Friendship

I have been thinking about my dear friend Angie. I reflected on our long standing friendship.
I had two cards I sent her returned this week, as "Unclaimed".  I double checked with her- yes I had used the correct address. She forgot to check the mailbox.
"Angie", I said... "I sent one of these cards for your birthday. In December. How can you forget to check the mail since December?"
"October" she told me.
I didn't understand how that was possible. I check the mail daily... and sometimes even on Sundays!
But then, I write. And I used to work for the post office.
Angie calls. She used to work for the telephone company.
I seldom call anyone- but I do talk when people call me. (Mr C thinks I never shut up!)

Angie and I have been friends since I was about the age that my youngest two are now- I was not quite 22.  I have my cousin Jeanie to thank for our friendship. Angie and Jeanie used to be neighbors. Jeanie moved away, then I moved into the same apartment complex. One day Angie knocked at my door, and introduced herself.
I have never been good at making friends. Angie was persistent. She would come over. Like, every day. We would drink coffee and the kids would play. She maintained contact, when I was a person who shut everyone out.
We have been through a lot. Divorces, marriages, kids in jail. We were (often!) pregnant together. She was the first person I ever knew who had a home birth. We are now learning to get through losing a child.
I think maybe we are past the point of just being friends. We are bonded sisters.
I love you, Ang. Thanks for making the effort to be my friend!

Another walk in the woods, and Thanking God!

 Original post: (https://cowmomba.blogspot.com/2018/03/falling-down.html

Today was a gorgeous day. I finally felt up to walking back through the woods. I wanted to SEE the place I fell and the rock that landed on me. I was so shaken at the time of the fall, all I wanted to do was get home.
I knew the rock was big, and that I had fallen a fair distance. I didn't want to exaggerate, so I was pretty conservative in the descriptions of the fall. Today I have pictures, and you can see I didn't exaggerate. I was actually quite conservative in my estimates.
It freaked Tom and I both out to see the site of the fall, and the rock. It could of been SO much worse!

 The bold red circle was where I had been poking around. The lower circled rock fell from the spot it is connected to with the thin red line. The picture below is the rock that fell with me, landing on my leg.

I have my hand on the ledge where I was standing when a portion of the ledge broke off.

And, here is the tiny fairy I had moved awhile back! Safe and sound.


God was REALLY watching over me!
Psalm 91:11

Get Back Up Again

Taken on my walk, before I fell

I have spent a few days recovering from my fall. Today is my "trial" day of going without the arm and ankle braces. So far I have done fine, though the arthritis has still not let up. