to tell you they're screwing sooner than they used to, it did not put a cap on what can be charged, some of them charge as high as 33% thus my legal loan shark theory.

And revision of First time buyers credit passes and yet is amended to include some existing homebuyers as long as the qualify within the criteria to which the bill's been amended, it might have a better impact for people buyer previous to April 2010, closing before July of 2010.

Unemployment percentages are marked as being 10.2% but I do believe they fudge their figures and it is actually much higher than that, possibly as high as 17.5% Plus of the population.

Want ads in new papers used to be 5-7 pages replaced now by 10 pages of Foreclosure notices published as the official public notice which must be given for each property.
Last September and October were went the utter bottom fell out of the markets promises made to stimulate, stimulate, stimulate, and very little done to stimulate despite massive quantities of monies borrowed to God Forsaken Banks, 9 more closed last week, 5 more banks this week, the weak being made weaker, the strong syphoning monies into directions not intended, and still no accountability for where this money has been earmarked with each bank, that was intended to help with the mortgage market.

Homebuilders jokeying to commercial properties or rehab of foreclosed homes trying to affiliate themselves with the banks to gain an in with a bank to try to survive, feed and be fed would be the theory.  But again the rich get richer as the good old boys club runs amok within their own financial circles giving the jobs to their goombas......good buddies.

Steepest Decline in home values
Tightening of rules and regs for lending
Appreciation/ Equity in homes wiped out in a blink
Unemployment, programs amended but how can it hold when many States are broke?
Foreclosures
Ruined credit
No possibility of renting due to ruined credit
Homeless
Winter
Few shelters
Abandoned Homes, not winterized. Destroyed abandoned homes will result.
401K plan being utilized by the unemployed to support their households, and yet they are still penalized the 30% federal tax and must still figure there will be state tax as well.
Maybe the elected officials should spend more time with the populace after they've been elected, maybe they really are missing the boat not being out amongst the common man.
Maybe one if as good as he says he is, should come and listen again., and say what can I do here?

Threatening Demeanors

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again, it is not always easy to do good.

The play continued, scenes rolling before our eyes:
The threat of the ........... being hidden, kept them in check, whatevers been said, whatevers been done, the people had lost their feedoms.  Freedoms of speech, not allowed.   Freedoms of actions, not allowed.  Freedoms to roam about the country, not allowed.  Freedom of visitors without monitoring, not allowed.  A few brief smiles, not reaching the eyes, and together they went back into their respective designated area, safety only in staying together with unseen schackles holding them tightly to one another.
The tyrant separate watching the room for any display of truth.  A Corrupt soul fouling their aura's and reaching out for ours as well.
The morning m.o. continues tightly to feed his meaness, and this the worst of cycles, what precisely makes someone so mean?

As my Dad used to say: "You kill me"

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again., and so I come home from work.  My phones on speaker in the car so I avoid the brain tumors that could emminent from all of the years of cell calls. So I hang out in the driveway until I can shut my unemployed little girlfriend off......she is giving me her weekly progress report, and she is venting about the lack of jobs out there, the lack of interviews, a re-occurring dream she is having that she gets re-hired to her old company, converses on another friend who is not sympathetic enough to her, rush hour has made this phone call 40 minutes so far, but I want to shut her off before I pull into the garage where my man awaits me.....he sees me and grow impatient.....he is surprising me with a grilled dinner....it is mild out.  I ditch the phone, and grab a favorite beverage for bar-b-ques, and go join him.
Meeting friday, old company, status report..........
and then he rattles off all the things he can be.......choices in this next episode......
many are things he has been at one time or another, I tell him he can be whatever he wants to be ( I think dad's phrase: "You Kill me"and smile up at the orator).......for livlihoods I have long trusted this man to the point where I have been relaxed through this bonus time we've been given, I have no doubts he'll work in the future as long as God permits him to stay on planet earth.  I hope God will be kind to his pride, he has a ton of pride.......
And Sundays child stays full of Grace, for a man I certainly think he has been Graceful.
I wish him well.

Fresh Starts, Life can hold many chapters: often called days

Have you ever seen the sunrise?  Do you take it for granted?  Or do you see the stark beauty of a day come to life as my eyes do?

A while back it seemed many of us were starting new chapters.  Many of these chapters involve the failed economy which came to visit us all so personally., and then like a Christmas Carol showed us where the paths might head given certain conditions.  One man loses his business, struggling against it quietly for months before shutting the doors, and then deciding where he needs to proceed to next.  Another man employed his entire adult life, not trying to decide what his next path will be, too many of the choices harsh on his body, I tell him to be whatever is kindest to him.  Men through work failed businesses, impacting personal lives for those that live with high maintenance demand, and one takes his own life, he should have seen more sunrises.
Failed loves, you cannot make someone love you, it is impossible, and no two loves are the same, similar to snowflakes, each human has his own way of communicating, of extending warmth or emotion.  The best you can do is enjoying being yourself, what interests you, what brings you to life, and then seek enjoying these things, life will pass by too quickly anyways.  Some go to school for light years obtaining educations and critiques so they can practice a given craft or trade, and they are never hired for those jobs. So what to be, how to go on?  Another has a good life and their chapter is stolen by Monsieur Death, chapters are ending, and no lights shine on up ahead showing what paths to take, what to be, what to be?
So on we have traveled with eachother for some company, starting over time after time, and adding chapters to this thing we call life....so many chapters in our indivudual books.  And as we've traveled we who embrace each chapter, we the ones who value life the most, are often irked by the the placeholders....which to define them is tricky but they only mark their time, they do not embrace life.....they sit through it, bitch through it, and make simple things complicated by their own actions.  Sometimes they are liars and thiefs of items, not just time, but it is always marked with a negative, they can quite often be mentally cruel, sometimes physically cruel because they so hate their own lives they just have to pass it out to everyone life it was a second helping of food.  These days we do a wider berth around it, because the coldness of the scenes, the harshness of their unhappy souls tries to overflow onto us, and we must remain children of light so we can keep starting over, and adding to our appreciated chapters.
Ah, Dana, your layer upon layer seeps into so many arenas..............

Seven years and missing you still, and the dream a few nights ago

"Last Night I dreamt I went to Manderley Again, her mullioned windows........" A beginning line out of Rebecca, A Daphne
Du Maurier book I did enjoy and re-read...... and so did you....so with Dreams in Mind, and today the 7th anniversary since you went on the journey we all wonder about, I must confess I had a dream the other night, ROb showing up at my door with Glo to visit a surprise for me, Frank pulling up out in front with his family slowly assembling, and I asked Rob if he had told you and Dad he was coming, and he said no and gave me a worried look.......and so I woke up to cry and carry new sadness, cause Ma this dreamer had forgotten you were gone and Dad was gone, I can't really describe how much initial pain still sets in when a dream or an awakening brings with a whollop the truth and reality of you both being gone beyond my touch, talk, and hugs, I do really miss you both and I have a ton of stuff to ask you both, and a ton of stuff to tell you both.  But instead I rake the leaves for you, and I still do Halloween for you both, and so on and so on.
Awhile back R and I talked and we both agreed you two taught us alot,  you taught us some things about living and you taught us some things about dying, and that has made a big difference in how we cherish our times.
Moody Blues- "But in the gray of the morning my mind becomes confused between the dead and the sleeping and the road that I must choose".  A Question of Balance/Album

Oh Heart, did you steal away our affections for eachother?

Oh Heart of the family, how do you fair?  What do you see?   Do you see the chaos that's come to reign? Your bride and I used to wonder how they would manage with their first major loss, we had already lost a few major players travel your path.  We speculated, and I have to say it's much worse than we ever thought it would be.
Well another year has passed and if we failed last year , then suffice it to say we stayed out of beat this year, and no one seems to be willing or able to get the rythym back, You'd barely recognize that we are the same group.  In fact we are not.
Some would say we've had a few successes, and some could/would spot a few failures, the failures of the heart are too numberous to mention, I would guess you've seen them play out, so why bother to elaborate.
We are numberous separate entities now instead of the one crazy group that was so....fun.  We have individual contacts instead of enmass buzzing.
Few call, fewer visit, and couple email a word here or there, but we have broken ourselves by not communicating.  The upstairs used to be like grand central station, now it is just the ladies side, sometimes I wonder if they just can't go back up to the surroundings and so many things of your daily and yearly life, maybe it's too much pain.  Or do we insulate ourselves from feeling so much pain ever again, if so it is a delusion, we cannot do that, there is too much pain yet ahead, and here we monkey away our days, weeks, and years not truly talking, thus not really understanding what the others feel, we can only surmise and could be highly wrong in the summation.
It would take a total gathering, and total truth to get it onto track, but people would have to be locked into the room, none of this crap of flouncing out before resolution, and I have noticed many like to walk away from the talking if it's not them spewing who truth is it anyhow.
Yes, jail, we'd have to be locked in cells together, with no keys in site. That might work.
The keys of course would be: I love you, I am sorry, I forgive you., and into 2010 fresher....check your baggage at the doors, and baggage is too heavy anyhow.
Too late for butterflies in our season, so send a doe and her offspring as a sign.

A different perspective on a day, and all of the angers and fears

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again, and I can feel this becoming truer and truer.
Now to our subject: somedays you can see it all a different way, somedays as you wake up, prep for the day, work through the day, and come back home at the end of the day, you realize that the entire day you a lone person were being complimented in this life by a rare variety of people, and it is your choice whether or not to give as you go along in the day.
We complement eachother....as in harmoniously exist, and of course someday we are not so harmonius or in tune with other people, but usually we have some choice in how this plays out.
At work I receive calls from people who feel they have the right to scream at me a mere mortal over a revised billing I did not send them...something an insurance company sent them, literally screaming at me, and threatening me over something I had nothing to do with, and the fun part is some portion of their outraged brain knows I had no hand in the billing, but I will surely research it out for them and let them know my findings.  Some part of the angry people who continuously want to call and be enraged about something, well where is all of the anger coming from?      And do they ever get the point, that I may have enough on my plate and not want a heaping more of bullshit, when my job is simply to ease their path wherever I can?
And then there are all of the countless personal calls, friends laid off expounding at me how scared they are, how they feel, and how they are not even getting interviews, and how they are worried about affording their mortgage payment, and all the time my own husband is laid off from his job, I tell them I do understand, they know he's laid off but they are so in their own panic they do not realize we are all worried, we are all in the same boat.
Family calls with news of others behaving very badly, asking for advice, and yet rarely ever doing the brave thing and coming clean with all of the truths to the others, they veil it, and leave out the major punch of some very real dangers being hidden about that are in actuality beefing up the evil and damaging the good.  WHat is so hard about telling the truth as they know it, so that all would be enlightened, so that it would make sense to the others involved why they've now back down entirely is due to fear.  So everything is now wearing a mask, and the danger is wearing his mask, too.  They've asked one of us to solve it, and yet we are viewed as outsiders within portions of our own family, so much that we must tread lightly whenever we approach, which can never be solved due to so much enabling....so I reference a book I read and re-read: "Co-dependy, no more" and it can sum up why some much bizarre behavior is allowed.
Other calls of anger within my own sphere,  sometimes so much that I'd like to call a meeting to either soothe it one way or anniliate the other, either one would be progress.
All chain reactions, some don't carry their weight, when they finally attempt to one is verbally impactive to the others, so the others don't come back for long spells, which only makes more anger gather and be retained, all parties now tainted, where did the fun go in the whole project? One man tries to be in harmony with the whole scheme and he is tarnished because his values have changed and he is not as explosive as he once was?
Why can we humans not seem to be capable of putting the enjoyment into perspective, and shrugging off the aggravants?
And now back to work and all of the forementioned items running rampant in the same week: I land on the phone with one woman who has had her moments this last year and she is starting to land, she has started to find herself again: j's son took his own life this past year leaving her and her remaining aging teen daughter to meander through the why's, how's, how did I miss....why didn't he tell us....if I had only....we should have talked more....the permanentcy of such an act.....over the phone this past year I could feel their pain, their shock, their anger, but they stuck together....they jockeyed for who could hold the other up so many days, they have finally found some type of norm to their days again....and as I am able to help her as I really do care about the humans in my day, I am warmed that they have moved further from the real harsh first realizations of what had happened, they have move towards simply caring for the other, and this has gotten them to the best ground possible for them, so out of all the strife, and all of the craziness in these phone calls something good comes forth, they are starting to try and help others and in this moment I am proud of humans who have the resiliency to slowly rise above and do a better thing.

A Sunrise and Back

Have you ever seen the sunrise? Have you ever seen the sunrise and thought it was one of lifes treasures to behold? And going back to his 5 seconds, and 5 minutes, and 5 hours and never knowing really ahead of time what the day will bring you, and knowing how it can alter in one day, well today I hope my sunrise and my day put you on the road back to me, no strain, no pain.
Some would not get our 5 seconds, 5 minutes, 5 hours theory, but they haven't lived our precise moments: they haven't dialed 911 for my father, they haven't dragged mom doctor to doctor to find out the bad news, and they haven't received our sister's SOS call as she followed our brothers ambulance to the hospital, so we do understand it can be gone and changed quite suddenly, so we try to savor and drink in as much as allowed, and tend to be greedy enough to know we want more.
Time can drag out and can seem incredibly long, you have become my main invited ingredient on a daily basis, you are usually at the other end of my humor in life, and I know you told me only targets could be missed, well I do miss your sorry ass when it's not here.  I want to watch you sleep.
So as sunrise puts you on the road, may the journey be kind and safe, and bring you back to me for stories of light shows in the sky, and bears and deer, and whatever else has held amusement or awe for you.....
And so it did and we have more......

the present

The paths for their lives had come together,
much happiness in those stages they did know
they journeyed quite awhile untouched and thriving
until the first life question pulled out of the air.

The floundering hurts had become massive
they wandered parallel for many years
not wanting to shed their old life habits
going on bravely in spite of their tears

With surprise they found the treasure once more
and sought some place where they had left off
building again amongst the solid grounds
Looking ahead yet enjoying the present

and this was a valuable lesson learned

Research Studies, The FDA, Good Things, Bad Things: A Cycle

 It seems for all of my adult memory, or since the creation of color TV research studies have been conducted one by one on all of the foods we've eaten for light years, and at times all of the product we've used daily for those years as well.
The findings have ranged from Eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you, well just the white is good for you, and back to the entire being good for you in moderation.
The very meat that we eat: given hormones for growth, antibiotics for illnesses, and God knows what other types of experimental drugs, and then sold off in mass quantities to the public, and all of this ingested for years by families with more bizarre ailments than ever realized in decades of old. Now some stores sell exclusively organic raised, for a higher price.
Subdivision built under master Electric Company Fields of Electric Towers over multiple homes, and then the announcement years later that the electric was killing trees, the electric was quite possibly killing people via cancer from too much exposure, this caused a very sharp drop in these suburban homes. And the homes with overhead powerlines out in front of their homes, "well we have to bury the cables" it is still conducting too much current, and causing trees to die (children on hot wheels at a surplus, riding along these sidewalks)?
Milk, more hormones and additives, should have been contained after Louis Pastuers process was completed.   Cheese, yes, yes, good and bad.
Medicines marketed, and pulled after the population provided the research.  Phen-Phen diets, prescriptions handed out in mass to ever woman who weighed 20 lbs more than they thought she should....damaged to the heart/valves, and didn't I wonder about that the day the elephant landed on my chest in Sonjia office, mind racing.
Dish Detergents and bleach, do not mix it causes a toxic reactions that will harm humans.  Do not use plastic in the micro-wave, yet they allow the sale of all of the plasticized products for that very use...
All of the skin absorbent products used in automotive repairs, so someone using them daily, anti-freeze and all of it's human ramifications, let alone what it did when it got mistakenly dumped into animal feeds, I bet few remember that one, it was a beaut sick cattle, sick people before it was figured out that the milks and meats were contaminated by another product.  Salmonella from vegetables grown in septic fields, sold to masses again.
Vitamins injected into our foods, additives like we wouldn't seek a purer form of the vitamins we think our bodies need, decisions made for us, so they can re-package, resize, and charge more for this enticingly bettered product?
Yes you should take it, no you shouldn't use it, a walking contradiction allowed in many cases by the almighty FDA.   Amazing, if you are dying the are drugs they won't let people take on an experimental trial to see if it gives back a quality to life, and yet they allow these manufacturers more slack in poisoning the people because the right studies weren't conducted prior to use.
My simple conclusion is: we as a people need to go back in time on products, more is not better, less is better, we need to be happy with the simple things again, and know that we are at least minimizing our damages.
We need to not try every new fangled product that is marketed.
And we still need to read the labels, my supermarket recently started putting a label on meat: Grown in the U.S.A., Mexico, or Canada?
Go think on that one for awhile!

A Fisherman's Prayer

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again.
The following prayer was oddly enough on Uncle Bob's memorial cards, but being the daughter of a fisherman, the sister of a fisherman, and the wife of a fisherman, it touched me gentle and true:
A Fisherman's Prayer
God grant that I may fish
Until my dying day
And when it comes to
My last cast
I then most humbly pray,
When in the Lord's
Soft landing net
I'm peacefully asleep,
That in His mercy I be judged
As good enough to keep.

And so I wish all of my fisherman the very best endings to their fishing days, and I always have.  That probably explains better why I've always been their biggest advocate.  I remember my Dad's sadness when he couldn't/or his body couldn't go on the longer trips anymore, I remember him on his last father's day, the boys gone on a trip to fish, kindly accepting the company that surrounded him, and being gracious about the robbed opportunities that age took advantage of. However, he was the whole day in his white fishing cap my brother had given him. And I have the pics to prove it.
God Bless my Guys, more adventures for you before the darkness comes.

Weapons of Mass Destruction or Guns Kill, or People Do?

I believe that people have the right to register for the purchase of arms to hunt with, or to defend their homes from wrongdoers, space invaders, or total civil unrest.  I was a child in 68 when scary people marched up the main streets flipping over cars & torching them, and throwing bricks through store windows, and I was out up there on foot, Milwaukee Avenue, Central & Foster, oh boy.  I can understand people wanting to be protected.
Now for the flip side:
I do not believe that wrongdoers should possess unregistered guns, or guns of multiple descriptions for the purpose of having a weapon or weapons at their disposal that they can unleash fear on the victims of their thinking patterns which may or may not be eroding as the clock ticks.

I do not believe that an eroding mind has the judgement nor the control intended for any type of weapon possession.  I do not find humor in a person threatening a child or an intended loved one with a gun, or mocking who else he'd like to get.  I do not find any good in a person who is toddering towards hatred to possess any type of weapon let alone several guns which they hide about as their day progresses, no good will ever come of this.

I believe the threat of the person and their guns would need to be removed from the innocents, and the victimizers mind treated so he could find the light again.   There is no light here, there is only danger, and sickness traveling outward, the complete aura has been fouled with the darkness of this present evil.

This would need to be done carefully.
Very carefully.
Some hide some outside, some hide some inside.
When multiples are involved.
How do they come to possess these things, I have few ideas of how these items are obtained, but none are good ones.

All aware would be scared, too scared to say all of the sentences.

And I think of Mom again watching those two kids at school, she had been teaching them through Rebus Method English as they were from Poland, their mother had died the year before, and at their sessions her noticing how dark the circles were under their eyes, how tired they were throughout the days.  And I think of her speaking with the principal who began observing too.  And how one night their Dad was arrested for playing Russian Roulette with his kids all night, many nights, drunk and on drugs terrorizing the children, and sleeping with the gun under his pillow. She was a good teacher aid, she was observant.

A tear and a smile for the children., and a prayer.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, life, growing up

I think the part of growing up I liked the best was the company that came over on the weekends when I was real young, so much life everywhere, so many personalities.
I was two or three and I remember hiding under the kitchen table (actually a dangerous place when adult feet are lively) and I remember reaching up and over to try and swipe a potatoe chip from a bowl near the ...nope I got caught....and told to go into the front room.
I remember someone would run to the bar around the corner and purchase a couple of carry out quarts of beer, and lots of lively conversation, and always some type of music playing on the phonograph, 33's ,45's, and believe me 78's were played on that particular machine, vinyl was good....the only time music wasn't playing in my house at that point was when baseball or the fights were on (Boxing).
Ours was never a perfect home, but at that point in time it was as close as it would ever get, all of the weird stuff would come later, and we've done that story.
In the summer they'd come home from church after stopping at the corner grocery stores, the first Jewel-T wouldn't be buildt until I was closer to five, so these corner grocery stores were no bigger than a seven eleven is presently.
We'd get fresh rolls and ham, and some type of side like potatoe salad, and off to our house we'd go, baseball game on, sandwiches made, and my folks and my brothers would spend the afternoon watching the cubs or sox on the black and white TV which was housed in a fancy blond wood cabinet, and for fun the Hamm's Bear would fall through the ice into a hole he had cut himself, or some other such stunt, always sabotaging himself.
I was young enough so that I'd get bored and go out into the back yard, they had told me about the gypsies who came out on sundays, and to stay away from the back gate, and if anyone tried to come in the yard to run as fast as I could upstairs, I was afraid of the gypsies....so I never went near the back gate, never.....the joke was in Chicago with alleys and such being used by everyone as short cuts to the stores nearby on north avenue someone was always walking up and down them........the real was there was no gate on the front entrance to the yeard, so they gypsies could have gotten me if they wanted to., at night time they set up big tents by their premises down the alley at the T from us., and music would play, and it was a bit more exotic than our music....
my best friend lived next down Chisanna a ukranian version of Susannah I guess, and her mother was my mother's best friend. they live on the 2nd floor of a three flat, and we lived on the 2nd floor of our 2 flat, least it would be ours for another 3...3 1/2 years, but we did have some fun growing and learning the world together.....everyday was an adventure, and she had an older brother who was best friends with my brothers so it worked., his name was Jerry or Slatcov in Ukranian.  And their mother Olga told my mother stories of how Stalin had tried to abduct people off the streets in her old country and people were killed and made into sausages......I was always very in awe of eating sausage when I was little, didn't know what was in them....and there was a man one door over that everyone swore was Hitler, and that he had really lived....and he had a mustache just like hitlers, I don't know what his name was or wasn't but we all called him Geek, and no one wanted Geek to get them, so it was another scary thing to stay away from, and then an evil witch lived down the street and you couldn't go to her house for Halloween cause she put strange things in the candy, and so on...and so on...
so much fun to be had, but so many scary things to do a wide berth around.....
and that was how the core of me began.....

Tom was a scumbag in the family via marriage

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again., and here is the story of Tom as I recall it:
Once upon a time there was a man who married a cousin, they in their youth had many children.......one after the other.....this man probably drank too much, I do not know if he did drugs......I do know he was responsible for the death of a baby thrown from it's crib, and that he got out of that, I do know that he beat and sexually abused his children to the point of two of them prosecuting him via the Chicago Court System, I do know that the social worker who tried like hell to protect the children during this trial Shot Tom dead on the court steps the day he was acquitted, I do know that his deeds were important enough to the social worker to have the man thinkit out...seeing that this bastard scum was getting off of the charges, the social worker had done his homework this time around on dear old Tom.
I also know that one of the abuse kids would never find happiness, and she would take her own life.....a nice girl.....never able to move on from the abuse she suffered at the hands of her own father.....the boy child would hide in drugs and drink....
All the evil, all the darkness imposed...as a little child you hope and pray for rescue, and the rescue does not always come due to apathy, fear of rocking the boat, fear of making it worse...How much worse can it get than .......depraved indifference, where was the mom in all of this?  She lived there?
The social worker went to jail, but in the life of some children had made a difference!

What kinds of Evil Lurks in the hearts of man, the shadow knows

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again.
We shall pass this way but once, any good that we can do let us do it now, for we shall not pass this way again.
Sometimes....The Shadow comes to mind: " What Kinds of Evil, lurks in the heart of man?"  " The Shadow Knows!" It always sounded sinister.....my mother passing this radio & comic gem onto me that her baby brother and her enjoyed so much in the 30's I'd imagine....possibly into the early 40's.
And so for teaching my son had to view a video, a horrendous video, so he'd learn more self controls when he'd encounter evil in his teaching world, things you'd see and encounter that would make you slip from knowing righ and wrong and not caring about right and wrong: in this video this poor little boy kept being giving back to his self indulgent drugged up mother and asshole step father, the step father beat him and tortured this young toddler, his own father attempted to kidnap him and was caught, the courts buying into the lieing mothers bullshit of falls, and clumsiness for the accident prone child, and that she as a mother should have custody of the child, and crap they gave the child back to her so her lovely live in could continue his abuse, the child had footmarks in his private parts, and his finger tips had been cut off by the time he was rescued, oh my God the pain that poor child suffered only to die in the hospital after a few days......there is no hell deep and harsh enough for the boys mother who allowed this, and for the boyfriend who imposed it.   So let's get back to evil:
Where does evil start?  Is it a lack of geneology?  Is it damaged brain cells?  What makes a man have and hold onto the darkest side of himself?   What makes people hurt women and children?  What makes them think they have that right?  What makes someone think they're so special that they can try and impact other bright lifes, just because they are so lacking in love and spirit of any type? And what makes a human hang onto hate and ugliness of soul, when love is so much easier? 
Be careful here, do not rationalize to me, justifying holds truth, rationalizing holds piss water.  I've seen all types of behaviors, and when you attempt to try and explain most of it away......there is no core.....and when there is no core, you are rationalizing.....
The person is full of hate, the person is full of toxins which only add fuel to the hate, the hate is expansive in it's outreach as the person deep down knows they are dead wrong in their actions, re-actions, and lack of self disciplines so they reach out and touch as many others to show their super powers that they mean business, that they are the boss, so eventually we all end up back in our prior roles., all ground gained lost.
The Evil will only spread until it is brought back into control. It is that simple in truth.
And who's truth is it anyways?  Hopefully, the majorities.
If there are drugs involved, the drugs need to go, one drug leads to another anyways, and the pushing and trading and stealing, and weapons, and beatings, and threats of beating will go away if the drugs creating this monster are stopped.  Some portion of the person might be salvaged.....and if not so what, the majority being held hostage by this brute can rise back to the light, once the evil is stopped.

Color Aura: Evil is horribly ugly, it is never pretty, it is the worst of the unseen cancers.

HAVING A GOOD IQ VERSUS BEING ABSTRACT

I COULD EASILY HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED AS AT THE LEAST BORDERLINE ADDH.
LAURA AND I JOKE ABOUT HAVING 10 to 20 PROJECTS STARTED WITH NONE NEAR COMPLETION, YET IT ISN'T REALLY A JOKE.  ONLY AT WORK ARE THE GOALS OF FINISHING IT ALL EVER REALIZED.
chripes i forget the right and needed groceries multiple store trips, and so many passwords so if i want to do something I have to find the correct password, and by then I find something else and end up totally diverted.
so sometimes we are successful at somethings in life, and yet we leave so many other areas lacking.

Paperwork is tough, bills done easiest, but organizing the paperwork is hard,
ironing is hopeless about every two-three months with a huge stack by then of my boy-os shirts.
Cleaning the house takes him 3 hours whole house, takes me 6 hours if I push myself.
Yard work done throughout a week if weather good.
 And so it goes............
So focused in some areas and so hopelessly distracted in others.

The Lies in the Press, Economy is not recovering

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again.
President Obama I did believe in your capabilities to implement accountability, oh yes I did, if your administration lent money to the banks there would be accountability, so Chase has it's new machine that perform magic of envelopeless deposits and their new fangled fancy receipts, and Citibank has their new drive up machines, and new machines on the inside of their banks as well, and they're spending our bailout dollars on non necessary items having nothing to do with housing loans....or the love making home affordable program whereby yesterday I read that Bank of America another fine money pit is approving no more than 9% of the "Making Homes Affordable" applicants.
Now it was only last year that the stock market versus the people with 401K plans invested heavily in the stock market began to lose their asses compliments of the crooks and CEO's involved in many of New Yorks top Wall Street Firms, not enough of these assholes went to jail for their crimes, the main one being that they did not fullfill their duties to the masses of investors across America, and then these good old boys rewarded themselves with their golden bonuses and golden parachutes, this is where you vowed more accountability to the people or at the very least to your office, and you stood in front of microphones swearing that there would be no more bonuses and no more golden parachutes until America was back totally on her feet (not her ass, her feet), and so the news media one year later is full of how the very companies who grovelled for government bailouts ....that the taxpayers will end up scrimping for lights years to repay through this fine unabolished taxation program we call the dreaded IRS ....well now these good old boys are reported to be lining up for more bonuses and more golden parachutes, and this Mr. President IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, TO THE MASSES OF OUR MANKIND, THIS IS SIMPLY BULLSHIT THAT YOU SHOULD AND COULD SQUASH AS PART OF YOUR VERY SINCERE DUTIES OWED TO THE POPULACE YOU REPRESENT.
HERE ARE SOME OF THE PROBLEMS  I SEE JUST IN TWO SIDES OF MY ONE FAMILY :
This past year we have family members cut back to 3 or 4 day weeks, we have them working harder trying to find part time jobs to make up the income, we have credit card debts they've incurred trying to keep their own businesses which ended up failing alive, and these credit cards are at such a high rate of interest that maybe a loan shark would be preferred to legitimate bailed out banks who fleece the countries population while holding out their other hand for bailouts, and worse yet you are allowing this crap to flourish, why?
My own household snagged it's 401K to substain us during a lay off that started early fall and will no doubt continue until the home building in Illinois picks up 5 notches-and we can make it till the 2nd quarter but then what...., oh and the banks aren't lending money to the builders either.....builders here are forced into default on land and projects they had going, and this affects all of the trades, the concrete people, the electrician's, the plumber's, the supply houses which continue to close and disintegrate years of trusted dealings, and all of the insurances they once carried lapsing for non-payment, and they can't work if they're not insured, and one the dance goes.
There was an internet joke about all of the bailout money having been given to the taxpayer's but it holds real truth, it would have stimulated the entire economy if we had been given the money directly and instead Washington came up with this elaborate mindless, logicless plan to give it to the banks and Wall Street's flopping houses.
So where are we one year later, we have a false reporting media, we have more selfish crooks heading the banks and the stock market houses, we have so many people & populace ignorant people in our own Congress and Senate, these people have few clues as to what's really going on in America......
You still need to invoke ACCOUNTABILITY NOW BEFORE THEY PAY OUT THEIR BONUSES.
You need to assign and freeze the rates credit cards companies can charge legally.
You need proof of where these people are spending the bail out monies.
YOU STOOD THERE AND PROMISED US IF A SYSTEM WAS BROKEN IT WOULD BE ELIMINATED, AND YOU PROMISED THE ACCOUNTABILITY WOULD BE THERE AS WELL, NOW OWN THIS TRUTH AND MAKE IT A REALITY!

The Best Thing I Ever Did , Was You

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again.
I have a person in my life whose development I half contributed to, be it my strengths he gained some of, my weaknesses he hopefully deterred away from, my humor which is still there to be used in the blackest of times, or my ability to try to always see the big picture and reduce the temporary chaotic family moments to a bottom line of underlying love, as long as we have our health and eachother for these moments.  And this person I have invested my time in loves to write, loves the arts, and so he has begun his own blog, a place where he can wander to, and publish some of his writings he's had to do for his education, or some he's done for his own amusement.  He's also added in some pictures he's found interesting that have been drawn as graffitti by one man all over the world, yet no one knows the mans true identity as he is always hidden in darkness or cloaked by a mask, this intrigues our young man.  Enjoy your writings and developments that can come with a blog:
http://onetensurvival.blogspot.com/2009/10/chicago-coursing.html
A Hundred Years from Now, It Will Have Mattered in the Life of A Child*

Annie Lenox or "What's Going On?"

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do let me do it now, I shall not pass this way again., so let's jump in with both feet:
Annie Lennox who is a rather unique singer has a tune describing her hanging out of her window yelling out to the masses " What's Going On?", she goes on to sing about all types of scenerio's but still ends with the Question of "What's going on?" This is a great song and describes my inner feelings as I listen and watch the world.
Within this single song she also describes: "And I prayed, Oh my God how I prayed" which also ties right back in to my inner workings.....
This song has coined the ongoing chaos expanding on our streets, city by city, state by state.
* Just going to work I witness:
Drivers who grew up on Video Games and cannot begin to comprehend that this driving is a privilige, that it is not a game, that if there is a crash borne out of their half-hazard reckless driving, it's not a "game over", it is a "LIFE'S Over" casket time type of result.  You are holding a steering wheel on a powerful motorized vehicle not a frign game controller.  The people surrounding you in the other vehicles are human beings with families, children, real live blood, heart and soul occupants are within each and every vehicle assholes***** THIS IS NOT A VIDEO GAME, how long will it take you to get it?????

Yesterday I am the lead car in the left hand lane making a left turn as soon as the intersection clears due to backed up construction traffic which is still blocking my intersection left hand turn theory....I'm good with it but the 4th car in back of is NOT and he pulls out and cuts in front of me so he can turn left before me and the other two cars in back of me do.......SO I ASK MYSELF and God "Why does this particular asshole think he's above the law, above the driving ettiquette, all he does is further block the intersection by adding another car length to already packed areas?  And so in truth I do not get it, but what I do see is many people out there an increasing number seem to think they can do whatever the hell they want to, when they want to, and I can see chaos coming to this already messed up world of ours.  If each person thought they no longer needed to live by common sense or common courtesy, WHERE exactly WOULD WE BE?
Over the weekend the work voicemail fills up, inquiries, questions, so many valid, and then one man calls extremely angry about a set of billings from the insurance company for his vehicles, and he's outrage and cussing and sputtering on the voicemail and slams the phone down with extreme harshness to demonstrate his anger, and I frown at the phone as I warned him 1 week ago that he would probably receive two billings one for his upcoming renewal and one for the policy period which will be up in 8 days...I did not ask him to buy a new JAGUAR, and if he did buy such a beast HE PROBABLY IS NOT IN A MONEY CRUNCH....so where does all of this anger come from, and why do people think they can just keep lashing out at others in their path....like the rest of us  are their whipping boys.

People I work with , yet not for, so many personalities, nice at times, and so I help them out here or there letting them know when one of their appointments has shown up...but remember I do not work for them they have their own businesses, gone on vacation I help get faxes for them to their substitutes, or call back one of their clients or more with an update that so and so will be back in the office monday, Monday comes, and the first appointment shows up and this one loses his temper, yelling right away when I come to tell him his people have arrived, slamming his door right next to me is another biggie when he's piss off......HEY LOOK BUDDY: It's not my problem....it's yours!!!!
Don't make someone else miserable or crazy just cause that's where your head is at, don't need it, don't want it.
My own particular boss is a great person, and I am a great person as well.  We both have 1/2 a memory, and the other remembers whatever the first one forgot and it makes it work.  Time after time I will across something he forgot to finish, or something that is lacking the old submit button, and I fix these silently, and actually can't spot when he's pre-occupied like this, so I will be more thorough as a result, but If I MAKE A MISTAKE, he feels the need to get up in my face like a EUROPEAN (they have a different concept of being face to face) and he yells at me and reproaches me with the most angry face possible, I don't get it, I am a human, I am not a dog that pissed off of the newspaper.  Human.  Human enough to figure out that I am not really the one who caused all of the unleashed anger to pent up and explode like this.
Family:  Sometimes family relationships are tricky, sometimes I might make some one angry with me, sometimes someone else in my family makes another family member angry and I stillget blamed.  Reminds me of when we were kids and we all had to get the spanking cause we wouldn't rat on the others....And in truth I don't get that one either.
Hush, Hush things like rockets being fired at the moon to see if water will come out....saw it first on the news, online news 1/2 hour before it was to take place, billions spent at a time when the country is in such pain and turmoil due to the ailing economy and all of the jobless people trying to stretch the pennies for the upcoming months, and these idiots are wasting at this point in time valuable dollars on aiming at what they think might be an ice spot on the moon to see if with penetration water will come out...."What if it was hollow you assholes and you brought the house down?"
And so Annie's song: "What's going on?" just seems to fit as I shall not pass this way again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Counting friends on one hand.....

As we talked, he used one of my phrases about counting friends on one hand, and yes it is true we may in life have had many friends of different levels, we may have had a lot of good acquaintances, but we did both laugh and agree that the friends with lasting friendship we could still count on one hand with fingers left over.
He wishes his other pal would have caved in and decide to go on adventure too, he misses their fun, and said they did have fun watching all of the activities as they journeyed, and accomplished what they wanted to with their favorite adventure sport, but it is still not in the cards again this round.
I struggle when I watch and cannot guide. I struggle when I see but cannot solve.
Family
Friends, good friends.
Friends for a time
And Acquaintances for the various moments.
And we see it differently, we see the days and the world passing by, we see spunk we will never get back, stamina which will dissipate, and we embrace what we can while we can.
And quite often the friends are still the family, what could be more natural?

Amber Alerts and this modern world

We are sleeping, the phone rings.....the answering machine booms to life:
This is the Palatine Police.....we have a child missing his name is.......and he answers to Mickey, he was last seen in a beige colored hoodie, pants, and gym shoes and was on foot, he is 10 years old......

And the heart has been scared awake by the first sentence when all of your members are not home.....
And you wonder about Mickey and his story, and you are wide awake wondering if he is nearby.

A. A. Bondy, some absolutely great music

I Shall pass this way but once....but I am glade my son brought A.A. Bondy into our lives. His music to me is a combination of Don McLean's finest and Simon & Garfunkel' best.
Bondy has wonderful guitar skills, his lyrics are a reflection of the deepest thinkers words skills when he puts his words on a songs canvass. His voice is a good one that matches up with his words and guitar playing.
To me he is folk music revived, and he has some insights to America, it's problems, to the politicians that keep leeching of the masses, and he has seen many aspects of love and has some intellectual bottom lines for true love and the relationships that can be rekindled if the desire to do so is there.
For Americans he writes:
"So don't tread on her for she is your sister, she was born with an American Heart, And don't tread on me for I am your brother, I was born with an American Heart........"

If Life wasn't so sad it would be funny: Chicago

The impact that a week can have on one human being let alone all of the humans roaming this planet, well it's an overwhelming thought isn't it?

The newspaper: A baby kidnapped.....couple of days later the Courts take away the womans other children......lots will spin out of that one.
People in Chicago crying over the loss of a summer olympic program 7 years in the future, well I can see the job loss theory in it, but Gods get a grip on it, think of all the garbage that will be eliminated, think of all the incidents eliminated, then think of all the traffic we have now and know that a worse nightmare will be in Rio not Chicago, smile! Think of all the crime committed by internationals that won't have diplomatic immunity slapped on it as a sdolution label. Think of all the debt incurred to gain some profit, and now think of all the terrorist warnings that go with any Olympic, and think to yourself "Does America really need that?
I rest my case.

Mirror Images

I Shall pass this way but once....but along the way I did find out that two people can start out very different beings and yet if they spend enough time together they will begin to make a mirror image to present to eachother and the world of other beings. There is strength and weakness in doing this. The weakness is: a mirror can be used at the person closest to diffuse any harm they could cause you emotionally, as in they get what they give, however this particular mirror can cut you.
The strength of being able to mirror is the closeness you have in trying to present yourselves to others and make them think your strong when you are possibly falling apart inside, it's masked so maybe you are more useful to thim and their situation, so you all get through it.
I think some of this mirroring came from being parents, I think child-rearing contributes to it being developed from all of those days when you had to present a united FRONT. After that you develop it when you hear news together, versus if you heard the news separately your reaction is probably a little more helter-skelter.
A survival tool at it's finest.

Many ways to express love, music from you

From the time of your raise review whereby they sighted " Communication Skills" as an hot item for buffing up.....to our joking about Communication Skills being a family wide fuzzier area....well I've given it much thought.

It's called " Conversations we've never had" all of us and any of us. There are so many things we think about, so many things our body language is about, so many insults spoken verbally, and yet there are all of "those conversations we've never had" lurking in the background. And so many scenario's for this:

Maybe one set said too much and another said way too little, and then it perpetuates, it's allowed to go on for light years. Maybe we were too relaxed in our cups, maybe someone else was too vicious in their cups, and somewhere along not even battle lines were drawn but people began to write each other off, like an accountant would do with end of year bad debt, just write each other off of the books.

So much of "I don't need you in my life" thrown out there to the masses. You're not important to me. I can live without you. And my dears these are all true to some extent. However it does take a lot of the fun out of it. It does diminish the quality of a persons life when all of the things we knew for light years are removed, person by person. I can only liken it to losing a person to death, ok so that's an unavoidable impact on those left behind. But what the hell are you doing when you cease to stay in contact with the rest of who's left? We have a decent amount of family and friends, can all the calling, all the emailing, all the outreaches really come from one side and not be felt by the one who reaches out, you think they don't notice you never originate a call? We lose one to death and then drop their family like a hot potato? What's up with that? The person may have passed but the family left needs all the help and normalcy that can be given in order to find the light again, otherwise abandonment will be felt, so how could they continue to respond the same when so little is kept personal?
Better yet, we suffer a loss, take it so badly we fail to see what's in front of our eyes? We fail to value all of the remaining colors in the rainbow even though we can no longer see yellow, we fail to see the orange, the pink, the green, the blue? It makes no sense to me still. Conversations never held.

From the day you told me to take off the colored glasses, from the days too much got said, to finally nothing being said, to the times we gained each other back from valuable lessons, from the days we mended so many fences, from the days that glue was required, all of these painful, and with so many relationships involved we humans give up way too easy., or some do. My own now immediate family and my old immediate family have long made fun of me for always forgiving situations, ungraces, and my own sister has called me a chump on more than one occasion for the same thing, but when I close my book after all the chapters are written, when I am really done, I will lean back and smile...and know I gave it my best ever shot, I did all I could do, I jumped in whether I could see water in the pool or not and tried to set what I could to rights, I'll know it wasn't always perfect...I could have done better in places with a kinder attention span, but I will call it good. Doing the best you can within your own personality dysfunctions that's all you can do.
And so when you who cannot verbalize and could not write like me and put it all down or convey it, well when you play special music for me, music that can say the words your brain has within, well then my friend I do listen to you, and I am thankful you found a way to communicate with me. And I thank you for your thoughts, back at you.
And to the rest I hope you find a way.........to say............

Stepping into someone else's shoes for a moment

When I met my truly Mexican sister in law, mother of two boys, provider to those two boys, cook and laundress for those two boys, I liked her instantly, she is composed, adjusts to others needs around her, she conveys all with her beautiful eyes and smiles. She smiles a lot and her eyes light up when she does.
She is good people. She has always run her own household, she is strong but warm, and gentle.
I have not seen her for two years, at that point she welcomed me and my sister Kitty into her home, along with my son Justin, and our other sister Kate, we were visiting for the day, and it was a day we enjoyed.
Her boys have been loved well and it reflects all the care they've been given by their Mom and their adopted Dad our brother Patricio.

So now they travel to the USA and Patricio hopefully to live as nice a life as they lived in Mexico if not better. The USA has always been called the land of opportunity, and it always was until the economic crisis. That one area will be a challenge enough. I choose to look on these things as ADVENTURES, but then I was born a romantic wasn't I?
Another person might view it all as a challenge, but that puts too much labor and pain into the process, so I will still go with my Adventure for this portion of the family traveling to America, giving up life as they've known it in Mexico.
So to begin the adventure, you have: A new language to be worked out (the oldest boy Poncho has a great knowledge of English, and will help his Mom achieve more fluency in the language, the change in seasons and scenary, and clothing mandated by our 4 seasons is yet another adventure...the coats/seasonal, the shoes/boots/seasonal/ gloves hats and on we go.... The red tape that our legal paperwork will render will be a crazy adventure, the city of Chicago and it's vast transportation systems and school systems and stores and weather changes will prove to be a real learning curve (as Grandpa likes to call it) adventure, and learning to become street smart for all three of them, yet not too street smart will take time too. The way I see it they will need some protections placed until they know enough to move about the areas safely...although safety can be a delusion suffered by those of us who think we are safe....when were are just on a lucky streak versus an unlucky one.....but some good and luck can be achieve by us simply just trying to be there a bit more than we would for each other....we grew up here or very close to it, and we understand that walking down the street or alley or wrong street can become devastating if you don't know the gangs, the gang signs, the dangerous common sense things to avoid, this will take time and love from us to go an extra step to help them with their odds. Our lady knows how to drive in Mexico, but learning to re-drive in Chicago will require understanding of the east, west, south, north hundreds system in place, where the dividing lines are...etc until you hit the burbs.
The schools in district like night and day, so the right choices will have to be made we hope for Schurz and some bus trips versus Calvin Park, the little one with special school needs.....where is that school at and how can it be best arranged for safety....his world is so different anyhow.....
Oh it will take a heap of family love to make their progress easier, better,
Tough love one day, gentle hugs the next, harsh words tough for anyone but throw in the language difference, many things will be taken harder than how we interpret them....to learn that someones fuzzy on the inside and harder on the outside, the newbies with the oldbies and slowly a blend of understanding and affection will emerge from all these encounters, slowly a growth of affection, friendships, and camaraderie, an expansion of our life cycle, an expansion of our emotions to let the love out, to let it flow out to others, and to remember with love and love of family you will not like every thing the other person does or says, but we all have to look past the un-liked and undesirable minutes and find the best in each other, settle for the best minutes, the good times, for we are only here on this planet a short while......yes, it is a big adventure, isn't it? It will take awhile to become acclimated
*God Bless and may the family bless you too and begin to carry you in their hearts more than ever day by day. And now we're all on a new adventure.

So much has changed in 50 years

A walking game we used to play was my parents telling me what had changed since their childhoods, since their parents time when my own folks were children. They were depression children so many of their descriptions had that mark on it.
My mother was fortunate that her Dad who had been a street car conducter who became out of work during that era was able to land a job in a cold storage factory that handled all types of foods, that was probably their saving grace during the crash of our economics in that era.
Her Dad would bring home butter as a treat, when there was no butter their bread was moistened to some extent with Lard or mustard, she actually liked mustard sandwiches as a result indicative of the times she grew up in. Meat was another thing Grandpa brought home Chicken, on some occassions bacon.
Stories of bread costing less than 25 cents, Stories of Ice blocked delivered to their residence which did become a boarding house for awhile after they lost their home on Sangamon which was located on the south side of Chicago, the boarding house was off North Ave on the north side of the city. Lost also was the car they had while on the south side, now they all resorted to walking or the street car if you had the money for the car fare.
No TV's then just listening to favorite radio programs which included mysteries, and musical shows. She remembered sitting in a favorite little dress listening to I'm forever blowing bubbles, she remembered her brother Tommy ordering a secret decoder ring for " Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow knows", some of the stories would gain smiles from me as I listened to them, thinking of family I'd never met, sensing her love for most of them, and seeing the world through her eyes on her times. Mom would also speak of the corner grocery stores floating credit to the family, and how you could pay so much a week or a month, and how children had to be as smart as the adults when shopping so the crap or food going bad wasn't palmed off on them especially if they already owed monies. She remembered water having to be heated up on the stove for hot baths to be taken. She remembered water from wells , pumped and being carried up in buckets no matter what floor you lived on.
My Dad would tell me of bread lines in the street, quitting school to dig ditches for a project to help the family bring in money to live on. My Dad would tell us of his father losing his butcher shop for multiple reasons, but staying as an employee there, thus some meat still being brought into their home. My Dad would always speak with affection showing in his eyes of his mother who was a hardworker, scrubbing the floors daily and throwing the rag at him if he called her Shorty his own nickname for this 4'9 woman he loved. He'd speak of his friends called the Honory Gang for the street they all hung out on. He'd speak of sundays a leisure day spent with family, he'd speak of the war coming and him going into the service for his country, he'd speak of all the things he'd see, he loved architecture of all eras, and he loved Chicago's downtown buildings so like Gotham City of Batman comics.
Now me I think back to black and white TV's with fuzzy pictures on it quite often, and radio's with only am stations which were staticy more often than clear. And our era still had decoder ring offers. We had the lone ranger, tonto a true friend, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Trigger, and Zorro-A personal favorite, we had sunset strip, Perry Mason, evenings where we were allowed to bring our food into the Living room saturday nite and sunday afternoons, I remember going to church and always dropping my gloves in the gutter as we got out of the car that dad would go and park, or my little purse...guttered out too. I remember mimicking the church women saying the rosary....and I'd get reproached and cracked by my Dad for the "pisss'pissss mocking I'd do trying to sound like them. I remember I hated and still do: the stale odor of alcohol that some people in church reeked of.
I remember our dirt backyard and all the fun we had in it, I remember watching my brothers put together baseball games, and eannie, meannie, minnie, mo,
and baseball games on tv for weekends, the Hamm's bear commercials, the tavern around the corner where quarts of beer were purchased. I remember glass bottles of milk and that the plastic handle could break off so you'd better not swing those.
I remember the cadillac across the street and our own 55 plymouth, I remember 1957 fords black, beautiful shine, I remember my Dad always driving stick shift as automatics weren't out yet, cars being easier to work on and maintain before the complexities of air conditioning in an auto came along. I remember bond being used to keep rust on a vehicle at bay. I remember playing as many waking hours as possible and all without sitting on our butts pushing a game button, we were the game, we ran, we played sports, tag, hide n go seek, sitting was for if you got injured or if you'd been bad and were sort of grounded.
I remember being tired, dirty and ready for the bath that would be inevitable.
Then came technocolor movies, colored TV, and our children find watching black and white movies " Annoying".
So many more things would be developed to amuse the populace, and yet the time period I speak of was a wonderful time for a child to get out and play, there is far too much technology in this world today that deprives growing little people of using their imaginations and thriving in a less computer/game/tv and electronic world.
We need to regress. It will be better for those that come after us.

Virginia, a lovely & funny woman who is gone on...

I Shall pass this way but once, and work weeks can be incredibly hard core, a few weeks can be boring throughout a year but generally it is a busy business: that of an insurance agency.
Each agency has access unto themselves to certain insurance companies who products they have an agreement to sell, and when you need a different product or company than you call an affiliated agency and place your applications and business through them to get the best pricing for your client/insured.
The other agency was how I came to know Virginia the last 4 years, a woman of light like myself on many days, a woman of humor who would always diffuse me from my grumpier self and have me laughing so hard my eyes would tear up. I could tell you this happened once or twice, but no when I talked with Virginia she and I had a sense of humor matched in the heavens so we were always laughing about something as we answered eachothers real time questions and concerns about obtaining insurance for a specific client.
Then came the day when Virginia prank called me pretending to be a client with the most bizarre insurance needs on this earth, but I have lived through bizarre and know that for some people it does exist, so as I tried to help this woman, she would lead me on a path of crazy twists and turns so that I had to keep on my toes to try and make progress, all this disguising her beautiful crystal light voice.......and then she finally started lauging and told me I was real good....
and how she couldn't resist the prank.
Now this lead me to one day when a woman called with a very bizarre tale indeed, I listened I asked questions, and then it got a little crazier for details, and I said " Yeah, right"....thinking it was Virginia playing again...maybe using a southern accent this time, IT WAS NOT Virginia, and I had all I could do to salvage the situation as she'd picked up on some affront.....
However, Virginia did call the next day and when I told her what had happened we laughed until we couldn't breath, this time she said she was crying from it.
We made a deal that we would meet on a friday for dinner.....we had to see eachother.
Yesterday I emailed Virginia, an inquiry which usually would have sparked her to the phone with some humorous oratory, another gal wrote me back and said she'd process it for me.
I wrote her back to ask if she was helping Virginia out. The other woman called me, she said she didn't want to email me about this, I'm thinking crap Virginia's laid off???
No, Virginia who was about the same age as me 55 years, suffered several mini strokes about 1 1/2 months ago, and then she suffered a massive stroke and is dead......
so as crazy as I have become, I cried, and then I took a rare mini break for a smoke to compose myself, and when I came back upstairs, I wrote Virginia one last email, I told her:
"I will miss you my dear friend, I will miss your humor, you were an exceptional being, and God must have needed you to help."
Kath

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

In life a very sharp double edged sword encountered can be the love /hate relationship.
I do not quite know why it comes to pass, but it does crop up in various relationships.
If you love the person or even like the person most of the time, a good friend, a spouse, why is it that they come to hate and hold contempt for a facet of your personality?
And can actually recite a list of what they've been holding in? Holding Back?
Sometimes when they reach this point and begin reciting, sometimes it sounds like they've forgotten the other qualities. Sometimes it sounds like they've held their thoughts in for a substantial amount of time. many times it comes out when they've had a bad day, a bad week, it's triggered, but why?
So we ponder our navel for awhile, we try to gain perspective and critique ourselves for their mentioned points, we begin to feel less comfortable around people, it is not safe to relax and be yourself, and unless you put time in distance between them and yourself, you might lose part of yourself.....some essence gets put on a back burner.
so, you had a bad day?

Out of sync

I Shall pass this way but once., yes I know that, and some days you wake up off kilter. Dizzy all day, and kept tipping over losing my balance, actually felt miserable at one point room spinning. Could be fluid on the ears, allergy seasons at it's max, always knowing it might be something else, something that could assault like a wild cat striking.
Nice thoughts to carry for a day.
Waiting on Cobra benny's to kick in, more pleasantries.
At lunch I laid down for 20 minutes, best shot at chilling for a few, and then back to work.
Stomach finally up for grabs all evening, bodies not happy with something.
We'll see what today brings. Hopefully the dizziness will stay away.
But the day intotal made for a thoughtful and slightly weepy me as it wore me down. Sentimental chump somedays.

A nurse and a really nice lady, a friend

Somewhere along the way in my Avon endeavers I had the good fortune to gain a new customer who is a nurse. Each time she orders, at delivery time we get into conversations about life, sickness, and the enevitable path death.
I think my first delivery was the night I had just come from seeing my best friend through multiple core biopsies of the breasts, my friend was in discomfort, but it was the nagging thoughts about the future outcomes that plagued us both, so I ended up apologizing to the nurse for being late, and explaining what I'd been up to, and that started us off talking about all the things we humans fear.
She's extra humane, and after years in oncology she shifted to long term health care, and says most of hers will eventually die, so she's in tune to their good days until they hit the final bad ones, and she cares deeply for them. She looks you in the eyes when she talks to you, another admirably quality.
Sometimes I meet a person I like so well I wish we could be friends, and sometimes I realize that we already are friends.
I'm glad she's on planet earth, I am very glad she is a nurse, and for her lovies I am happy they have her to care for them.

THE GIVING TREE AND IT'S HOME, the heart!

When your heart really breaks, it's so hard to think only as the mind recalls so many memories at warp speed, the breakdown in a human comes from all of these thoughts processing so quickly, the brain pulls past, present and future through a narrow chamber and you sit down and sob.
It is over. It will never be the same. I can never be the same. You are cold all over, you feel like you've frozen and will never be able to thaw out again. Believe it or not this is the shock to your system.
Advice: go by the water and just watch to sea, the horizen, the sky, watch the people doing their thing, living their days as you usually would, it does have a soothing effect. You might have to stay there hours, there is no inclination to go anywhere else. Stay until you know you can go, it becomes that simple.
The next day you will feel much the same, lift one foot in front of the other, slowly you will progress.
Be open minded, everyone wants to place a blame. Everyone wants to find where it went wrong. Give this up. There isn't a doorstep for the blame, people simply "Change" and you do not always change together. The simplicity of this one truth can save you much grief, and time in evolving into who you will next become.
Now, I want you to remember who you were 30 years ago, really think about the pleasant little things enjoyed, things that coined you as you. I want you to remember who you were 20 years ago, I want you to think about all the little moments you enjoyed and loved, now skip back to who you were 40 years ago, how did the teen shape, how did the woman of youth emerge, so many of the same core items, loves, likes dislikes are still within you, find the spirit within yourself that has always been within-unearth it and move into the light.
You are still that lady, you still have much to give my old giving tree, move forward into the light, there are others waiting for you. They may be friends, some might be family, some unknown as of yet, but someone's waiting for you to become a major ingredient in their laughter, their daydreams, their life. Don't linger in the old doorway holding onto the old luggage, move on into the next chapter and the adventures that await you.
The old will come and haunt you here or there......drop that luggage in their doorway and move on, see the old for whatever beauties it truly had, but embrace the new entryway there's much to be enjoyed as you cross through it, maybe it's chapter 6 in a warm cozy book, your book.
The old life might seek you out again one day, but it really can't even evolve their until you move on from the here and now.....one foot in front of.....
Life will correct itself with the passage of time, you'll give, you'll get, you'll laugh again so hard you're close to tears, you'll anticipate the new things, and every once in awhile you'll still try to see where it went wrong, it's a waste of time though, you'll never find it, never be sure....it is what it is......it was what it was....and you are back to WHOSE Truth is it ANYHOW????????
So drop your luggage, drop all of that heavy baggage......and move on into the next chapters sunlight that awaits you.
Now come here......my tree is tired.......some of my branches are gone.........but I have room for you to sit with me a spell......and we'll just chill out together....quiet like.......until we feel like getting up...........

The Man I Married is a do-er.........not an observer

In this life he has been a Glazier working with glass, replacement windows, sun roofs, moonroofs, plate glass windows, hi-rise windows, replacement screens, down town Chicago buildings, all of this done as a very young man.

Next he signed up for Carpenter School and started that craft back in 1976, he wanted to learn how to do everything from start to finish, and so he did this through the Chicago District Council of Carpenters-Union Program, going to school so many days a week, and working part of the week when the weather cooperated.

He then spent the next 18 years building homes throughout the Suburbs of Chicagoland, whole subdivisions materializing, first as an apprentice, then as a journeyman, and slowly worked his way up the ladder of his craft as more and more subdivisions appeared.

Eventually he became a Foreman and gain the experience of supervising people. And the next company he worked for landed a very nice subdivsion to build, a 50 man crew is who my husband was supervising and building homes with rounded turrets out in the front of the homes, I still have the newspaper article and picture of his crew, the turrets, and him looking down from one of the towers he was building.

This meant being outside in the rains, the snows, the sub below temperatures, and out in the sweltering heat throughout many hot summers, a slender man getting thinning from hard work regardless of how much water he drank on those days. Coursened hands, slivers, nail gun accidents, falls off of 2nd story roofs, sprain ankle, walls dropped on him by a dumb ass with the help of the wind all contributed to an eventual bad back, mulitple discs popped out of place, but one pressing on the nerve and spinal chord, finally a surgery to micro shave these discs.

He was offered a job as a superintendent for a bigger builder when he decided finally that his back couldn't take the hard physical labor of building homes daily any longer, well he was a trim superintendent, a project superintendent, and eventually promoted to a Senior Project Superintendent (over many jobsites) and he held this position for many years, and did well at it, all of the planning,coordination and memory required for this type of work. All of the relationships established and worked at to keep the homes closing on time, his suggestions when just higher ups were gaining bonuses for homes closing on time, that the whole team should benefit established better pay for others. He's always been extremely innovative as a thinker and a do-er.

And so he is off now on a lay off, a time period when the housing market is crashed, this man who used to just pick up a phone & had a job the next week, what will he endeavor to do for the next chapter of his life? I have no doubt that whatever he does will be honorable work, and that whatever he lands he will work hard at, as always.
He is one of my life hero's!

9/11 America and Bill, and our American Hearts

It is a day of rememberance in America, a day to remember all of the souls and spirits lost in the chaos of that day in 2001, a day that would unleashed many levels of feeling and heart in the American People.
September 11th, 2001 started out the same as an other work day, until Bill came in to ask us what news we had heard? We had no radio in my area (customer service and sales support seated side by side in our old building) He told us he had just heard that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, least that's what he thought he heard as the radio in his office kept cutting in and out, he supposed it was a skit or a radio DJ prank.
Bill would come back to our area many more times that morning with updates, it was ok for him to wander, he was a Vice President of the company, and the owner's Dad. Bill was also a soldier in the Korean War and had brought me articles to read about his outfit in that war, about battles engaged in, and Bill was definitely an American Patriot, much like my own father, although my Dad was involved in the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. Bill was also my friend, he had adopted me at this workplace, and would give me tips for survival, tips on who to stand up to, and when to ask for things or equipment to further my job duties. He trusted me with his computer and his banking passwords enough to have me sign in for him each month to pull information needed, he hated computers and he hated our hypothetical I.T. guy more, found him annoying, so he normally came and talked to me, got to know my family background, and would the next year support me in heart as I did hospice for my Mom who be diagnosed with a dreaded disease and die through hospice.
I do believe that 9/11 strengthened our friendship, his son was stranded in Europe, his daughter and adopted son by law were stranded at an airport involving a disney trip, and on that day Bill ran the office with much compassion for the Americans working within that office.
What? Planes crashing into the world trade center? One, Two? The trade Center crumbled tower by tower, oh our God....all of the people didn't escape?
Part of the Pentagon Leveled? A fourth Airplane....heroic people fighting back against terrorists we didn't know we had here? Americans crashing the planes in one place so it wouldn't crash into a more Ulimate target in D.C.?
And then finally at lunch time seeing the news reel footage, numbing for an American Heart.
For a people who still remembered Pearl Harbor Day, we certainly never thought that America would get attacked in such a direct...over our land....using our planes....training here on our soil....for months method, no we didn't.
So we all felt the horror of that day.
Now Bill has gone to his happy hunting ground, gone in the footsteps of my mom, but I will always remember how he kept an insane day alittle saner for us.

Boycotting & Picketing the Wrong Prongs & Apathy

I Shall pass this way but once., and I did grow up on the heels of the hippy times, so I saw an awful lot of boycotts, picket lines, demonstrations where people would join forces in larger masses in front of a store, a government building, a corporate headquarters to express that we the people "Didn't care for a scene playing out be it in world politics, or national politics, or local politics, people would make up signs and boycott all of the things they really didn't like" , CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW, AMERICA?

This is not really a recession and it is definitely not over: If the prices of groceries are too inflated by greedy corporations, boycott them, draw attention to the issues.
If you don't like when the gas prices become inflated over the price of oil being announced which couldn't possibly affect us in a day, as it takes a lot longer for a tanker to reach here: then for Gosh Sakes Boycott Them. Make a statement, "Stop the APATHY".
WHEN YOU MAKE THESE STATEMENTS MAYBE SOMEONE IN WASHINGTON WILL LISTEN!!!!!!!

Colon Cancer and Polyps, avoidance

The following information is gathered from Mayoclinic.com, and is a worthy read. Before you read this please note a good balance diet including ruffage and/or high fiber foods can help keep this system within your body working better/more efficiently, and some sort of exercise keeps all of the body stronger.
Many are of the belief that we are all born with cancer cells/pre cancerous cells within our bodies, and that the wrong set of circumstances or diet can begin to feed them instead of feeding our healthier cells, the wrong cells gaining power over the body, much like white blood cells which begin to dominate in a red cell blood pro active environment, proving something went amiss, something was not processing correct throughout the body for this to have occurred:

Colon cancer
Colon cancer is cancer of the large intestine (colon), the lower part of your digestive system. Rectal cancer is cancer of the last several inches of the colon. Together, they're often referred to as colorectal cancers.
Most cases of colon cancer begin as small, noncancerous (benign) clumps of cells called adenomatous polyps. Over time some of these polyps become colon cancers.
Polyps may be small and produce few, if any, symptoms. For this reason, doctors recommend regular screening tests to help prevent colon cancer by identifying polyps before they become colon cancer

Signs and symptoms of colon cancer include:
A change in your bowel habits, including diarrhea or constipation or a change in the consistency of your stool for more than a couple of weeks
Rectal bleeding or blood in your stool
Persistent abdominal discomfort, such as cramps, gas or pain
A feeling that your bowel doesn't empty completely
Weakness or fatigue
Unexplained weight loss
Many people with colon cancer experience no symptoms in the early stages of the disease. When symptoms appear, they'll likely vary, depending on the cancer's size and location in your large intestine.
When to see a doctor If you notice any symptoms of colon cancer, such as blood in your stool or a persistent change in bowel habits, make an appointment with your doctor.
Talk to your doctor about when you should begin screening for colon cancer. Guidelines generally recommend colon cancer screenings begin at age 50. Your doctor may recommend more frequent or earlier screening if you have other risk factors, such as a family history of the disease.


Colon cancer

Precancerous colon lesions
It's not clear what causes colon cancer in most cases. Doctors know that colon cancer occurs when healthy cells in the colon become altered. Healthy cells grow and divide in an orderly way to keep your body functioning normally. But sometimes this growth gets out of control — cells continue dividing even when new cells aren't needed. In the colon and rectum, this exaggerated growth may cause precancerous cells to form in the lining of your intestine. Over a long period of time — spanning up to several years — some of these areas of abnormal cells may become cancerous.
Precancerous growths in the colon Colon cancer most often begins as clumps of precancerous cells (polyps) on the inside lining of the colon. Polyps can appear mushroom-shaped. Precancerous growths can also be flat or recessed into the wall of the colon (nonpolypoid lesions). Nonpolypoid lesions are more difficult to detect, but are less common. Removing polyps and nonpolypoid lesions before they become cancerous can prevent colon cancer.
Inherited gene mutations that increase the risk of colon cancer Inherited gene mutations that increase the risk of colon cancer can be passed through families, but these inherited genes are linked to only a small percentage of colon cancers. Inherited gene mutations don't make cancer inevitable, but they can increase an individual's risk of cancer significantly. Inherited colon cancer syndromes include:
Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP). FAP is a rare disorder that causes you to develop thousands of polyps in the lining of your colon and rectum. People with untreated FAP have a greatly increased risk of developing colon cancer before age 40.
Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC). HNPCC, also called Lynch syndrome, increases the risk of colon cancer and other cancers. People with HNPCC tend to develop colon cancer before age 50.
Both FAP and HNPCC can be detected through genetic testing. If you're concerned about your family's history of colon cancer, talk to your doctor about whether your family history suggests you have a risk of these conditions.


Factors that may increase your risk of colon cancer include:
Older age. About 90 percent of people diagnosed with colon cancer are older than 50. Colon cancer can occur in younger people, but it occurs much less frequently.
African-American race. African-Americans have a greater risk of colon cancer than do people of other races.
A personal history of colorectal cancer or polyps. If you've already had colon cancer or adenomatous polyps, you have a greater risk of colon cancer in the future.
Inflammatory intestinal conditions. Long-standing inflammatory diseases of the colon, such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, can increase your risk of colon cancer.
Inherited syndromes that increase colon cancer risk. Genetic syndromes passed through generations of your family can increase your risk of colon cancer. These syndromes include familial adenomatous polyposis and hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, which is also known as Lynch syndrome.
Family history of colon cancer and colon polyps. You're more likely to develop colon cancer if you have a parent, sibling or child with the disease. If more than one family member has colon cancer or rectal cancer, your risk is even greater. In some cases, this connection may not be hereditary or genetic. Instead, cancers within the same family may result from shared exposure to an environmental carcinogen or from diet or lifestyle factors.
Low-fiber, high-fat diet. Colon cancer and rectal cancer may be associated with a diet low in fiber and high in fat and calories. Research in this area has had mixed results. Some studies have found an increased risk of colon cancer in people who eat diets high in red meat and processed meats.
A sedentary lifestyle. If you're inactive, you're more likely to develop colon cancer. Getting regular physical activity may reduce your risk of colon cancer.
Diabetes. People with diabetes and insulin resistance may have an increased risk of colon cancer.
Obesity. People who are obese have an increased risk of colon cancer and an increased risk of dying of colon cancer when compared with people considered normal weight.
Smoking. People who smoke cigarettes may have an increased risk of colon cancer.
Alcohol. Heavy use of alcohol may increase your risk of colon cancer.
Radiation therapy for cancer. Radiation therapy directed at the abdomen to treat previous cancers may increase the risk of colon cancer.

Telephone Companies and bullcrap on the billings

I Shall pass this way but once.....and so yesterday I looked at my phone bill and tried to figure out what two different companies Enchanced Service Billing, and OAN Service billing were billing $16.07 a piece on my A. T. & T telephone bill, I called A. T & T to start my inquiry, ending up filing a dispute, they said these companies usually represent a third party telephone company signed up for on the internet, I know I didn't sign up for another phone service I already have one....then they tell me I have to call each of these companies and cancel something I never ordered.
And I do I call each of them, they are teched out of INDIA as per Usual....I have to get real bitchy to get them to credit it off and close their accounts on me, they try to give me $500.00 and $1,000 gift cards to stay...I tell them I wanted nothing from them but my damn credits.
At the end they all tell me it takes two-three months for these asses to credit you, and close the account, so who knows what other fun we're in for. They tell me at AT&T that the FCC allows this bullshit, and that's why AT& T allows it as well, and again that COINSHOTS what is wrong with our government, the FCC is one of the government agencies President OBAMA said he'd get rid of if elected all agencies that didn't really work well, if it was broken or sucked big time, he was going to shut it down.....well they're still open and allowing stupid ass shit to have to the people of the land.
In Conclusion:
PEOPLE REALLY READ YOUR PHONE BILLS, YOU'RE PROBABLY BEING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF..........RANT AND RAVE, IT'S ALL WE HAVE SOMEDAYS.

As one door closes, another opens to us

As we walk through life we constantly have life choices in front of us, entry through some has to be won or earned, some doorways are easy to manuever, others are very difficult to access.
So today we walk out of one doorway, we linger as this jobs been our duty and pride and joy for so long, it is not a doorway we wanted to leave but we've been told to go on, and go on without their company, a solo act for us to adventure through once it can be seen as an adventure, the lay off time provides time to shed off who you were, and to become your base line self again, usually not without some angers, some emotions, and eventually you will realize you are who you are, and no one can change that.
Leaving some jobs is more difficult especially when it really is due to this current economy, no agendas hidden here, but you my dear have been a solidly good worker, a family provider for light years since I supported us through your schooling carpenter days, you've beat me hands down 3/4 of the income compared to my meager 1/4, so now we face more adventures, more hardships, more disciplines, and more this economy, and let me say at the threshold I can't give a shit about any and all of it, as long as I won the round yesterday.
We've started over before and we can again as long as we have eachother to walk on with, one wisecracker to another, in humor, sometimes in knowing silence, let's start walking..............."Long may we run"..................

Another old Song

Have I told you lately that I love you, well darlin I'm tell you now.

My Guardians Angels or Guardian Souls, & Thanks

My dears I started seeing your trails a couple of weeks ago, I didn't know what was coming yet, and then life began to happen at a quicker speed than usual, more important things than usual. For a lady with floaters - trails can become a bit scary.....first you think it's the float you're seeing even though it's significantly different in site, my son knew I was seeing something cause he caught me startled the first few times and he was present in the rooms. But you are comfortable with him as you trailed in his presence before back in 2003, 2004, and you only come for matters of importance, but in truth once I figured things out somewhat I didn't know if you were here to guide and support me spirits or if you were here to start receiving, and that would make much difference to this gal. When you trail you leave your life marks be it height, statures, and usually favored garments in life coloring/patterns so that I know who is who, and sometimes the slight glow/globe of glow.
And so yesterday a biggy in my book we sat in the vehicle waiting for our time period to come, flowers in front of us, and oh yes my monarch friend you dance from flower to flower to divert us both, I felt both of our minds wandering to other times and other days, and I knew we both wondered were our path would lead us.
We got inside of this building I brought Mom to the day I put her into the hospital for her final chapters, and I broke out in a sweat, got hot flashes galore, started shaking vibrantly, and the nausea was on the tip of my throat, sometimes it is hard to go back, and harder still if you fear deeply that another round is beginning, and so these minutes went by slowly......the only thing that soothed and quited me was placing my hand on my mans arm.....it brought a calm so I could make it through the waiting.
the end result is pending some tests results of the future we have been assured to a higher degree that things look ok, but that it was a good find catching these diddlies now before they turned us into the black darker days.
So my dear guardians I thank you for your guidance, pushes, distractions, and comfort of supports that you offer saying " the best possible outcome is worked towards"
I thank you for the strengths passed on from life, I thank you for the strength you lend through death, and I offer you love back a hundred fold for the best outcome given and shaped.
I can't profess to understand it all completely, but with a childs heart I accept you all, I am not afraid of you, and I am not afraid of death only the loss that would be felt and there is a difference. And I know you surface for both situations, always an important one to me, and I know enough to trust myself and to trust you all as well.
God's White Light, white light on us all.

Einstein's theory

I Shall pass this way but once, and as I walk on I feel great sympathies/empathise for the common man, I always have I always will.

I watch in the morning on my drive all of the homeless people who keep multiplying like rabbits out in these trusted burbs, and I know that some portion of them are people who have disengaged from society, and some of them are people where society disengaged from them. Either have deep feelings and marks left on someone lives, the homeless or the ones they walked away from, someones feeling something here.
I also know some small part of them perhaps didn't have the right chemicals within their brains to keep them balanced in society as we know it, and maybe they've gone off their meds and slowly drifted away from society preferring to live out on the streets.
I also know another reason for the increase in numbers is this current economy, all of these people laid off from jobs they held 15- 20- 30 years, and now they've run out of money, they can't meet their debts, the fall behind, the get foreclosed on or evicted, they've been run out of their homes, they can't rent without a good credit report, can't stay in a hotel without money's,so what the hell do you gravitate towards? Whatever is left to you......
And so they increase in number, shelter's few, and fewer being built to accommodate the situation even though it could, and has happened to many of us or people just like us, the burbs don't want to attract "these people", so it is out of the question to try and shelter them from this STORM.
A different type of tragedy is occurring.

Laws and their interpretations from each side

Laws in our country were designed to protect someone, usually the people.

Lawyers and corporations were made to find the loop holes in these laws that would protect the people and turn them to the corporations advantage, so the can attempt to wienie out of their obligations the law otherwise would have imposed upon them.
With this said: the above has everything to do with the current state of the nation. Now also apply it state by state and you might begin to see the problems that have amassed for the people of the land.

COBRA is one such law that was signed into effect in the 80's to give people laid off access to health insurance benefits especially if they were in the middle of the road on a health issue, but it was at 150% outrageous premium charged to those dis-advantaged unemployed people at the time, so it was modified recently to give relief to the very people needing it the most, the unemployed 100,000 of thousand of people in this land who have been affected by the massive layoffs which are continuing despite government news banners about how much better things are getting. It's major revised COBRA theory is that the old cobra fee is reduced by 65% , paid temporarily by the previous employer who laid you off, and eventually re-imbursed through their quarterly tax payments/filings.
The corker here is the ex-employer tells you might be entitled to this unless you can obtain group insurance through your spouse.
Group Health Care can be found for what is called small group of two or more individuals, but then you may get stuck with pre-existing conditions which will not be covered by the new insurance company...who love to send waivers out to the people to be signed if they want any coverage at all, it will not be all health issues covered, it will become "some". And high premiums as it's such a small group.
And as it is the coverages involved have premiums in excess monthly of $1100 per person if under COBRA.
So let's say you're having health tests run on thurday, you're being laid off on friday, and your soon to be ex-employer tells you that COBRA will send you a packet in the mail in case you want to continue the benefits, these human resource specialist, bunny foo-foo your very real need for insurance with maybe you have it, they are by law required to make the source available to you including the COBRA APPLICATION which would needed for processing.
**WHAT IF YOUR TEST REQUIRE IMMEDIATE HEALTH TREATMENT?***

So the laws are written for the people, the corporations based upon their corporate lawyers advise handle an important situation in the shadows like they were dust bunnies whispering some 1/2 truth to the employee who will become un-employed.....saying here you take care of it........off into the sunset you go.........you haven't been laid off before, or not in this glorious time period, so you're at the mercy of any sentence someone will spit your way.

And this is one example of how crippled America has become thanks to LAWS devoured into swiss cheese by the people with money, versus giving the protection they were designed for to the people who need it the most.

As one chapter closes, another is written

I Shall pass this way but once.....you shall pass this way but once, and on we walk....
All the years of adventures, all of the jobs we've had and enjoyed and grown through, and so we know now we embark on another adventure: "what do I want to be when I grow up"?
I've been a credit analyst, and customer service rep, a group coordinator, a support coordinator, a Realtor, A Mom, A Nanny, a Cleaning woman ( lay offs can be fun, can't they), and now an administrative assistant.
You have been a glazer, a carpenter, a journeyman carpenter, a crew supervisor, a project supervisor, A Trim Superintendent, A Project Superintendent, And a Senior Project Superintendent.
And now we have another opportunity to see what the future holds, to see what the best strategy is, and what all of the combined skills will bring us to.

As one door closes, another opens! And that is one of the truths of life.
Shake off the old, take a deep breath, and walk on to the next path.....

You are still you, and I am still me, what we do with the paid hours is only a segment, but we are the root that grows it!

As long as I have you............

I Shall pass this way but once.......well somedays maybe twice, thrice, it depends on if I'm in squirrelly mode or not.
Last night you thought you'd shock me with your news flashes, but the truth is:
" I don't care as long as I have your ugly ass around", it is and will remain that simple.
You are my source of constant amusement, my whistle and my bell. And still the major point of beauty in this land of Sunshine.....
So with luck thursday will go well..............no dooms and glooms for us yet.....
And when friday rears it's ugly head I pray it sticks to the economy, and leaves the real you and I alone, yes I know you're not highly religious, but I do always prayer in some fashion for the things/creatures that are important to me, most beautiful one.
With Love,
Sunshine

August 31,

I Shall pass this way but once.....And another August 31st is on the horizen, I cannot escape from you quickly enough, you are a greedy month, you take the humans from us and crush us at time in your gestures, heat or no heat you deliver year upon year doses of crap for us to shovel through, now kindly go away for awhile?

Let September a softer kinder month prevail.

Fall

Upon finding you my diamond man, I knew you were a keeper. And yes I checked our astrologies believe it or not there is some merit to it all as it was probably the first theory, the theory of stars, sun, moon and planetary alignments, and knowing what gravity can do, yes I do believe it all can be influenced by gravity alone, just try driving on the expressway during the full moon, and the werewolf drivers are definitely out in mass.
Within a lifetime, we all are disappointed now and then by the people we love in life, maybe on a given day or time period they do not measure up, they do not dance to the tune we want to dance to, maybe sometimes the issue is big enough to cause of riff in the life systems we partake in. So, Forgive, apologize and say I love you better than it all. Now put all that aside and move forward..........
I would not ever have wanted anyone else at my side. You are my enchantment for life.
You bring the magic to all phases of it.
You are a rainbow of colors and contrasts.
You are my hero, and laughter.

Good Fortune in this life

So many people would see the words "Good Fortune in this life" and be off and running looking for a lottery story, or investment success story. They want to see that fortune equates to a getting rich thrill, and yet it doesn't. Most likely it couldn't be further from a truth.
Very good fortune in life comes from looking over your shoulder and seeing that most of it which has become the past was spent well with people you loved, family, friends, some crazy co-workers that made the whole 9-11 hours a day more enjoyable due to their vivid personalities, and looking to your right and left and seeing that even though life is ever changing your immediate present is entirely doable, not perfect but doable and that you still have good family to enjoy and relax with, consult and worry with, and still have some good friends to trade animal stories with.
And in front of you is the future....what is going to shape up to be your present one day at a time, it holds good times and bad, it will hold good surprises and bad shockers, it will invigorate you and deplete you at times, it will bring more days of you and yours, laughter and sunshine, grief and loss, and like any pregnancy - delivery of it cannot be avoided- no allowance for outcomes, on it will come one day at a time until the sands in your hour glass have diminished, so embrace all of the good stuff while it presents itself, and realize all of the good fortune you have enjoyed.

I'd like to teach the world to sing all standing hand...

I Shall pass this way but once., and the flower child who once was ( and I was at the end of the hippies, but man did I love flowers....even the man who owned the flower shop where I had come for light years as a friday patron or saturday patron, well when he made my bridal bouquet for me...he put my bouquet together for me, White roses, White periwinkle's and gardenia's flown in from sunny california...well my bouquet was free of charge, and just the rest of the wedding parties flowers were billed for, if I remember right his name was Bill Gosh of Goshe's Florist on Narragansett off Nagle...a family owned business., I do believe even though he was around 39 or 40 at the time, I think he passed away the next year God bless his soul, his wife and his mom tried to run it, but a tree fell on the roof and crashed into the combination house & shop so severely they never re-opened at least not there)
Anyways one of my world goals was to see peace throughout the lands...., coming out of the Viet Nam war for growing years made me really want to see peace prevail upon the land. The song people connect with a Coke Commercial was actually A VERY REAL SONG: " I'd like to see the world for once all standing hand in hand, and hear the echoes through the hills for peace throughout the land, I'd to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony......Put your hand in my hand, let's begin today, with your hand in my hand.....help us find a way.....
So, it is a sad thing that peace cannot be found, wars fought over religions to one side, and resources or access to resources on another side...are indeed a pity, no one can't stop long enough to see the big picture of the world needs....not wants....NEEDS.....no one can stop long enough to just know we all need the same things to live and that each man is entitled to believe his own religion especially if they could achieve that seeing the beauty of the religion and not hold contempt for the differences each has....
Friends cannot co-exist either without disputes erupting sometimes over a principle and sometimes over something petty that looks stupid in hind site.
And so it is when family/families begin to dispute/disagree that communications should be engaged to settle these items, but instead similar to the world sides are taken oddly enough without full conversation as to what the others point had been, they do not even give the other family member the dignity of conversation or communication, they simply take a side & remain there, sometimes losing valuable time and love that would have shined the situation and disagreement away if they had confronted it or embraced it, and instead shed a cold and intolerable winters ice upon their once warm feelings, and the fall out affects all other parties involved, and cold gets colder.
Quite often this happens after a loss of a family member, and people forget the trees for the forest, as in they can't see the forest for the sake of the fallen tree.
The big picture has been lost.
So how in the hell could we ever have world peace when the people involved do not have as much love and compassion for eachother as a family once had.
I do not know the answers, as always I am just full of questions???

Patience is a virtue in the waiting game

I Shall pass this way but once., and sometimes in life someone else wants to take the lead, this will require patience in this girl child, but come on I only have so much....
So other people want to dictate the schedules, other people are to call with a schedule or timetable, and then they don't call, what a major piss off this is and all of the self control involved to harness my energies after all of that waiting I did with blood pressures ready to blow.
And so today I have the perfect opportunity to get up someone's ass bright and early as long as they didn't keep their word and call yesterday. A shame for them my goal in adult life was to expedite things, not procrastinate.
A joke in private I rattle off is " to procrastinate is the devils work", and it's pretty true, and I can spot it a mile out.......
So here's to a DO DAY....let's get it done.............

Blood, cause and effect

Quite simply, blood from any extremity means something:
After a head injury blood from the ears signals a problem.
In post menopause woman, blood is a problem.
If blood is in a stool, fresh red is surface, hemorrhoids or fissure.

Dark red is a bigger problem, and needs to be checked for Stomach Ulcer which is most commonly cause by a bacteria and an H-Pylori blood test can confirm if the bacteria is present. ( Years ago My Dad came home sick one night from work, pale, vomiting, and then it started to hurt across his stomach area, he was driven towards our doctor's office which was still open....he had to be taken straight to the hospital instead where he had emergency surgery as his undiagnosed ulcer had perforated and his stomach contents were seeping out into his body. We almost lost him that nite which I think was around 1973/fall.) Now they find that a special anti-biotic can cure this bacterial ulcer.

Another problem signified by blood in the stool is intestinal or colon obstruction. It is important to get this checked out quickly through a doctor visit and a fecal test, and other possible tests dependent on what your results show, many people have obstructions removed and live long, healthy lives thereafter, it is not always a cancer or malignant cancer causing the obstructions. (My mother dies from Colon cancer, as did her 2nd oldest brother, but one of my aunties and also one of my best friends moms had similar obstructions of a non malignant cell structure and they had there surgeries a few years back and are now fine and well.)
It is important to pursue the cause of blood found in a stool.

Blood coughed up or thrown up is one more signal for quick, prompt testing. It could be again a stomach ulcer, it could be a signal from an obstruction below, it could be esophagus damaged to some degree.

Energies and Healing Energies

http://www.thetalker.org/ once had a post about healing energies, it was originally found in his healers blog: http://waysofahealer.blogspot.com/
A comment was posted by Jacob asking "if the energies could be felt"? The answer is yes to an open mind.....open your minder, close your eyes and see what you feel as giver and sometimes taker:

It was feeling them that gave me the curiosity throughout the years to keep experimenting with them.
It started simply some 34 years ago, my husband to be and I visiting his family, and his father drew our attentions to simply holding out our hands to eachother (he and I) and finger to finger connecting, and to close our eyes and see what we felt? Well we felt energy. Define this. We felt the energy flowing from the stronger one to the weaker one., or the one who needed more.
It was an interesting experiment and different results have eminated throughout the years depending on who needed the energy.

The very interesting point is that this can be done throughout the body. I have found a best place for me to feed him energy, I believe it might differ human to human, problem to problem, but it still holds interest.

My best friend on occassion does the finger to finger exchange with me, and sometime the energy is so strong she jumps back from the hand to hand theory in surprise.

I once did this with a friend, a dear friend who laid dying, trying to feed him the stamina for the pain he was experiencing during his journey and yet draw the pain out of him as part of the cycle of energy flow. There is a large part of me that thinks part of it was successful as I hurt the next two years, I believe my problem was I didn't know where to dispell the energy/Pain I had abstracted from his body, like hand to like fingers.
I remember feeling his strength which surprised me during the flow and exhange, yes his strength was actually astounding considering it was the night he'd choose to complete the journey to the Portal.

At times using this on my favorite recipient as I try to focus on where to send the energy I can feel it swirling into him almost like a massive storm cloud shaping into a tornado funnel.

Chase Bank, the commercial & bailout wasted $$

I Shall pass this way but once., but while I can still think and talk let me have one more opinion:

I thought the bailout moneies were to help the banks help the people in need, man oh man, did the monies get mispent in so many directions with no accountability still for these assholes running the banks. Let me qualify this statement:
From previous blogs you'll catch how impressed I was with Citibank installing new cash station/drive up machines at their facilities, but let me tell you Chase has totally outdone them on money misappropriations: Chase now has a machine that you can insert a deposit/check into (no envelope needed) and it gives you a picture of the check on your receipt, this same machine allows you to deposit cash one twenty dollar bill at a time....and it will know how much cash you've put in and receipt accordingly.

I urge the government stronly to start governing the right people, what happened to the accountability that was promised to the people of this land?

People are still losing their jobs, their houses and their identities in mass quantities, and this is the best the banks can do on spending the so called bailout money they all received?

Cut the America Public a break assholes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Precious Memories

I Shall pass this way but once., and some things I can't and won't take for granted are:

Vision! It's starting to fade.

Hearing! I lost 60% of it once, now it's only 20% loss, there is a huge difference.

Memory! I like a computer have had large segments drop, for unknown reason, Scary.

Family! I have lost too many of them to take them for granted.

Favorite Memories:
Watching you sleep. Waking to see you holding our newborn. Watching rainbows together.
Waking to find you were feeding him saturday morning breakfast to cartoons.
Seeing you and Frankie feed him his first popsicle, and laughing when his feet jirrated for more...
Seeing Justin try to tie grandpa's shoelaces in knots, watching them pretend the coach was a fishing boat, and Dad pushing him off into the pretend water.
Watching Juice and Grandma on Halloween and never know which one was having more fun with the day.
Seeing Justin fall asleep under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve waiting up close and personal for Santa.
Seeing Justin climb under the end table like Moonie, cause he wanted to be a puppy that day.
Watching Juice drink his milk out of a bowl like a kitty kat would on the floor.
The day he got his first sidewalk abrasion and wanted me to go get his skin and put it back on " Right Now"!
Taking him fishing with Pa after dinner, and watching him catch his first fish dangling on the worm and only the worm as we'd cut his tines off the hooks. Watching how he squealed when the fish got away.....as it fell off the worm into the water at twin lakes.
Seeing how proud he was at his pre-school graduation open house.
Seeing how proud he was at his college graduation.
Watching him walk Laguna Beach with his Uncle, loving the same terrain.
Seeing how he seeks out his father for guy talks on life events.
Listening to him sing and play guitar.
Driving almost anywhere with you, listening to our tunes, and most of our night cook outs
Time.....more time

A Breath of fresh air via a young lady

Life in the fast lane, get up, coffee, computer to wake the brain up. More coffee, wash clothes, wash dishes, make beds, straightened up house from night before, write out a few hand written bills and prepare for mailing, somedays go for a walk by the lake if caught up on all these other items before shower. If any projects or lengthier tasks need to be done a morning has to be sacrificed to the project. This is what I call living time....the time between waking up but before work for the day.
Work, can be calm on and off, but usually it is quite hectic, many phone calls, many emails, clients needing something accomplished in their name, new car, new home, bills payments via the internet or pay by phones on their behalf. Letters to be written to clients, policies to be mailed under cover letter, certificates of insurance to be issued so they can work in a building or collect a pay check for work completed, and on it goes.
Usually I was the only lady in our office suite, sometimes it's hard to exist in an entirely male world, another time you might be entirely stressed over obstacles life is throwing in your path, and so I had reach a five year mark for being at this particular job and I believe at times I've lost patience for the monkey games that continue to go on, the clients who can't pay their bills on time due to lack of organization, lack of thought for monthly details.
And like a breath of spring or fresh air, my boss had a young lady come in twice a week to help us with the massive paperflow we must store on behalf of these clients. A very nice young lady named Lauren worked with us this summer, she is a pretty, educated young college gal who would like to go into medicine eventually, we talked about all types of things as we worked, music, books, travel, places we'd seen and places we love to see one day, she was like a breath of fresh air in the musty office suite, now she goes back to school, but I am glad we had this particular visitor, our files are revamped which was the goal, but she brought some young life, and smiles to our world for the three months of summer, and we have told her she is welcomed back next summer should it work out for her schedule.
Be happy, be safe, young adventurer.

USA Collage and many worthy theories to use

I Shall pass this way but once., and sometimes I stop and take time for a favored hobby I came across accidentally while in real estate, this hobby is creating photo collages on different subject matters. If I had more time for it I would branch out to the point of it becoming a more active art form for me.
I have taken many batches of photo's from family members and and decided who or whom were the focal story and weaved around them the other stories as relative to the focus.
It evokes many feelings and emotions as you journey through it's creation, you can capture a person essence with it given the right pictures and the right understanding of the various relationships.
I have several left to do this winter.
Where the art form could come in is doing one on the various political mover's and shakers to convey so much of the lost time and lost opportunities they piss away each month, and show them taking their recesses as the country gets put into suspended animation while they are really using the time to manipulate eachother with this poor party concept they still strive to hold onto, when in actuality the people are no longer interested in a party, the people only want repairs and results that are tangible enough to be seen or captured.
Yes, I could have fun trying to capture the political bullshit that is shoveled onto the masses.
It is past time to picket, only because there are so many subjects that need to be addressed.
Grocery prices, auto prices, the real logic and rules behind the clunkers whereby people with clunkers are turned down for the program, lower home interest rates that can't be utilized well by folks needing to refinance their homes that appraise $100,000 lower than two or three years ago and if they refinanced now they'd be charged PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) until a certain equity would be reached, a healthcare reform bill mostly thoughout and abandoned because of the insurance companies and insurance industries/healthcare related fighting it behind the scenes as they don't want their own rules re-written or rejockeyed and all the time they view it as a market share they might lose versus it's designed to protect the very people they wouldn't be able to service, pre-existing conditions are a plenty out there due to the insurance companies denying people coverage or making them sign waivers on given conditions for life, or sometime for limited years such as a woman we knew of with a pin in her leg, for life anything occurring that would have to do with that...would NOT be covered.
And so the big boys club progresses with no progress in site........

A New Chapter and the book of life

I Shall pass this way but once. and as I've wandered along some times you can feel you've entered a new chapter, a fresh start or a time when things can be changed to the better if the people involved have learned anything as they journeyed together.

And so it comes to pass this feeling of embarking on a new journey, fresh starts are coming in sinc for my family, the son who will begin student teaching this year and continue onto his own American Dreams, the husband and I who have hung on during this wilder ride and are just now reseated and buckle in for whereever we will roam to next in life's adventures. My best friend having never closed a door behind her, will venture back into the part time job she had so many years ago to bring extra's into her own world with the very best attitudes no time for pity parties, she always amazes me with her inner child spirit and carries few grudges although many have wronged her in misunderstanding what she holds in heart...usually a lot of love with some truths thrown in for balance. And my favorite nephew on that side who won my heart light years ago when meeting me while in his training pants....still flashes me a smile here and there that shows the love involved/evolved well suffice it to say he will have new adventures before him, and probably it all will have worked out for the best, one business had and loved to make it through all of the harshess of times, yet on a permanent basis left little energy or shine and zest for living out these younger days that are his to be had, the lifestyle lived for so long was too old for what years he has accomplished for himself., and so off he goes trying to decided on the next best course. All of us are lined up at the starting gates one more time, good attitudes in hand and looking forward to brighter times, many lessons learned from the past hopefully to keep the future brighter for us all.
And after many years of saying we were moving on, well, we finally have!

A New Desk and lease on life

Despite a new/used desk coming for me yesterday at work I took the previously planned vacation day. The Havoc on thursday trying to get last minute work done for our insureds, yet trying to pack up the old desk was a big pressuresome, but the mission was 97% completed.
Our summer gal who's helped out twice a week with filing, and making new files was on duty to set up the desk, so monday will bring lots of surprises and many questions of where is this and that as I get re-aclimated to this new desk/actually two desks combined.

The fun part here is that for 5 years I've worked with massive insurance files, scrunched into a 18 inch x 18 inch space with my keyboard directly in front of me, it's been a small cubed world, which has caused alot of aches and pains to my shoulders and neck and probably my back as well.
But the journey and adventure will continue, I'll get used to this new configuration but as it sticks out into the room ......will the others? Maybe.

SunShine and another song

John Edwards: Sunshine is more to the point, and another posibility of what was in my head when I named this blog.....................

Sunshine come back another day, I don't feel much like playing.....,
someone gone and tried to run my life, and I don't feel much like dancing.

My fellow gardener, ZI994

I Shall pass this way but once., but every august 13th I remember you. I remember your face which I loved from the time I was a small child, I remember your coming in from work and lifting me up in the air and playing our game of "wee" as you'd swing me up and and down like a small child using a swing, I remembered other times learning how to dance standing on your feet....corns and callouses quiet and enduring the little girl, I remember someone who as a child I held as my first hero and you carried that role for so long and yet remained one of the main ones. I remember plaguing you while you shaved and trying to beat you into the bathroom as you took so long with reading that news paper, I remember you as our first driver, our first person who so earned our trust, I remember you as the ex-world war II artillery Sargent who was nicknamed sarge at time who wouldn't tolerate any bullshit, I remember the lectures you gave to kids in Humbolt park for running out after a ball from between two parked cars, I remember you shopping for our groceries due to the car, and for Grandpa's groceries for the light years he needed you, I remember a few kite days, and balsam wood planes of different designs, I remember you didn't discriminate against a little girl who wanted to shadow her brothers and you, I remember you lost your sister early and your parents early, and common bond of that with Ma's losses you tried extra hard to keep and maintain a family and a home more than others might have tried to, others without the Sarge quality would have hung it up, but your softer side of missing them is probably what drove you to keep it all together on the really dark days. I remember our first garden and the one's that would emerge after, and when someone sees me leave the few leftover flowers on top of the earth....they might think I mimic Ma, but it was really you and all those fall gardens we'd dig the bulbs up from our dahlia's, and always leave a few last blooms on top of the earth, a lst word being said for the season. I see you in the back of the church giving me your assurances as I had a moment of "What am I doing?", I see the hands I played fingers with for so long, the same hands that tied the fishing lines, and worked the presses, and took the war photo's, such magnificent photo's I wish I would have seen the whole album while you were here to capture the before and after theory that you had achieved of war torn countries, the cathedrals and all in the 2nd 1/2 of the book bombed when they hadn't been in the first half, It was a good eye you had, and a good heart, until so much heart made it give out August 13th, and robbed a family of a very good man, my Dad.
I remember the age starting to catch up ("a young mind in an old body, sometimes trapping you"), I remember when you couldn't lift the small boat any longer onto the station wagon for fishing days, I remember when the cold was too hard for you to take for longer fall fishing trips, and some of these bitter-sweet memories are probably why I push mine to go while the goings good.......I remember whenever I see your son and my niece and the bonds that passed onto others from you, I remember you whenever I see your other son who has your coloring and eyes, and seeing how he's now aged towards days of you, and me with laughing when someone's approaching a dangerous line with me, they have no idea what's in my head, but you would.

And so my dear friend I can only tell you I still see you, you are still my hero.
Love for you all the days of my life,
Chicky

Self Esteem and the Economy, who are you? You!

I Shall pass this way but once., and having family, friends, and mere acquaintances, I described my days as so "colorful" to a young girl helping us out at work this summer, she comes in twice a week on a part time basis, and has witnessed much along with me this summer, so many personality types , so little time.

We have the mail man Mike who used to dress as a man 5 years ago, he's supposed to have a genuine bonafide female wife and child, the years have brought change, next came the eye shadow and a hint of light lipstick, next the long hair, and more makeup, some angers expressed for no apparent reason, his color aura's at that time were nothing I'd want to linger on reds, blacks, and a nasty dirty greying as he found whatever it was he needed out of this world. These days he calls himself Victoria, based off of Victoria's secret, his nails are longer than mine, his hair is definitely longer thank mine and he's got boobs now and a hair doo. He comes in and is quite a bit happier merged into his newer lifestyle. The rumor is, he isn't really gay just does this to amuse his wife, goes to work as a man and emerges on his route as Victoria............................., he goes on vacation and finds out they're re-assigning his route, and giving him something else less desirable.....they don't even tell him, he hears it through the grapevine.....

We have visits from police due to someone in the building having thrown away old insurance files with peoples personal information in it, and someone having gone through a deep dumpster snooping through wades of garbage and cooking grease from the neighboring lunch restaurants, only to tunnel in on these insurance files, it's all a bit fascinating when you see what people will spend their time, what sort of havoc they like to promote for their fellow man, putting aside the right and wrong of each situation, it can be like an army of naughty ants who don't know enough to just seek food and building materials. We got strong lectures from the police about the trash IT WAS POSITIVELY NOT OURS, but we heard it all anyhow.....there are several insurance agencies within our two building that share the dumpster, but we didn't quite rat out the other party either. We found them ourselves and explained to them they needed to climb into the dumpster and remove all these items per the police. My husband once chased a man down our street for stealing our garbage and this was long before you heard so much about identity theft, some 15 years ago.

And then for their is Anna up front, a woman that mirror- mirror on the wall has taken on as a personal motto, she spend hours in the john at work, hours brushing her hair onto the counters so it unfit for others , who never flushes the toilet in the ladies room, and leave the place a disaster zone water all over the sink, the sink backed up with tuna fish or some such vomit looking item mixed with four inches of water, so that a human using the same room can barely remember why they walked in there, and management (the association) has talked to her and ever since they did it's only gotten worse, yesterday it looked like a homecoming house that had been toilet papered...

So many quirks, so little time.

And the girlfriends, one needs to be met to drop off her car, and only runs an hour late getting there....
the next another calls crying, she's been laid off again 3rd time in 5 years, and she's more scared now than in prior years due to the current unemployment figures, she went off cigarettes for 5 months, but now she's smoking and crying, I can only do small damage control, she just had 10K in replacement windows installed last week in her condo, and has just come back from a Canadian vacation seeing her family, she is tapped out for this layoff, I told temping is the best bet out there. And with the lay off of someone who went to work 6 days a week, right away it's a jolt to their self esteem, I tell her she is who she always was.....her skills and mind haven't changed, a corporation chose to go a different path without her skills, she hasn't changed unless she buys into the bullshit packet.

My best friend has lost her ass due to a business she invested heavily in, and now instead of having a secure and comfortable few years before retirement which was to have been situated she is going back to working part time to do damage controls. Too much was done under her name, and so this lovely world which embraces us can at the same time turn around and smother us.

So the colorful days have beautiful colors, silly situations, and some more serious drama's unfold, but none are helped by the current economy, the current lack of job prospects, the hundred million or so that keep loading their pockets and keep unrealistic prices soaring (ex: new cars) in a world where wages and housing have crashed. And this is where they did us no favors saving the banks and markets because instead half of us crashed and the other 1/2 didn't, the greedier half as it were.......was......is.......

and so we all travel on, we go to work or to see friends....it is more than time for us to start picketing, to start speaking up loud and clear, but people are afraid of where that might lead us....it might become much more if we'd put our foot down now!

Tea Party?

Music & Sunshine, life segments

I Shall pass this way but once., and upon walking through the house this morning I landed in the family room where I had my computer playing music from a very cool radio program, called Pandora Radio where by you can set up your own preferred arts/songs and come up with your own station, it is a wonderful toy that my son emailed me.

So as I walked in it was playing one of the first favorites I ever had: "YOU are my SUNSHINE".

And so loved is this song, it provoked tears, so many memories captured in one tune, so many emotions.

The Beach, The Ocean and my mental escape

In my minds eye the one place to stand and reflect on life would be the beachfront watching the ocean bring in the tears of mankind that keep washing up on shore, and back out to that ocean so much power in that ocean.
The sounds of the oceans anything from a wishhhhh at the lowest tide to a roar with the full tide.

The smell of the sea, the feel of it about your face as you hit the sea air.

The soul healing sunshine and waters soothing your mind, embracing your soul, making you come to grips with things you couldn't face before. Making the pieces to life's puzzle finally fit.

Yes I could stand before the ocean right now and gain so much strength from it, but until times level out a bit, I will have to stand before her in my mind, and remember the beauty.

Banks and funding accounts & N. Y Clocks

I Shall pass this way but once.....and what a ride I've had......yesterdays was compliment of my bank, a well known bank, who last week ending when I deposited a sizable check told me in writing on my receipt and also on my online screens through the weekend that so much funds were available to pay out bills against.
Holy Chripes, not monday, but tuesday my account turned into a living nightmare from MAIN Street......USA, oops was that supposed to be Nightmare from Elm Street, my apologies but please catch my drift: This loving bank who has receive so much of the wrongly placed bail out money has managed to change the dates on all of my transactions, and bounce every single transaction out there to the point where my blood pressure rose as I spoke to these yaches on the phone two times, and I could no longer hold a single thread of a thought......whoops we changed our mind....whoops our ATM drive up machine is time stamped with New York time....even though it was deposited in a Chicago Facility.....that made it monday instead of friday, and they didn't catch it till tuesday activity....whoops the checks in the ATM and they'd really have to inspect the check to see if more funds were really available......
Whoops I just looked again, as it's a new day and it all still reads the same. They assure me that there will be no problems with the account, all will be honored no matter what it says....sorry for all of the inconveniences, it will be fixed by the clock striking midnight, so why do their screens still read the same??????????????
And this explains why you don't give bail out money to illogical assholes!!!!!!!!!!!!
And so with $0 available I couldn't go to a store if I wanted to, not for a prescription, not for milk, not for anything, absolutely fascinating.
Now: I went to sleep at 10pm and I got up at 1am....a bad dream, I was walking down Milwaukee Ave in Chicago near Austin my old neighborhood.....three arms men rode up in a car and struck me sown and stole my purse.....as they ran down the street I tried to chase them cause my wallet was in there.......I couldn't catch them....so I woke up with my heart thudding instead.......
DOES MY DREAM HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH MY VERY LIVE EXPERIENCE AT MY BANK THESE PAST 24 HOURS?
Should be Putzes.com never sleeps.......and now I can't either.

*****A NOTE Added to this post 8/9/09: So on wednesday I Mounted my red dragon & drove it to the lovely never sleeping banks parking lot, paperwork in hand to prove my very honorable intentions to these clowns who had taken control on my life the last few days, and I was kind and good and well mannered as I asked this banker man to please turn me into a human being, a person, and to understand I AM NOT A NUMBER. He reviewed my papers, and made the world right with a few notes and approvals typed into a computer.
Conclusion: MAYBE ALL OF THE HUMAN ELEMENT IS NOT LOST YET****

The art of writing, as pertains to who? Mr. Obama?

I Shall pass this way but once., and writing to get things out of you, or writing to slowly figure out your only conclusions or options can occur. Oddly enough it was Aunt Dot who really told me to start writing after reading many lengthy emails from me, she thought I had a way with words, and might be able to make a difference by using those words to express myself, and so I have tried.
This blog contains many opinions, many emotions captured at the right time as they were occuring to me. Many views on this present economy and even some world politics are conveyed.
Our current President Obama has been in office approximately six months, and has tried to implement different components he thought would help the country and this very unreal present economy. One problem he thought he'd have eliminated apparently was corrupt greed and then ever loving bonus takers, God's they are at it again.....hint of the slighest profit and they are taking the extras home with them instead of rehiring any laid off workers or re-cycling the monies back into their banks and their companies, it must be great for these CEO assholes to wake up and look in their mirrors each morning without a conscience behind those seeing eyes.
And unfortuneatly our President has some world affairs to sidetrack his time expenditures as well. We were promised these people would be held accountable, once, twice and this is thrice, where is the accountability, has the government stepped into slap these assholes hands as the IRS most certainly would slap ours if we did wrong? How about no bonuses until at least ten years out when this is truly on the road to recovery.
One thought for him would be to still make the time to be out amongst the people, to feel what we feel, that is how he saw so much while he was running for election was he spent alot of his time with us truly seeing our lifestyles had changed so much, he was able to really be prepared to represent us.....feeling the pulse of the nation, now he's been surrounded by so many of these Washington types for long enough so that it clouds what's going on for the masses across these lands.
Sir, come back out amongst the people so you can see what we see as it still continues to disintergrate! And next time you pass the billions out, funnel it to the very real taxpayers and not to these clowns that bought new ATM's with it, paved their parking lots with it, purchase new bunny foo-foos to decorate their lobbies, instead pass it to the real people who need groceries, need to see doctors, but don't want to spend the money right now on all the residual bills they get stuck with, people who need other vehicles to get to a job, as their own vehicle needs massive repairs they don't have the money for either.
Let's go back to looking at the fine art of being the depressed peoples instead of seeing through the distorted bi-focal that is Washington and those hords of politicians and hords of CEO's.
For the one's that voted for you: Help us OB 1 Kenobi, your our only hope? Help us Ben Knobi your our only hope. Help us President Obama, you were our only hope?

Small Business, the Economy, and the 1st 2 years

I Shall pass this way but once......and hind site can be 20/20, and probably should be 20/20 because otherwise what lessons have been learned.

When you start a small business it is said that you have to really work it with a 150 % committment for the first two years to see if you will survive, and definitely before you can turn a profit. Being self employed carries a tremendous learning curve with it, you will learn that be all dressed up and ready to go does not necessary make it succeed, you will need very long hours worked at the business and away from it maintaining records and to prepare for the next round, stamina, Ample money to feed into it as it grows, flounders and grows some more, you will need some moral support, and you will probably need to peer support from others in the same business as you. You will need to have 70% of your brain wrapped around this business most of those two years in order to make it.

And so it was with the real estate, God those first two years were incredibly hard, but all the preparation and hard work finally kicked in, all of the mailings or pieces I walked to neighboring homes , some threw it out and others read what I had to say, and the 3rd spring I had 8 listings in my own neighborhood it was wonderful****but I sabotaged myself by telling a real estate friend that I had interviewed somewhere else, she told my manager and I was fired that day along with 5 others (who had interviewed with me) and I lost those 8 listings to my good friend, but no doubt as they closed she had one of her best summers which is okay for the long haul with me as she contracted breast cancer and did unfortunately pass away within the next 5 crappy for her years and we did end up remaining acqaintances of sorts.
We did all end up where we had interviewed, and with hard work and good advertising, paying for a ton of printed materials to keep our name out in front of people, well the next spring we were off and running, for sale signs with our name on it, shooting up on peoples lawns like little tulips, people running into me saying they saw my name everywhere, well yes the church bulletin advertisement, a local weekly newspaper carrying a 3 business size ad, and the fact that several of my houses were on busy streets that people drove up and down on constantly, did make it appear it was everywhere.
I sold myself as a marketing agent, someone who would use their own knowledge of the house, it's location, and it's size to promote it to the right places. Many of the homes on busy streets called for a Chicago buyer, who would be liking our busy streets after seeing their own, and would absolutely be happy to see a long driveway with a garage at the end of it, an accesible garage (some of Chicago's are rather a challenge to get into from smaller alleyways).

Anyways it all goes well until you hit a bad economic time, and houses stop selling or the market drops and all of the sellers put the breaks on at the same time. Those times are harder to endure.

I did this for the better part of twenty years, I still am licensed in the State of Illinois, but many and up and down seasons made me seek full time work elsewhere in fairness to my family, and probably myself.
You can become very weary from trying to get ahead and stay ahead, sometimes it is much simpler to work for someone else and to help them get ahead.
Maybe you were tired and just couldn't keep up with the hours you needed to work, maybe you didn't have the extra capital to back you up, maybe you were young enough that you just wanted your life back to enjoy, and your good health to enjoy, maybe it all becomes to hard to give up so much or sacrifice so much for a garden that constantly needs to be tended and weeded.

What the _ _ _ _!

I Shall pass this way but once. , and I have certain little things in my life I don't want to have changed but some foreign computer programmer, so when I logged on this morning to read emails with my coffee I am sincerely irked to find comcast has changed their programming yet again, and with it all of my settings I had saved are gone and shot to death by idiot programmers.
Everything is 16 to 24 pt font, all of my messages are off the screen with no arrows to let me read the balance.
I use comcast for my work email as well, so this only make me have a very poor attitude for a friday, a day I am usually pretty chilled out and happy with, well this is more like high pressure pissed off.
So then when I log onto my blog link through comcast.....somehow now the blogs got this huge font as well.
See I feel my time is limited....I feel my days grow shorter, so do I want to spend my time adjusting settings I already had set????????? No I don't and I resent some programmer thinking that I won't mind, I do mind.

*****Footnote: Well talker left me a comment, so yes I am not alone in some of these bizarre croppings that impose themselves on our computer lives......but more than that I did not write to comcast, but someone out there searches the net somehow for their own way of troubleshooting problems, and did write me off of the blog to offer help.
On my own I did find that going into the comcast preferences I was able to switch my font size back to a preferred one like 8 or 10 pt font is doable as I'd prefer seeing the big picture entirely instead one portion magnified which somehow messes with your comprehension if you need to arrow across to read the whole thing.
But everyone out there wants to look like AOL...so they keep modifying, the joke is I had AOL first, and I was tired of all the Ads they invoked which makes my AVG crazy in it's adware/spyware capacity.......so years ago I moved to comcast as they didn't shove ads down your throat.....but alas they do now.......

Screw the camera lights-homeless children #'s rise

I Shall pass this way but once....the news media is such a diverse tool, but is used in such limited ways.
Michael Jackson....and all the spins off stories. Days of this crap on the news, in the papers..over someone who sang but had questionable personal habits possibly inflicted on others or at the best a messed up psyche'.

The camera lights that catch people breaking the law, driving laws, and result in tickets, the same cities and counties that installed them at a great cost to the people now wondering if it is morally right, in spite of the revenue it brings in to their municipalities. At least 7 days of this on page one.

Homeless children trying to finish school in their districts, so close to graduation, one little column and back it goes to the back pages. So let's take a minute and think about what it takes to accomplish that feat.
If Parents of school aged children are losing their homes in vast quantities, where are the children sleeping, what are they eating, what are they seeing that will influence them once this summer is done and they return to school. How many of them are getting broken away from their families and being sheltered, and sheltered by whom? How many little ones are out there that are under 5 yrs of age? Poor dietary, poor sleeping conditions, all formative years?
Do any of us have room in our homes, do any of us know of ways to ease their paths, even when we're on on a tight path ourselves. We'd know more if the news media could actually keep pace with the real world, and go back to reporting the who, what, when and why of a story a very real American story and forget about sensationalizing characters and stick with what's really happening in our particular world.
News media, get real, I don't care about Michael Jackson, I care about our fellow man, and our children on the streets and under viaducts for shelter.

It's the trying that counts, not success or failure

A man wants badly to succeed at doing a thing. He can work very hard at achieving his goals, he can do everything the way he sees it should be done, it may not go smoothly, the economy is a mess, people have cut back on spending, hold off on new clothes, new cars, and dining out.

It's actually much worse than the lovely news media has told us, because no way no how do they have the statistics for this figured out, street by street, town by town, state by state....across these United States, the figures won't be in for another ten years, or at least not the correct and very real numbers we affected people have accumulated to.

And so the nation fails, the states fail, the towns fail as they all interpret the dance in progress incorrectly, most are not smart enough to cut back themselves, our silly little town continues to waste monies on men being paid to put up spring, fall, summer, and winter banners high upon the light poles idiotically telling the towns people what season we're in....wasting men's payroll hours, gas for their truck out of our increased taxed it shall deduct! People put your foot down, enough is enough!

And so the ordinary person feels the blow that their own governments are ignoring. We lose our businesses, big and small, we lose our jobs...big and small, we lose our homes big and small.

The latest trend out by me is instead of garage sales, you'll see on a weekend an entire household full of furniture on the front lawn being sold off for little dollars.....people are on these lawns in droves, the small dollars earn will go towards a new start as these people will move from their now foreclosed homes, many more homeless seen on the streets looking for food, looking for night shelter, and so it goes on......

And the solo man who loses what he considered everything, did all the trying count, was it a success or a failure, is the cup 1/2 empty, or is the cup 1/2 full.
The answer is: as long as we all keep trying it was a success. As long as we still have most of our loved ones it is a success.
It is really that simple, we will adjust, will move forward to the best possible place we can get, and we will prove that one big bitch of an economic glitch is not going to pull us down.
New game, start over. Okay!

A Gentle Man of Impact from the surrogate's eyes

I Shall pass this way but once, you my friend do make me laugh, you're re-vibrating energies still resound, and I am oh so happy your brother, my life mate has so much in common with you. I've heard similar stories of his good deeds at work, so I totally smiled through this:

Sunshine's latest adventure led her to accompany her best friend and sister in life to your old friend's retirement dinner last night, and so many of your postal worker friends were there as well, so we heard stories, some old -some new, but the common thread was they all bespoke well of you and your many good deeds.
We had Ginger who's daughter was stranded.....and P.S. the jig is up......you didn't have your own car...so I personally know you were being naughty for driving.....but you went and rescued the daughter, jumped her car and made sure she got home safely before returning to work., and had rescued Ginger previously when her car locks were frozen up and she had had the open heart surgery so you came and deiced her locks so she could get to work., and the third story of how you'd set her up with trays cause the post office expected her to process so much per hour, but her strength from the surgery cuts didn't let her lift so you lift all the trays to her so she could sit instead of stand, and countless other stories about you and your comrades....many who claimed they think of you ever single day. People who have been there since you had started in the late 70's, people who came up the ranks the same way you did, you had you as a fellow carrier, a fellow supervisor, and eventually as your body tired a fellow costodian work who brought humor and light into their days.
So we thought the evening might be harsh one for her to solo, and yet the warmth of you shined through to us all.
And your friend Ron's family, well they're all so nice, I had met him several times throughout the years, and he's missed you, and gone through two hospices with his folks since you've gone, but has still remained a good friend to you, so that he made certain your lady was invited for some warmth with friends of old.
Echoeing back with warmth, your surrogate,
km

She walks in Beauty and in Grace

I Shall pass this way but once., so shall you, you live in my head. August 1, August 3rd, August 6th. So bizarre still that they brought you in then, wrong move who would want to give you back.

When you were young you were almost perfect, at every stage I saw you, I saw you as a baby, I saw you as a toddler, I saw you as the little girl, I saw you in the shadows as I watched the other children play, I saw your reason and logic develop, I saw the practicality you possessed, I saw the leadership qualities emerge. I saw you oh so definitely the day I saw your brother's face for the first time, "Oh my God".

The years have continued to float by me. Busy schedules, Dizzy Days, loving times, living it out well.

And then I see you off to the side observing us, I see a young woman of Grace and Light, I see your father's female version, you are beautiful. Years ago when I was single I purchased a picture of a young woman, actually three young women, three pictures the same day. One was a butterfly woman which now hangs in my good friends kitchen to see her through her days of ache, this particular woman holds a monarch within her hands.......she is you.
Another picture should a willowy green Goddess holding her hands and arms out to embrace the waters set before her.....she is you.
The third picture I retain, she is "morose" as my father coined it the day he saw it, and gave me lecture about how I spent my money at woodfield on junk I would not possess years from then, Oh but I do....I still have this picture done in grays and blacks that so express the sadness and bereavement over losing you, and them that followed. She is you as well.
On the bigger scope she is also the picture of Death.

I think of these pictures as my three graces, they are all beautiful.

And so are you child of Grace, Beauty and Light.
You are a grown woman now.
And this woman although older, does still see you in the faded sunshines.

Outside the box, outside the norm? Aura'd ESP

I Shall pass this way but once. The bat hit with echoeing force, the sound is still within the mind at times.....echo's....
The fever's were high, no mercury reading in site off the charts. 106, 107, 108.
Anytime I couldn't stand or tolerate the world, after a severe mental trauma, high fevers.
Oddly enough the last high fever was with Lauren's loss in 79, blood poisoning, good enough reason for medical standards, but Ma knew it was really my way of shutting down from the unbearable loss I felt. A complete defeat. And so my own real doctor intervened as the others found no meds to fix me with and let them know what would work for this old gal was erythromyacin my own personal medical saver solution of old.
So the flashes started when I was a mid teen 16 year old driver.......17 more, 18 more, and wondering about all of the whys of it. People telling you or looking at you as if you were weird, finding acceptance, and eventually just accepting your self as you go on.
And so throughout the years they've accosted me, sometimes more strongly then others, and decisions having to be made as to what I should share.....what could I say to ward off someone elses evil, how could I say it so that they might change enough in their paths to avoid what I see?
Learning some type of finese was a plus.
I didn't see the color aura's until sometime after 79 and the last high fever. So that brought me back to square one, trying to get a handle on what I was seeing, how to interpret it, acceptance of what it was is what is is, and that sometimes like now I can see a weakness like in a piece of cloth that has worn thin....acount for the color difference, and see who can be patched as clothe versus Mike's yellow that faded to grays and finally to white as I watched him leave. That was one of the most insane nights in my life, I could only seek the back porch and sob so hard was my vision, and yet so intensely beautiful as he escaped this bodily hell. And people ask me why I believe?
Look through my eyes. See what I see. Think as I think.
And so the child within is one of the smartest beings, she still tries to use it to help.
She knows her own aura was once orange....brimmed with a pretty red, she knows it's changed to a melon color usually, but will she see the gray as it seeps?

The Chicagoan, the young woman, the child

I Shall pass this way but once, but I spent my childhood and young adult years in Chicago. Chicago can be dirty, tired, and overwhelming if you're passing through it, so much traffic....makes the movie scenes whereby someone gets out of the car to get somewhere quicker on foot....look like a realistic thought to me. So after all these years...equal time for certain out in the burbs of Chicagoland in my , I certainly do not view myself as a visitor, when I go to Chicago - a part of me is going home.
I am comfortable in this home, I thrive on the activity surrounding me, I co-exist with the traffic and the city noises, I love that stores are within two or three blocks as compared to the burbs and two or three miles, I think public transportation is a godsend to the many people needing to get to stores, medical buildings, jobs of all lifestyles, I think the city offers multiple solutions to it people residing there. I think that if you've grown up there, you've got a deeper reality that bad things happen to many, yet we are not alone in our problems, we all have problems, sometimes similar to a friends, sometimes entirely different but we commiserate with our fellow man.
I am introduced to people as so and so from such and such a town.......yes this describes who I am and where I live......
but my thinking my thinking is a Chicagoan. I am highly adaptive to my surroundings because I was born in Chicago, I grew up in Chicago, and I thrived and survived in Chicago, it was actually my husband who moved to the burbs, I simply followed him wherever he's gone for the last 34 years.
But if someone asks me where I am from? I tell them I am from Chicago!

This has serve me all of my life. I am strong in my jobs, I am strong in my emotions.
Thanks to Ma, Dad, my Chicago brothers, and my Chicago self.

Someone burnt down my first Chicago house.... ah yes those vendetta fires, too crazy for comprehension.
My second Chicago home is still occuppied by the man and family he started back then, who bought it from my parents, my old neighborhoods have changed but I still go back for a peek here and there, and my parents are both back in Chicago where they grew up, they are now firmly planted back again in their home turf.
One day I will go back to Chicago as well, one way or another. And it's okay as it's another home to me.

Thank You

I Shall pass this way but once, and you will only pass this way once as well.

"Thank You" not nearly adequate. But yes Thanks to you.

And we joked about what's mine is your and what's yours is mine, and we turned it into what's yours is mine, and what's mine is mine, too?

And so with your simple grace, simplicity of logic and heart, you have given:

What's mine is yours and what's your is mine.

You are a beautiful creature.

Our Yard and some of our critters of mankind & us

I Shall pass this way but once, and have had some incredibly enjoyable moments due to our critters who co-exist rather nicely around us.

Years ago we would put out a variety of feed, nuts, and on occasion cookies for the animals who live nearby us. We had a ton of fun watching the bird feeder as blue jays would swoop down to claim the peanuts and haul them back up to the tall pines in our favorite neighbors yard two doors down, cardinals rearing their babies in our forsythia bushes that border our back yard.
Robin's in spring waking us with their call at 4:14am in the morning, we're back...we came early....where's the food....sometimes they'd get trapped in a surprise snowfall and we'd fret a bit for these outdoor cousins of mankind.
Baby bunnies discovered by the weed wacker man.....and we'd pray they'd been deep enough, and guard the area for future trimmings until we'd see them emerging safely, being taught survival skills by their mothers or fathers. Red headed hawks swooping and a cry from a smaller animal would bring us running to try and protect.
Night stalkers consisting of possums and raccoons, still hungry and scavenging for foods left from the day shift, began to rear their families nearby, once under our new bay window, jezz and stuck under there...Gods the sound that one made would unnerve you, we rocked it so they couldn't get stuck anymore, it was not a good place for them to hide...lines up right under our recliner in the living room, nope.
So years and years of co-existing brings:
2002, August 18th-19th weekend A bunny full grown coming to lie outside my back door in a little flower patch kept there, she's sick, and she's coming to be by me...a human friend she grew up on this property, she had her babies on this property, she'd run like a dog to me when I'd come out throughout the years with the food groups, and one summer especially...the summer of 2002 she'd run to us when we'd go to grill and chill out in close proximity as we cooked, we found her very humorous, so I guess it was fitting that she sought me out for dying, it was just too bizarre for me at the time, as my own mother was making the same kinds of distress sound that weekend inside the house that the bunny was making outside the house, very unnerving to this girls stability, the bunny died and I haul her away, my mother would end up in the hospital by monday with a blocked colon, a colon blocked by cancer.
While she'd be back at home in the 59 days that followed prior to her death, we'd have raccoons and possums and squirrels playing with a pumpkin they carved all by themselves, we'd watch them play and boot the pumpkin around as an amusement during a trying time. One raccoon and one of the possums had been orphaned young on or around our property these two night creature be-familied each other and did not seem to know their differences, did not seem to know that one of them was white and the other black....nope no clues for them, they hung out together and where one was, you found the other, so it came as no surprise to me as I gazed out into the yard the night of the day my mom died....an especially long and crazy night to me...that the raccoon ran back and forth in panic on the garage roof in front of me as I looked out the patio door window to life, it ran in rhythm to the oxygen machine I was listening to, and for a minute it captured all I was feeling, as I waiting for a nurse to call me back about a meds increase, a possible middle of the night visit from this very kind hospice nurse. For a minute I knew sanities and insanities can merge depending upon our vision and our senses, for a minute witnessing too much can cause that fine line to have you believe that the animal knows and has now told you what it knows.
I remember having to step out onto the makeshift wheelchair ramp that night and smoking a cigarette like it was my last to keep myself together. But somehow the animals helped me through it.
So when I have leftover nuts or breads from the week, or a few cookies, I still throw them out for them.
***This year we have a robin who made her nest in our front yard, she comes to the back when we're sprinkling the flowers and begins to hunt, she checks in on us very close to our table while we grill.
Throughout the years we've had other bunnies that would tune into my husband and come running like a dog when they'd see him, and chill out in the back while he'd be working around the gardens.
It's been too funny in some ways, these wild creatures who sense their safety with us, who seem to have adopted us.
It's this yard that summarizes why we've fought so hard this time to win our own battles, there's hope right now we might be able to win, we will know soon. And then if we do win, we must do everything right for a long while to safeguard it, so we can keep on enjoying all that nature shows us.
5 or 7 rainbows a year, all of the animals-natures variety shows, and a peace we know at this place we call home, a place we've lived for some 28 years.

Here I go with my vibes again: Flash

I Shall pass this way but once, any good that I can do, let me it do it now:

I met a new family this week, a nice family, and while I was meeting them, my sub, sub kicked in with a flash over the blondest girl, and the desire for this particular child to be on ZIJA, to gain all the very green nutrients given by this particular plant/tree: The Moringa Tree: The Tree of Life.

I have no clue why the flash invoked. I had all I could do not to lead the woman, the mother into direct conversation regarding the plant and it's attributes.

I will have to mention it, so as to appease the flash.

And I wonder if my friend picked up any subs as well, if it was the same one

A Father's patience & who can stretch it

Today I can smell rain on the air, and this peculiar old saying lead me to a childhood memory of the Fox River, it's smell, and days of old when my Dad would take us there to fish. He fished seriously with my youngest brother, they always enjoyed the peace and quietude being out on a fishing trip would bring. The Fox River, Pistakee Bay, sometimes Triangle Lake off 12 near Dempster.
But when Dad took me with so I could see some of nature, roam the river banks looking at sand life, that was such a treat for me. A day out with my father and some times my brother lead me to know I cared about the wildlife, and I loved hunting for little sea shells, frogs, fossils, rocks with fossil imprints upon them. One of my favorite days was at the Fox River, it was a long day, and I got to try fishing, but could watch my pole on and off, and go exploring through the sand as we were fishing off the shore.
It's a day when my brother cast his line & it got hooked on an overhead railroad trestle, they made jokes about the line being snagged, and I learnt all of the various things which could do that, getting stuck on a branch would become one of my own little plagues when fishing.
Dad didn't take me with for a better time of fishing, he simply took me with so I could have a day away, so I could have a better day, so I could learn something about nature, which meant enduring bathroom trips for a little girl, and clearing out the spiders from this resort places, spiders which his little girl was afraid of. Or of days out in a row boat, set up for fishing, and the same little girl had to get rowed back into shore for the rest room trip....or lunch break.
I am sure I stretched his patience plenty on these days. But Dad: It worked out ok, My brother and I have taught our children off of how you taught us, and we've taken our children on all types of adventures due to the ones you took us on, and so the teaching and patience has gone on.
And Dad: Thank You.

Second childhood into Death and into the light

I Shall pass this way but once., but as I walked I saw some things, which caused pause in my thinking.
One thing I did notice was as people either went into what is called their second childhood, or as people passed closer to death, their own death, a gentle for them confusion would come about where they'd recognize family members well known to them as other family members long gone from their lifes journey.
And so it was that Grandpa John would call his daughter Irene, called Reenie: "Kate" mistaking her towards the end for his wife....her mother., My Mom had conflicting emotions for this as her Mom died from breast cancer light years before, she missed her still, and had loved her well in spite of some idiocyncrasies exited by my GrandMa I never knew.

My own mother slipped away, but before she did she started telling to make certain I'd give such and such to Tommy, my minds take on that was she meant my brother Rob, as he'd always had hands that reminded her of her brother who died light years before when they were just teens from a heart condition. And since it was a prayer book of Tommy's and one from her brother John involved and Rob is the most religious of us all, I figured it had to be him, and I've always wondered if I was on the money there, no assurances given once you're running through this solo land of death.

And so I come to another entity/woman/spirit who is slipping sometimes into second childhood, I suspect she slips as life became too painful for her after the loss of one of her sons, if jerked to the present she remembers all over again and that process has become too painful for her waking hours.
And so when I arrive to visit, sometimes I believe she doesn't know who I am, I believe she connects me as someone she doesn't quite like, but I don't think she can quite catch that we've had good times more often than bad, somehow it is the bad that leaves it's footprint on her heart as she looks away rather than experience the feeling seeing me bring forth to her.
I wish I could fix things sometimes, but it appears impossible, like having come upon a 5 or 6 slip off in the road and everyone is walking a different path instead of staying together for the safety that the one path will of being together. The feeling tones are out of focus for so many of them, that I fret they won't get it right before the chaos begins to heighten.

Atrophy/Senility/Second Childhood, all cause by various components, Electric shock treatments for one, chemical imbalances for another, painful realities for a third, a real medical condition shaping in the background for another, so hard to define, to understand, to reason with.

It is a painful process, one moment the beauty of life, and the next some inbalance to cope with.
I can only say to hang onto the beauty wherever you can still see it, and remember the overall goodness that the people once carried together., and it may carry you through the darker days into the light.

A July Butterfly Story, The Monarch and Sunshine

I Shall pass this way but once, and sometimes you tell me things, and I try to hear you, try to hear what you're really saying.

Yesterday I prepared to leave for the City to see my Father in law who is actually a good friend of mine, he wanted me to met a forum/internet friend of his in for a visit from the beautiful area of Ontario, Canada. ( Funny as one of my friends went to Ontario this weekend to see their own Canadian family for a vacation together).
Earlier in the week I had put a few Sightseeing ideas together for them, along with a hotel notion of convenience to these sites.

Shortly before I left I stood in the kitchen and had an overwhelming whiff of something burning, I checked the clothes dryer, I checked with another family member, but no nothing, and yet the smell of burning hair, burning flesh was still strongly there.

When I was ready to leave for my adventure, I went out the back door, set my things on it while I stopped in the garage to say goodbyes to my partner in life, and as I walked to the garage you started swooping around me circle after circle after circle till I got to the garage, and then you started circling my possessions on the back step the same way, I told my spouse what you were doing, and he came to see you fluttering about and then you landed on the back gate I would need to use for my exit.
I said, " He doesn't want me to go", and you did wing exercises while we talked.

I went back into the house to get some meat out of the freezer I'd forgotten towards our evening meal, and when I came back out you were leaving fluttering between the two house roofs over the drive.

Trust me, I drove with caution for my journey between the smell of the burning and your visit I was totally wigged, but I made it in, had a nice visit with all concerned, accomplished my mission and made it back out, significantly average-due to precogs given.

When I came back I saw all the yard bags lined up and the garbage ready for the sunday run to the curb, and started the task so my friend with the bad back that's plagueing could avoid the task he'd prepared, and I got my green Dolly out to help me....telling it, that it is the Dolly that likes me best, laughing in solitude at my own joke, and here you came back to me, fluttering around me, then dodging to my flower bed, you started to hide under a leaf not wanting to compete with a bumble bee buzzing around the flowers, and I told you I made it back safe and sound, I thanked you, and out you came and landed on my extended finger....staying and flexing your wings for a minute, and then off you flew over the drive headed for the back yard/drive area.

I don't know what happened in the interval as I finished the garbage, but when I got back to the gate, there was one of you sitting on the fence-flexing, and the other one was hurt lying down on the drive, legs of a wing hurt, as you could barely crawl under his truck for shelter. I told you to rest, and maybe it was a simple injury that rest would cure, later when I looked again you were both gone from my site, and I hoped you hadn't incurred dying on this beautiful summers day where you flew and gave so willingly, so that I would make it back home safely....I consider you as good and important as I am.

The inner child was so touched by your landing upon her finger, you were so light, and so trusting, the inner child thought of her childhood, and the long lazy days of summer, and watching and loving catepillars, and the brick building at the corner where they would all cacoon at Richmond and North.

And for a little while her mind wander a bit....

Thank You

Tail on the donkey, Bush, & Zietgeist

Like the OZ "Lions, and tigers, and bears, OH MY":

Some times I think I need to get away just to see if I have any perspective left. Too Close at hand, is definitely too close at hand, so it does tamper with our perspective.
Thus our decisions might not be made as well, especially when the logic within those choices in front of us are narrow or scarce then your need be to careful ...to really see, to be able to project out some, could become incapacitated by the clutter and muddleness being too close brings.

Every room I frequent right now shows my state of mind, piles of papers, stacks of envelopes clutter the rooms as they clutter my head. Solutions which should have been simplified have all become complex. Several of them are long shots, simple ones become complex due to new man made rules put into being, and the joke here is all of them would have worked two years ago, but not now all of the rules have changed.

Zietgeist was without a doubt pinning the tale on this donkey with total clarity. Somewhere within the Bush administration all of the rules changed....the real money boys texas along with the old monied families did put certain motions into effect in this economy that are rippling out amongst the people, and we have become the 4 sets of mice within the Maze in "who stole my cheese" by Spencer Johnson, M.D. which oddly enough I put up on e-bay this week. Suffice it to say this mouse has been through the maze and is still seeking their cheese, so the race continues.

Since vacations and oceans are out of the question maybe I will settle for some walks by the lake, some chilling with the environment, some barefoot moments on the grass.

May this mouse can gain their perspectives back alittle.

All the good things in life.....into the light with you

I Shall pass this way but once, so let's make it a good once.

So, this week let me tell you again, you are my sanity, you are the sunlight that makes for Sunshine. We've aged and grown so much through the years, but I am so absolutely frckn happy I have you to play with on this earth. You are almost my everything.....our spinoff gets part of everything for us both, too.

You didn't bat an eye when I said we always did the honorable thing, and that it was the choice of color now as well. We really will go to hell together, but we are doing all the correct and principled things which we have always done., so it's all good.

Anyways, with more love in my heart for you than I can ever really express, I'll walk with you wherever you lead me to.

And Tiger, too.

Economy Corrections****$$$ & Gas

I Shall pass this way but once.....so I may as well say what is on my mind as we go....sort of like pay as you go....

I booted the computer this morning to a headline....major news headline.....
"If gas prices were increased to $20.00 per gallon it would save the economy", what are you stupid people drinking or smoking?

I cannot believe the shere stupidly of this sentence? Furthuer more I cannot believe that any reporter would put it in writing.

Reporter's have done much to abuse this country, and they should be held accountable for their stupidity of expressed bullshit they pulished just to get a byline with their names in it.
There is a big difference between freedoms of speech, versus corruption amongst reporters who cause further harm to our ailing economy by publishing anything as stupid as this article was.

*****
A few months back, say 6 or so, there was an email that the stimulus $$$$$ should have been sent back to the taxpayers, and that all of this money pissed away and given to banks who fail to lend it to the masses in need of it....but my citibank for one certainly has brand new ATM machines planted outside in their drive ups, well hopefully you get my point:
If this stimulus was given back to the taxpayers, the economy would have corrected itself, the email was of course poking fun at all of us because it would be a cold day in hell before that would ever transpire, however:
If the stimulus package had been sent back to the taxpayers as a refund to stimulate and correct this economy you can bet your sweet asses it would would have done more corrections in more arenas/areas and we would have been in a better shape by now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that is the problem with elected officials: They really don't possess enough Zazzz or sparkle to come up with such a brilliant frickn idea which would in truth have done a fantastic job of bringing us into stability.

And now one last thought on this very stupid gas theory that simply must have come from someone who certainly doesn't drive far to work, if we struggle at $2.79/gallon to $4.00/gallon, what the hell are you thinking saying $20./gallon would correct what??????????
Whose pockets are you trying to line here, you ever stupid reporter???????????

Karma and Kath, and the spiral outward

I Shall pass this way but once, but I still do ponder Karma. I think of Karma - does she think of me, I have tried my level best to be as good as I can as a human, I see where I fall short, and I strive to be good and win over any bad side I have. Yet I watch Karma as she watches me, and she is not quite a balanced girl, says this laughing lady.
So today an email brings me to some dates played out in front of my eyes, and I say Awe.....my little girl would 30 this year, Awe, Ma and Dad would be married 62 years......and I see that August is approaching. And I think back 30 years, and without a doubt it is like jumping off a tall building and seeing your life flash in front of your eyes as you plummet backwards......Dana layer upon layer, layer upon layer.....
Chripes, there have only been a few times when one side of me was so angry....that the other side took over and compensated and made my body go through motions, actions, movement that days upon days, months upon months, I knew no one was really inside of me, the good one got me through while the bad one wanted to run over anyone in her path....such was the level of anger. The first time the bad one did this was 30 years ago....hitting an emotional bottom, the good one took over and bluffed us through who knows 3 or 4 years, maybe longer until the good one was intact again, probably 4 years until the boy was born. Karma did you take me for a ride that time.
And I did enjoy the interval.
Karma next left me spinning in 1997 and wouldn't give it up until the early summer of 2006, when somehow she landed us in a backyard we haven't left mentally since, a place of peace and beauty that restores us to each other.
They were such cold hard years, the reversal of beings, the hard one leading the soft one through it all this time, mirror what is shown to you, hard as nails so the soft ones injuries would not show, never let em see you sweat, never let em see you cry....hard as nails, baby.
Can honestly say I never understood many items involved....like most of it.
Karma you were such a bitch at times, no goodness shown in your face.
So Karma, did I become so angry the once, and again the twice, that I set the layer upon layer in place, in action? Was the harder tougher side such a complete dark side that she could sabotage the good one? And that was a question the dates, and thinking of a collective 30 years brought to this girl?
Oh Karma what are you capable of?

Landslide, and Fleetwood Mac and Stevie's singing

I Shall pass this way but once.......so the song playing on the radio had been around for 30 years, had been remade by a different band...I believe Dixie Chicks, but now it was playing from the orginal artist of Fleetwood Mac, I remarked to my pal over a year ago that it was one of the greatest songs: "Landslide", this started a debate over what makes a song great, he questioned my feelings. He challenged my opinion.

It played again while we were sitting in the yard about a week ago.......and this persistant aging woman said: "Naw, it is a great song"! Her pal kindly said, "could be one of them".

It is the story of a life, a love, a woman, and what landslides brought her down, and the changes evolving from young womanhood to the priorities of the aging woman, and still the landslides brought her down. It is song out with some of the sweetest guitar ever played to accompany a voice. It tells the evolution of a young love to the older love, as my eyes and heart perceive it.

I am sure it is on U tube, done by Stevie Nicks, a woman with a mans name.
It is a song that tells the story of some of us, and that holds the greatness.
YouTube - Stevie Nicks - Landslide

My Casey Deiss, a man of simple values

Shawn Phillips - The Ballad Of Casey Deiss

"He was a man of simple values" and the lyrics of this song which was learned and loved on the guitar so long ago have always echoes through the days of the journey:

The young man I met was a Glazier by Trade, for his living he would install new windows, replacement windows of all types, some were grocery store plate glass windows, other days he'd be high up in a downtown building replacing a window blown out by the winds of this Windy City.
Shortly after we met he was sent up to the Detroit/Windsor Canada are to take a class on replacing t-roofs in automobiles, and of course how to install a sunroof in an auto.
Those were his days, riding around in a glass truck, and installing some type of windows some place in Chicagoland.

He wanted more, he wanted an American Dream. He wanted to become a carpenter, but unlike many men out there he wanted to learn everything he could about carpentry with no steps missed, he wanted to go to school to become one. So he set about signing up for a program offered by The District Council of Carpenters in Chicago, he would with time complete his schooling, much math involved (he was in awe of the maths, never considered them a strong point), for his trials he would make a set of minature saw horses, he would make his own tool box, he would make full size saw horses, these items would travel with him for more than 33 years God willing and the creek don't rise-more. He would learn how to build homes from the ground up, he would learn you have to build all things from the ground up, a strong foundation is the key to supporting all things constructed, and as he learned he continued his schooling a split-schedule by the time we married supported this new household. He was becoming a Union Carpenter, a Union Homebuilder.

And then they dreamed the dream together, come into my world and journey with me, these are the words of invite implemented and grown upon. She worked for corporations, she worked with the dreaded maths as well, receivables, collection calls, resolving disputed items, shipment received which were damaged, order entry programs, the switch from teletype to computers for order entry, order entry systems designed for her departments needs, shipping domestically and via rail, truck, barges, and eventually internationally, and all the wide berths of knowledge it would entail. Traveling to shipping plants all over the midwest to acquant the new users with needs of corporate for this new paperwork trail to flow smoothly.
And then eventually she went back to school to sell the very homes his dreams had built. She made her switch so they could have a lifestyle that would make her mom by day and sales person by night and weekend. This new switch allowed her to mix her knewly acquired ingredients with all of the business lessons learned from the past.

And on they travelled living the American Dream, in America you could become whatever you wanted to become with some hard work and knowledge gained.
I cannot even tell you how many subdivisions he built through out the state of Illinois, I cannot tell you how many winters, days with sub zero temperatures he made it through weeks and months of workdays, his poor hands cut up and cracked up from the cold or how many bottles of lotions those hands absorbed throughout all the years. I cannot tell you how many rain days he made it through, while others opted to go home and call it a day. I cannot tell you how many hot july and august dog days he made it through building his homes, drinking a cooler of water only to have the sun pull it from his body, how many days up on roofs bent over working avoiding passing out from heat stroke as many did. And I cannot tell you how times something went wrong, a fall off a roof where his body absorbed a shock, a support wall being installed and yet dropped by someone else upon my man, I can't tell how many of any of these, but it was alot.

So the body is injured slowly through time, the man is weathered, but he is a man who is able to still give of himself whether by helping someone physically, or by helping them think something out mentally, and he always remembers that you have to have a foundation to build upon.

A Smart man, a Proud Man, a Simple Man who dreamed.

THE GIFT: Family AND THE LOVE from THEM

My family, is quite curious and wonderful in their love of the other. Sometimes in their trying to rise to an occassion they actually end up tearing off a piece of my heart, their actions are so pure and so bottom line humble, and so filled with love for the others in our sphere, our hourglass home.
Current economic events have played havoc with the household, leading us to research all types of solutions short term, long term, to see what future progress could be made in solving our own situation we inherited from this current econmic collapse.
Two of us were strongly tied into the housing industry, and that industry has collapsed so hurtfully that like a beautiful dragon that has been struck down, it can barely rear it's head. The wounds are so deep within this once beautiful beast that it still totters on the rim of further collapse.
In the past, I replaced his sidejobs of yester year with my real estate transactions, as his body tired from years of union abuse building homes, side jobs became more painful for him, so I would go out at night and weekends and sell homes or condo's, I especially sought to list and market homes, I had learned the valuable lesson of potential buyers not always truly knowing what they sought, therefore my time was placed with sellers who truly wanted to sell and move on. An average transaction took 60-90 days from the pointed of listing the home & commencing to market it to prospective buyers. Currently, it takes a minimum of 277 days to market the same type of property, no guarantee on where the sales offer will be arrived at.
In the past my pal was on bonus for the homes he brought in on time, and he and his team were exceptional at bringing things in on time. The days of bonuses became effected over the last three years, constantly dwindling till there were none. There are no bonuses as there are no sales of newly constructed homes, jobsites in mass quantity have been shutdown and given back to the almighty banks who have failed to lend to the builders, but wanted their bailouts from the government just refused to pass it on.
Major supply houses are now going down, floundering as they have been stung on their recievables, and they have few future orders on the books, so they cannot continue, last week was a well known lumber house to the trades, the week before another builder we knew, and so it goes spirally downward still, the total bottom not seen as yet.
The plumbers, the electricians, the heating companies all tied into new construction, spirally downward, trying to catch piecemeal jobs to keep their families afloat, employees let go due to lack of work, workers compensation insurances no longer needed as there are no employees left.
Now simply multiply out their suppliers who had been thriving as well, and those receivables which had been on the books as well, and you will have more supply houses going down.
I have a friend who did all of the renderings for several builders, those floor plans you see in a brochure that was produced, printed and distributed to a mass of potential buyers., well he drew out the homes and the various elevations and perks they would show, he has instantly no business, horrendous receivables shown on his books, a home heavily mortgaged against as he helped his children get up and running, he has not taken a pay check for two years, how can he keep living, keep paying to weather this storm?
And so as the incomes shrank, we all tried to keep going thinking it was shorter term than it was, our homes which carried our main savings accountings, well their values have dimished by $100,000's of dollars depending on whom you speak to and where they lived.
Credit card debt is at an all time record high, the banks that own that debt manipulating it until the cardholders are brought to their knees by the 30% interest rates our government continues to allow as legal, alleged rational fees, and this continues to plummet the people towards foreclosures which the government claimed they wanted avoided at all costs., lending monies twice now to the banks so lending would become possible again to the people in need.
Families pursue loans that can't be given against depreciated home values, families speak of
foreclosure and it's potential as it would affect them and of walking away from lands they love, homes they love. Families speak of sellingtheir possessions, other members speak of selling their vehicles, families speak of cashing in their 401K's meant for a retirement they may never see, and seek the right solutions to try and weather a economic storm.
And in the middle of chaos, I see the beauty in both your factual faces as you put your offers on the table, we are a tight little unit, the love of the others runs strong, and we try to take on the blows so the others won't be as badly effected, and some part of us dies as we try to puff and blow life another chance. To say I love you all deeply is not enough, to say I love you completely is still an under statement.
The government currently elected for the huge promises they made this populace, needs to re-focus on it's own country, it's own people, and bring in the economic geniuses which are out there to truly provide some reliefs to the people, if there is more money given out, give it directly to the people, and the people will correct their own economy, no more money to banks who hord, to bankers who line their own pockets and continue to screw the masses.

America, the beautiful, We still celebrate July 4th

Happy Birthday America , tomorrow we celebrate 233 years, and unless Korea hits us we'll still be standing.
We started out as a large group of immigrants coming to this nation to earn our freedoms, people coming from Europe, Africa, and many other lands, freedom and all of the opportunities this land offered.
We started out as a large colony, and then another colony would form, and another, and our old countries would tax us for our imports, our exports, mother countries reaching out to this new land to support the old.
We had the tea party, we started a movement brave for it's time to get out from under this taxation of the motherland's. we fought battles to earn this freedom from taxation, and freedom from Europe's tenacious hold across the ocean, and we did win this war with time, and loss of men.
We wrote a declaration of Independence which we still celebrate tomorrow, and a Constitution outlining laws to live by in these United States which the colonies became. We wanted Taxation to be thought out, and for this mass of people's to be strongly represented and thought out before taxation's were invoked.
We fought more internal battles as one 1/2 of the country battled the other half to free people brought to our country as slaves, this particular war cost bought side many lives, but eventually the slaves were freed, but for many freed to what was a big question, it would take years for them to be favorably protected by laws needing to re-written to catch up with the theory. For some it was a slow growth as a people and for others it was definitely the land of opportunity, and again the land of freedom.
Other wars came to pass as we grew, we grew into a protector of liberty and freedom, and when other countries would try to bully and acquire other lands afar, we would intervene, we would stand against atrocities being committed against others.
Meanwhile, within our own lands, the new rich and affluent, mixed with the old rich and affluent to form a land that grew too quickly for it's youth, a land that rich men wanted to exploit as quickly as their monies would allow, so they could reap all the riches this land could possibly render them, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. They built their industrial revolutions, they built their sweat houses that freed men labored in along with the children and women, they were insatiable in appetite for more, they quickly expanded to the Midwest via railroads to build more companies, more industry which brought more laborers, and with laborers came an ethnic encompassing neighborhood's, some with slums, some with rooming houses which would eventually lead to apartment buildings, houses and land owners.
And still not satisfied they continued to reach out west, new railroads being built, towns being built in record time and the East Coast Affluent searched for more.
Throughout this time some good Representatives were found for government, this very young government, but the very greedy and very old seated affluent kept a tight grip always to protect their interests, with less and less thought being given to protecting the rights of the very peoples they had started out to protect: This young band of Americans, from the newly merged country.
And so it has continued to this point, Greed and corrupt beings buying powerful positions, other kinder and wiser men trying to hold strong to promises made to the masses, and the conflicts of give and take that go on daily for this great country, this lovely land of opportunity.
So much greed and corruption and the various conflicts finally brought this country to a screeching halt about 1 to 2 years back, and it's instability could felt in all walks of life by last fall, financial collapses, housing market collapses, stock market collapses, auto industries collapsing, jobs collapsing, and the spiral into a mass people who were loosing everything while the corrupted corporate giants continued to load their pockets with departing jumbo bonuses, 200 more people out on the streets living and sleeping on the streets, hidden in the dark under viaducts, viaducts the officials have the nerve to fence off so these poor diminished people don't even get that shelter.
And 200 more, and 2000, more, and 10,000. more lose their homes. Devastation of lifestyle, upswing in suicides, huge upswing in family suicides....
And so we elect a man who has promised to possibly slowly fix our country and huge decisions are made on corporate and banking bailouts to help the people and help the housing market, and still the lenders don't loan to the needy as now they tell us our houses are worth a $100,000 less than they were two years ago, and we try to adjust, we try to stand through it all, much of it requiring some luck or fortune as to if your job is still there tomorrow for the tomorrows count a long way towards paying your bills and not getting behind on monies due to the corporate giants who remain in power.
And the government pushes through some laws in record time, but drags ass on passing other laws holding the credit companies in check so they don't destroy more people., and the lives of other people dependent on them for support. But for some odd reason this newly passed law won't go into effect for many months, when it should have passed and implemented right here and now for the protection of the masses.
And so this week's greed report mentions our bank as one of the credit card companies fleecing the very people they are in business to truly help, and we look on in disgust knowing how many households will be hurt by this lack of action.
And in closing: we still celebrate this most beautiful land, we still celebrate whatever freedoms we still have here in this land, and still celebrate that we have free elections so that we can keep trying to elect someone who will show care and wisdom in their consecutive decisions made to protect a people from the greed and corruption that exists, and we as Americans celebrate that at least we have a chance in this land as the battle between good and evil continues onward.
We are free to move about the country. We are free to celebrate family and friends. We are free to be more vocal and let the REPRESENTATIVE'S know we want law to protect us expedited.
Happy Birthday America, may the promise you hold for tomorrow guide us through this time.
We love you, you are beautiful still, and together we can save you if we work hard to remember the people of the land.

Our daily environment- an impact on the soul: family

When a marriage brings lives together, they each bring different beliefs, cultures, traditions to the table.
It is simple at times, and complex at others, they mesh their ways until a new born arises out of their individualities: Family.

I cannot even begin to describe how much happiness and light I've found with my family. We have our humorous approaches, even when in chaos. We love music and art. We love stories and appreciate the beauty of nature.

We love our home. It's our refuge, it's our place where we can finally come back to relax, to be ourselves, to touch base with eachother.

It is rare we ever take any of it for granted, for we have travelled many of the same roads.

So we cherish it instead. We enjoy eachother instead.
If each of us had this beauty, this is how the world's existed this long. Beauty of family reflected in beauty of living in this large world of ours.

Time waits for no man, and slowly we're alone...

I Shall pass this way but once, and sometimes this one statement accounts for it all. I used to believe in re-incarnation, although I was very young at that point, I believed in Karma and re-living it until you got it exactly right, until I figured out little children pass away too, and then I couldn't wrap my head around that piece of the re-incarnation theory.
In fact I may have been off a whole level with this thinking, the reflecting on it until you have it right is more likely to take place from the portal onward to reach a final destination.

So with that big picture in mind tell me why every once in awhile you notice that more and more are getting ready to go onward to the portal, you sometimes get tapped alittle by a lonliness that comes with more of your sphere of influence leaving for this next adventure.

I have cousins on hand who have health issues, and find out one is in a nursing home due to a blood disease very rare that has robbed her of any kind of good health and she can't be more than 62 yrs of age, hell I think she's even 59, but she's been sick for the last ten years for sure.
Maybe my ma was onto it even light years ago, she always remarked on how pale the girl was, maybe the white cells were battling the red way back then, all I know is she's been a remarkable mom to her brood, and a good wife to her man., and she has always tried to stay in touch with her siblings despite many chaotic disputes that side of the family incurred.

My other cousin is hoping for a good body scan this coming week, she's been battling lymphoma for some time with losses and wins here and there, it is time to face her lady or tiger, and see what Merlin has cast for her spell.
Her son also my cousin is now in the final stage of M.S. and the young man with the violet eyes can no longer do all of the things we once took for granted.

Maybe I'm thinking and reflecting more due to email relationships formed. Maybe it's cause it's time next week for an annual picnic, and I still cannot decide whether I will venture out on the 11th, a crazy ride to places I barely can navigate, to find a forest preserve in the middle of lands you don't know, so you can find out if a favored Auntie has made it another round. I used to meet Dicky there, but Dick's been gone since right before my other good friend. Dicky brought mischief everywhere, I'd wait to see what his Irish American spiel would unfold, and I'd laugh or smile till my cheekbones ached, my dear birthday night caller, yes I miss him, too.

So this crazy wench in her present state of mind reached out to her cousins on both sides to find out more about secrets of her grand parents, grandfather's in particular, and I got the Irish side back first, and all agreed Grandpa left Ireland cause he was in the the 1906 version of the IRA, and he could never go back home like the others to see his Mom who still lived at the cottage/farmhouse.

But what I never expected to hear was that my Polish Grandpa left home (Warsaw) to come here to the Americas because he was the son of a polish general, and the new regime was out to capture the family, so for political reasons he arrived at Ellis Island as well.

And so with pride I laughed as I finally understood why these two men became such good buds, the were two peas in a pod. Franchek and Sean, Francis and John Americanized.

And I also found out that my Polish Grandma Maria was a farm gal (Mary Americanized), who described farm life to her oldest Grandchildren, and that explained her practical nature, her love of lincoln park and humboldt park picnics on sundays so she could feel more like she was out in the country again.

And so I wander..............

The only one you can depend on in life is: yourself

So, months and weeks spent debating the current dilemma brings me back full circle to:
The only one in this life you can count on is yourself.....so I say Self: Can you make this better?
Self has agreed to try her best shot. Her very real best shot.

Now you could read this and think I am talking about you, but I am not, I am talking about Self,
The inner child's iner child....the core, the one sitting next to the very soul of me.

I need to dig up within myself and do some heavy evaluating of where I can possibly outsmart those bastards of mass corruptions, and I intend to frkn win. So I will try to use every little trick they ever taught me while I was spiral within their webs.

And in the end if for some reason I go down, I will go down with my best style, Smiling, teeth showing, mocking them with my eyes, my Georgia Clay eyes.

Riding the loops

Life is a roller coaster ride, ups and downs, and loop de loops, when you think of all of the good times you have throughout a life time, you smile right? Memory or recall makes you smile, as various moments replay in your head?

And when you think of the bad times you've experienced your face will reflect the emotion you feel as you look back. Sadness, disappointments, grief, they affect us all.

3 very different deaths came to light this week at work. It played out enough so that reflections been an ongoing thing. We had the man that shot himself, another who used to share our office suite with us passed from bladder cancer, and another passed from a several year brain cancer, two of them were close to me in age. Spouse's calling to inform us, so very little that's adequate that you can say, other than the truth: I am very sorry to hear this news of your loss, can we do anything to help the family?

You come home tired, and know your own family's vulnerablities, and you blank/erase your head of any fleeting concerns as you know you're not strong enough to have any of this happen to your family.
Family is a lovely thing, like a flower from inner tier to outter rim, it has so many people/petals as the flower unfolds, no two petals are alike, and yet it take all of those petals to make such a beautiful flower. It is a beautiful flower. Maybe it has a thorn or two but it is still so pretty you can't help but feel the awe of it. You love each and every petal for it's uniqueness, for it's contribution.
Now if you're married then you have two flowers, two unique entities, they can be amazingly different and similar at the same time.
Now throw on all of those extended flowers arrived at from extended family members and you've got yourself quite a bouquet. And the bouquet is awesome.
These flowers bring meaning and happiness to your life, maybe some thorns, but you learn how to navigate around them, don't you?

Communications and Accountability, modern times

I Shall pass this way but once.....and sometimes I get "Irked" as my father called it.

Communications with other human beings does not have to be difficult, people in our modern culture of phones, cell phones, computers and email, walkie talkie's, whatever.....they choose to make communications difficult in spite of all of these means available to convey an answer to a question, an update on a question, a status to a situation.

I have come to embrace so many of these dear hearted people that I am ready to explode at times with the lack of communications., only because the people on the other end don't seem to think you need to have some sort of answer.

At work we pre-pay down payments on insurance policies for many of the clientel, this money is due upon receipt of invoice, it is to be a short term convenience for them, I have invoices open from last August, that my friends is ten months, ten months that my boss has fronted this interest free money for people who won't answer our status inquiries. It is I who get to chase these people...and try to chip away at their wallets. It is I who have had my fill.

With Avon, I have people who order shoes (my personal opinion is if you want shoes....go to a shoe store*) in a custom size of 10, and after I pay shipping and handling on this....they won't respond to my calls or my emails that I need to make delivery to them. So I end up paying shipping and handling twice on something some flake ordered and couldn't pay for. I am not allowed to collect up front.

With Avon I have order deadlines, I check with my people to see if they need anything ordered this thursday as in yesterday, and as of this morning I still do not have answer, many times they will send their orders at 10:45 on friday, I am at work....and I see this and somehow have to sneek it through to Avon to meet my very real friday noon deadline for shipment. All of the inquiries were sent the last two days prior to friday. Plenty of texts and calls and emails the other 28 days of the month.

Well this all leads into the personal angles of life as well, check on something, get nothing. Try to talk about something, get diverted, and still you will get nothing. Phones and texts ring all day, can you gt a call that they're falling off of the earth for 24 hours, no but they'll call you to see if you remembered to do such and such for them, or to ask for directions on the days they're lost.

It's incredible.... and so I make my point here that I have decided to give up on Communications. I will use it at the grocery store, where they still usually know how to respond..

Revolving doors

I Shall pass this way but once, really, so why do I feel like I'm trapped in a revolving door and I can get out..........
I am of the belief finally that we all get caught up in some syndrome in our life, we try to guide, push and finally shove pieces of the puzzles presented into place, a place we know or feel they should be, and they rebuff us and seek their own destination. But as the child who played with the peg table trying to fit square into round, round into squares, rectangles into square...we keep trying to make our alotted pieces fit.
It can become futile.
Futile land is about where you get stuck in the revolving door, it's hot, you're damp, you're tired, so the mind is slipping a few notches, and still you cannot get it fixed. Phone calls that should have come haven't, solutions you sought haven't, so at night you slip into bed, and are almost giddy to pass out for the night, just to rest your brain.
Daylight brings some hopes of ............

Multi Dimensional People, Working Class

You can take the hustle and bustle of a train station, a restaurant, a warehouse, an office all for granted and just see the big picture of people traveling, people eating, people shipping and receiving, people processing paperwork needed for the day or week.
Now take all of those pictures and scenerios, and see the multi good deeds that play out in a day, all of the patiences involved, all of the kindnesses, all of the strangers one gets to know throughout their work days. All of the people living on an edge these days, whereby they encounter one kindness that gets them through a glitched week.
America is tired and damaged currently, many systems are broken down badly, many theories have gone into a holding bay....they should work still, but they do not, we can't quit throw them out, but it's our idealism that makes us hold onto them for when things are better.
Loan programs whereby the people have enough income to support a loan, and they still have a home, but the home won't appraise out, and yet there is not enough loan to value ratio in it to support the ultra conservative banks desires.
Builders who have been forced out of building homes, owning land, home building once in progress, cannot obtain the loans to keep building until all properties are sold.
Office building lining the freeway 30% occupied, office rents once 1200. monthly reduced to $800. and empty, people cannot get the business loans to support starting a new business.
Prices still high or risen on the very gas needed to convey us to work, hours slashed, pay checks reduced, mass layoffs, businesses closing their doors. And:
Homes shattered by all of these aspects, are now manifesting violence more frequently as bizarre scenes play out within their walls. Lives affected by the fallout that is left to the survivors when survivors are left.
So please never take the kindnesses of the people you encounter throughout your day for granted. We can carry eachother with these encounters, strangers almost, but common in our surroundings. The only way we can survive is to continue one simple kindness a day....and carry eachother through this dark time.

Little Boy Blue, and the shed

I Shall pass this way but once., any good that I can do.....let me do it now:

I have lost my parents, and I have had to go through every single one of their possessions, item by item, treasure by treasure. I have had to go through my Dads tools, one by one, and make decisions. I have a small tool box downstairs, it contains just a few of my Dad's well worn tools, handle grips that were in his hands for hours, and years of those hours.

I have some of my mother's treasures as well, so many of sentiment, my brothers locks of hair from first haircuts preserved, all of our evil report cards preserved, cards to my father expressing her love as the years passed them, and his back to her. Christening outfits I never witnessed a baby in except for pictures of my brothers and I kept neatly fold in a cedar chest that was her mothers. I have hers and my fathers wallets pretty much as they were.

So the day of the shed I seriously did understand the mens mindsets, and the huge amount of mourning they were feeling as they made decisions of what to keep and what not to, it was a seriously long day, there was no way it did not pumel them into the ground over the fact that you were now gone, oh so gone from their site, they inquiries, memories of working side by side with you throughout oh so many years.
If they weren't so raw and throbbing, the day probably had higher chances of ending differently, but instead it ended badly for many, and we've all had to ponder it to some degree to shed some light on it.
In grief, none of us hit bottom at the same time. Kit and I call it having a moment, we cry, we shake our heads and move on, but at the time of the shed they were locked into a task so horrendous, trying to muddle through the day with eachother as a good company for the task.
Pre-tears disguised with a smile, a laugh, a comment celebrating that you certainly did like to be prepared for any situation.
So I close with a beautiful poem written in the mid 1800's that expresses so much about grief and loss, that expresses why Lauren's grave segment for little children (Called Holy Innocents) is decorated/littered at time with children's toys, army men, little clowns, baby dolls, and wreaths made of little children's toys, and you will see it is not much different for an adult we lose:

Little Boy Blue:
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
and his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
and the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and placed them there.

"Now don't you go till I come", he said,
"and don't you make any noise",
So toddling off to his trundle-bed
he dreamt of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, and angel song
Awakened our little boy blue,
Oh, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.

Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.

-Eugene Field 1850-1895

Today is the Tomorrow we worried about Yesterday

I Shall pass this way but once.......but while I am walking....I am going to render my take on some of the aspects of life.

People try to rejockey their own assets on occassion before the run into that final trouble, and you appraisors practicing out there who have been so criticize for all you've allowed to slide by in the past, well now you are running totally gun shine.

For myself there were only two comparison from our subdivision that could be used, the custom is to take some comparisons from the nearest and most like subdivisions, so I had this information pulled with the survey copy you required of us, and you were either still too lazy to utilize the information or way too gun shy to do your job properly. You were a professional weasel!!!!

So what dung pile did you land us in? Do you even care, Mr., or do you just care about the guaranteed fee you pulled for a shit report? Loan to value tests of time failures, due to a lazy, scaredycat who plays it conservative safe, and you had the good comps in your hand you pompous asshole!!!!!!!!!

So, now we start over, we've lost valuable time to this 7/1 doom and gloom date stamp, we were to have started again last night, me uptight and tense, blood pressures through the roof, as I waited for the return phone call that never came my way, my man trying to keep me amused cause he reads my body language like a clock, he is one of the few who can decode this morse code human, and I seriously wonder about him....I wonder why does he love me? Why the worse things get does he love me more?
And I seriously don't get it, unless it's from some long time habit.

Oh well, today the salmon will keep attempting to swim upstream.

Today gas prices will continue to climb, credit card companies will continue to be legal loan sharks, and more people will lose their asses/assets as 30% of the people continue to care and adjust to this economy and the other 70% continue to prostitute it.

And with any luck about 3 weeks out, today will become the tomorrow we worried about yesterday, it's just so hard to believe in collapsed system, isn't it?

Father's Day

I Shall pass this way but once., and I am certainly happy that I had you to walk beside me.

You touched me several times yesterday. You were up by 4:30am, as on any other day. I still slept on. And our son had surprisingly opted to stay in so he could get up and go tot he diner with us for the 8am breakfast we hoped your Dad and Katie would make it to.

My twin called you at 7:30 to move it to 8:30am, but we still left the house at 7:30 so we could be at the diner by 8am, so typical of you. This gave you time to smoose with niece and nephew, and start checking over the place for some water damage done by the recent storms.

My twin arrived closer to 9:15 by herself, and as she pulled in we all said she's by herself. We all hit our collective lows figuring it was a done deal. Our craziest sister was still at the house, we didn't even think she'd make it, so we mulled our new found emotions while we listened to stories of missing kitty searches, and found cat, safe and snug in the family home., and the happy reunions of finding this animal for it's main care taker who does so love her kittens and dogs.

Then someone spotted the traveling Sister and our Brother in a car - awe's someone with them glass shadowed, and then the second awe as our diner owner started to cry so touch was he by the second car pulling in, for it carried his Grandmother who had never been able to see his tribute to his Dad. This diner is something his Dad wanted to do at retirement, it is very similar to the diner freom years back where he met his bride and courted his bride, and retirement had been missed by only a couple of years. And so some of our dreams live on through children.

The mood of the day and weekend shifted and the diner came to life as all entered and found their best spots, the cook and owner giving a grand tour to the Grandma, you doing your greetings to all especially your mom. Sisters hugging sisters, words said with love and affection, and gathering as one diner full of family, customers sought the outlying booths as they came in during this time frame. It was good, it was a time that erased, and moved us onward. It was one of our golden moments like the rainbows after the rainstorms, we breathed as one.

Then my evil twin told me that we were running out of clean dishes, and we had to shift our attentions to the back kitchen to try and get them caught up.

Our special visitors were leaving, goodbyes and hugs exchanged, all happier for the gathering, and all three of us back to the kitchen for an hour of group dish scrubbing, washing drying and rolling silverware to prep for the next round, our sister helping in the front.

The diner owner so happy, this is usually such a hard day for him, the visitors eased his heart and ours.

And then we finally drove home Justin remarked he'd have to drive back to Niles to pick up his friend later for their Randolph street outting/concert, and I asked if he wanted me to pick the person up, reflex really, Father's Day I would be driving back this way later in my own vehicle, I wanted the boys to get home to do their own things. And we all went off in our own preparations, you in the garage, looking over some lures in one stage, me gathering flowers for my outting to St. Adalberts, our son checking his email and I went to leave, and you stepped up right behind me, you were intent on coming too, I was so touched I could have melted. And heavier traffic, no bad humor, all in stride, you and I are funny ducks.

We love our families, very much. And we love our parents very much. One set is here and one is not, but we love them all. And the ones that are gone have taught us that time waits for no man.
There is no replay button, so we try hard to get it right, to work from the heart on this lifetime.

Now I have to tell you, I could never have been happier with another person, you joke the other day about dying, and then I'd have money, could go do all kinds of things, I reassure you that I don't think like that, you are my party, I come home for you, I push myself for you. I have slipped this year, I feel it ever since the burst sensation, I don't know where it's going, but I will enjoy my intervals with you.

And as father's go, you have found successes, he's so much like you in approaches, and so much like us both in heart, the three of us landed together years ago, and our times and discussions are enjoyed well. And as we carry it outward into the world maybe we have made little differences, maybe we have made the world a slightly better place for someone, at sometime.

And so today is a little warmer place of the heart. I close this with love.

Cutie for Deathcab: "I will follow you into the dark." Summer of 2006:
" Love of mine, someday you will die.........................when no one stands besides you as your soul embarks, then I will follow you into the dark".

Drivers and Truck Drivers

I Shall pass this way but once, and some days someone would take you down pre-maturely with their lack of driving ethics.
I couldn't get to my own vehicle this morning it was boxed in on our driveway versus the garage theory, so I took the Avalanche which for me is massive for my city driving, made it there but when I went to return to the super boonies, I was nextto a big semi, and the driver fell asleep,
I honked him awake, happened a second time, and honked him awake again, I finally speeded up just to stay away from him.

When tired pull over and rest at a rest stop, eh?

Sadnesses in the work field

So if you work someplace for 5 years, you are bound to get caught up in the routine, talking to your regulars, moms and dads and children yelling in their phone back ground, while they try to call in for paperwork to be cut for the business they run by day. All of the audits we help with, certificates of insurance, the endless payment reminders calls, emails, letters, faxes, all day I am in perpetual motion trying to rescue or assist someone from some insurance situation. Contractors have been hit so hard by this economy, and yet we had many families of them we've cared for. Yesterday, brought us news of one who was always nice, polite, family man, life went badly this last year, the economy, the business of building in a recession, then the marriage, falling apart, children to be taken care of, , a wife who had always tried to help in the business even though she had a full time job herself, but bad business, separation, what it does to the mind and to the esteem, if everyone would project out a year into the future they might make different life impacting decision or none at all would be better......

and so he shot himself at the des plaines river, and that is where they found him last week. No more happy average family, no more husband and wife working out the newer kinks, no more carpentry contractor, no more man who even if not perfect certainly tried for light years.

Done.

Replaced by questions, shock, and sadness at where it went wrong. Children being chased by their own mental shadows as they grow, wife haunted by places in time where amends could have been made and weren't, and blaming themselves for it shaping to a conclusion no one could have foreseen.

What's in a name? Chicky, Jeep? Justy?

I Shall pass this way but once......once.....once.....so many chapters though.

"Chicky", it could define so many things in this life, farms, science and industry, a guy to a girl, Chicky.

As far as I could remember my name legally was one thing, but my name I ran to as a child was "Chicky". From what they told me Dad named me this due to my holding me baby legs up in the like a chicken tressed with thread for roasting as we did in the old cooking days.

Chicky was a very happy young child.....a girl in body parts, a boy in nature hanging out observing all she could in the yard front or back yards, watching her ever lovijng brothers play, and learning from all of that. Chicky loved dirt and worms, and at then end of the day covered hands coated with hard core dirt she was the last one to be bathed, dirty water drops surrounding her tub. She loved red and white plaids, had pants and coats to prove it, she loved laying on the floor with Beauty the Norweigan Keeshound snuggling nose to nose, arms around eachother both wearing a whole in the dining room roll up carpet that would eventually be down through the pad.

She loved the sound of the chicago street cars running down North Ave, down California. The warmth of summer nights out on the porch, all families sitting out, renters and owners alike as so many of our were two storied.

She loved hide and go seek being played by the elder children, more to listen to it, observe it than to play it, playing it could be scary.....enough for peeing if you got caught......she was little, she couldn't run fast yet.

One night running she forgot the new pipe fence the neighbor had put up and hit her gut full force running fast, oh God a bad heimlich move, it knocked the wind right out of her body, she couldn't breath until she could finally throw up.

Chicky's best friend lived next door, her name was Chesana, Ukranian of culture, Suzanna when she grew up.

Sometimes you could smell the Vanilla on the air from the Oberweiss Dairy that was on North, sometime Chickens from the place down the street from them.

Sometimes day walks with Ma to the store and then past the TV repair place where Zulu the cat lived in the front window of the shop. So much to see for a little one.

Chicky died sometime in December of 1961 when her parents moved to a different house.

The amusement come with cousins, and on occassion brothers using this childhood name, and for just a moment with the users half here, and half gone, she responds with a light in her eyes, and a sweet smile around her lips, and for one split second the child is there.

So for all of us, Chicky's, Justy's, Jeep's, sure you can call me anything......as long as you call me!
Make me smile. Take us back. It's ok.

Love has so many perspectives and beholders

I Shall pass this way but once....it has been such an interesting journey, quite often I am like a child let off in a candy factory, I keep wander through all of these wonderful human elements, and yes I see the ugliness to, but these days that I value so much, well I am intrigued by love and deepth of love more and more.

I keep in touch with a friend of 30 years, we have been sisters for a good portion of it, I think we started as acquantances, she was once a partner to one of my other sisters, and yet it was grief over lost parents that bound us together in our wanderings and wonderings of after life exsorbing materials we pondered. And worse yet as I buried my second parent, her lovely brother was struck by a car and killed, oh God they had started on the siblings. From then on we talked to eachother better, our eyes showing the love and kindness as mirrors of our hearts. Some years passed and once again we were struck by losing another brother on our side....but one of her brothers none the less as she loved him dearly, too.
Her current life partner and herself walked along us on this dark path of illness and death, the company and kindness they showed us has always been phenominal.
So it is with great joy for these mature women that I have been told they became official life partners yesterday, our state allows this partnering and this way one can finally access the others benefits, they wish to cover eachother legally until they exit this world.
I wrote her back with congratulations, I am happy for anyone who solidly feels love for another human to the point of wanting to protect and cherish them. My own marriage has worn so many hats throughout the years, there is the newlywed hat....fun but a big learning curve as you try to combine two household thinkings into one, there is the childrearing hat whereby your spouse might think he now has two kids as the wife is always in flannel & playing with bubbles and chalk and when she's more herself she's running around with disinfectant cleaning bathrooms so no one else will catch a sickness. Then there are the lost years where she's done rearing children but you really don't get eachother anymore, her goal is survival of a day, week or month. And your goal is still the new truck, a boat, your hunting or fishing trips. She's happiest when all people in the family are finally in bed for anights sleep, safe and not out subject to disasters, police calls, or worse yet a stranger at the door, ringing it with bad news. Your happiest when you get away from the family for a week of relaxtion.
It takes some time to get through this stage, some people utterly fail, they grown so far apart they end up divorced cause it's easier than trying to find eachother again, to gain some common ground., To stop being two far apart parallel lines and instead go back to constantly crisscrossing eachother in interests and playing as you'd be more comfortable doing.
If or when you make it back to crisscrossing, laughing, talking, smiling together it will usually be after you have suffered losses together, sad to say, but true. The losses rob you of so much, it wakes your ass up to what you truly value in your life, who you truly value, and you can become quite happy if your kind enough to show your values to eachother.
So I wished our friend: "Golden Moments", and I wish more of them for us as well.

Life with the right mate can be like living on a rainbow, I see so many more colors through my love of spending time with you. I still see much humor, and you know at the strangest times I still make you laugh.....going back to the beginning that was what you liked best was that I made you laugh, and so the clown side continues to try for that here and there. And you these days, well you make me smile.

Yes, if I could wish people anything besides good health, I'd wish them deepth of love.
Of course, if they had deepth of love, maybe more of them would stay in good health?

Yuppies defined by Sunshine

I Shall pass this way but once, but I need to shed some light on this modern culture we live in.

Dearest Yuppies:
Yes, it is true that when your parents gave life to you and saw you through birthing they wanted the very best for you, they wanted you to have all the best in life that could be available as you grew up.
What they apparently forgot to tell you was that you seriously need to obtain and keep a job, so you can afford these perks or extras they wished available for you.
Understand that all of us parents, Aunties, Uncles, cousins who have our names on a car deed, house deed, debts of all proportions including but not limited to Mortgage's, Auto Loan's, monthly billings, well to say the least we have all worked more than 40 hour weeks to obtain this vast array of sunshine, and you must do your 40 as well if you expect to obtain what we have worked so hard for.
This is not a cake walk, this is not a freebee, this is not a daydream, this cold reality.
If you want what we have then go get a real job. Go out into the masses day upon day, come home tired, shovel afterwork in the winter, cut grass after work in the summer, rake leaves after work in the fall, fit groceries, laundry and cleaning a house around that, cook meals 7 days a week for all of your lovies, and then come talk to us about wanting what we have, about all of the perks you want. You might even get a few of them along the way if you work hard and don't blow it all on useless fluff.
In real estate it always fascinated me that all of the youngster I took out wanted a home better than Mom and Dad's ....or at the very least comparable to Mom and Dad's, well the hard truth here is Mom and Dad worked a life time to obtain that house, and so must you.
Sweet auto's, thrilling rides, well again save up from your job, and then go get one.

End of story, yuppies.

God Bless you and His Blessed Mother...too

I Shall pass this way but once, but thank God I've had you by my side most of the way.
How can I go to sleep when thoughts of you make my cheeks so sore from smiling?
And so this weekend, after hours of grueling bushcutting and packaging the debris, you noticed one of my statues in the backyard was so tired, but you knowing I love this replica of Blessed Mother asked me to come with you and learn how to air brush paint by redoing her.
You've worked non stop on the gardens for weeks now, we are 4/5ths done with that project, and so we start on our painting project you thought would take an hour, which turned into almost 5 instead....no dinner we were having so much fun with the colors, the experimentation of painting this child size statue.
She is beautiful, metalic blues, pearlized whites, the green snake under her feet, lips and eyes to make a soul think, you captured her as you capture all you touch, and you captured me too.
I thought back to our christmas ornaments made the winter of 78 for our very own first little tree on Octavia, and I remember how much fun we had together, I'd paint one side of them my way, and you'd paint the other side with your colors, and this is why they still go up on the tree, it's the love we shared sort of being remembered, switched up and deepened with the passing of so many years.
It was a lovely afternoon. She is beautiful, and sometimes so are we.

My Irish Grandpa used to say: God Bless you and your blessed mother, too.

Sunshine go away today, I don't feel much like.....

I don't feel much like dancing........

One of my youngest sisters always said this segment of "our family always continues to put the word FUN in DysFUNctional", it still makes me laugh, we are so damn naughty sometimes it's enough to make ya cry.

My closest sister perpetually talks about moving on.....some many do not understand her, they think she means vast changes.....she only means to imply to get past a thing, to move on from yesterday if it was a bad weathered day, and to face today with a smile and a fresh start.....to move on into tomorrow....with an open mind, a fresh day of sunshine and light to be explored through. She is right and life could be this simple if hearts were opened to it.

Grandma Kate Walsh is remembered by many in the family for many deeds........
my very limited relationship with her consisted of a couple of visits to her and Chauncy, and I saw them as two sweethearts aging, yet residing with their own dignities still at that point, they were in their own home he had built for them light years before.
He would pretend to be deaf and not hear her words.....and when she walked away he would wink at us, and let us know he'd heard every word she spoke at him, a wink and a smile from Chauncy.
She would run to her freezer's and try to get out her many homemade goodies to try to gain a meal for her visitors.
It was all good to me and my mindseye, my visits to them with my rather new husband at the time. They were his family, and I'd only had my own Grandpa for a GrandParent, and had always missed the Grandma theory.

GrandMa's gift to me on one of these visits would last decades, it would become incorporated in my living styles: "Never go to bed angry at eachother", "Always say goodnight-and start over fresh in the morning". " A day will come when you won't have the chance".

I have tried hard to live this theory with my own lovies. It has not always been a perfectly easy thing to do, you must remember her underlying wisdom, you must come to know it has a reality to it.

It was truly a beautiful gift from a family woman I met in passing with my then young husband, as he tried to have his family come to know me.

Funny I still love to travel anywhere with him. He is a keeper.

So: the moral of these stories are, no matter what always say good night, at least maybe in your prayers, for we do not know what tomorrow will bring us. And start each day as fresh as you can.....today is all we have, and there is no guarantee on the whole day.

Our Houses, Condo's and Apartments = Home

I Shall pass this way but once......and once only

I came from two depression babies, My mother was younger but felt the influence in her household of the depression measured by changes in food, lard used instead of butter on bread,
economical meals her mom could make out of what the weeks wages brought in. My Irish Grandfather had been a street car person/conducter for many years, but there were lay offs and cut backs even in that field. So he began working at a cold storage facility in Chicago shortly after the depression hit, and did in fact work his way up to a department manager, this did help with the food shortage and every once in awhile grandpa would sneek in with some butter as a rare surprise or a dozen eggs, with four children to feed and clothe it all went quickly. I remember mom speaking of the daily ice they would get for the ice box, and of seeing soup lines but not having to resort to them. They had owned a home out on the southside of Chicago near the old South Town Movie Theatre, and many of our Irish relatives still reside in that area today. The home was lost, I believe Mortgages at that time were 5 year notes, and their note was called in when they ran behind. SO they moved back up to the North side to the 1800 block of North Ave and a boarding house. There have been plenty of boarding house stories, stories of friends made throughout the years., stories of going up on the roof on hot summer evenings.

My Father's side during depression years also lived in this same North side of Chicago neighborhood, his father was a half partner in a butcher shop, and eventually he would loose his partnership but remain on as a butcher. My Father loved school, but due to the economics of the day was forced to quit, so he could go dig ditches to bring in monies for the family. My Father stayed an honorable man throughout life. He would eventually join the army and end up in the Battle of the Bulge, he would also take magnificient pictures of the war torn countrysides before the bombings and after, his pictures would include several of the war camps in those war torn countries, but his pictures would show the Germans being held in them at the end of the war, a novel switch from all of the Jewish Peoples captured and held there.

So we grew up hearing all of the stories from these two households, are parents tried to be frugal and make ends meet, and sometimes barely scrimping by their extra's included a $300.00 Christmas bonus that would purchase the gift for three children and the food for the holidays bringing us to the late 1950's.
We had a 2 story home on Richmond, we took a major loss on it's selling price in 59 and moved further out towards Gladstone Park, to a single residence.

Everywhere we ever went as a family, and everything we ever hear about as a family, set up the mindset for making a home. Some people think you have to have land, and your own purchased house to make a home, but it's not a reality. A home is made by the people within it's walls.
If you live in an apartment it is your own people within your walls that bring the shell around you to life.
If you are in an apartment, a condo, a cabin, a high rise, a trailer, a house, no matter as long as you have family to share it with, this is what make Home something you desire to come back to.

As long as I have my family, I am home. You see my point? Home is a haven, home is a haven within those walls that carries safety, our loved ones, our possessions meager as they may be, it's the environment within that gives us our refuge. For some who have lost their people, home is still the safety that has so many good memories within the corners of it's walls.

This is an economic recession, or so they've labeled it, I view it as another depression that hasn't bottom out yet as it continues to blossom it's ugliness out at the masses, my final point is: none of us knows where this is going to end yet, none of us knows what will be left. We may lose walls that once were cherished, but the bigger picture is as long as we have our loved ones and family, we have not lost our most real homes comprised of our families.

Fuel Tanks without a mentality

I Shall pass this way but once.....and sometimes my head is spinning, a revolving door trying to seek solutions, and how can you solve anything when you really don't comprehend what the problem or multiple problems are, if it wasn't so important to so many, and to where their Karma plays out, I would walk away, but walking away would give off so many bad spirals that a hundred years from now it would have turnt out so much more chaotic than it was ever intended to, the future would be deeply flawed, walking away would have robbed any of the good that had existed, why the good might not even be remembered, so horrendous this action could spiral out:

I can only compare us lastly to fuel tanks, who are need of gas, and don't have the mentality to get to the pumps.

This will render the vehicle's all useless.

We need to find gas.

We need to gas up all of the cars.

And I thought water seeked it's own level, persons seek their own level. So would this be a drought?

And the three men I admired most:

I Shall pass this way but once......

And the three men I admired most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost,
well they took the last train for the coast,
the Day the Music Died.

-Don McClean, American Pie

We all have a day the music died, don't we?

Maybe in our lifetimes, we'll have a few such days. A day where it really marks the total ending of one era, and the beginning of a new much more complex regime. A regime with so many new rules and conditions.

In our case it's become rules and conditions for loving. Rules and conditions for communicating.
It is a harsh regime, especially given the one we just rolled out of, which by comparison looks in retrospect more like the time of camelot.

We used to talk, we used to talk about everything, we'd air it all out, throw it on the table and by talking we sometimes would gain a piece of information for insight, so we could make some type of sense of it. Sometimes you would even shake your head at the insanity of things, but then would come that grin, and a compromise, a higher ground. Even on more serious subjects that saddened you, you would still come up with this answer and that answer as you didn't want to affront anyone with what you really felt or thought on the situation at hand, so it was always a compromise, always a graceful, yet rational answer back. Many would not believe what lengths you would take this to, caving in so others would be happier, and have what they needed? Yes, you had great Heart.

The new regime doesn't want to talk. If you receive any words they'd be flung at you as a person flounces away.......1/2 of the words on the air for us oldsters missing some of our hearing dynamics, body language replacing those last words.

So you can try calling them for one on ones, you can trying emailing some of them, but it all works out the same, Silence.

So you get one inuendo, of what's going on to result in this chaos, but you get no sound point, reason or logic to it. Just silence. I think they like silence better as it makes them feel justified in their very own actions, but it gains no grounds for resolving anything. Life still has run amuck and it can gain no balance until communications with all would be re-established.

So, to anyone who thought I gested when I called you the heart of the family, I was ever so right on it, when you boarded that train with the three men admired most, the music stopped because without it's heart it could no longer thrive. And so we have two brains, lots of useless limbs, but no heart to initiate the repairs, we have so little time left on our clocks that this upcoming miscalculation will be remembered harshly when the clock strikes midnight, and no one will ever be able to rise above it. It will become the ultimate mistake, the final mistake, And the music will certainly have died, unless you can send back your heart....your heart might be able to pull us through this.

Waiting for.......Heart to go on.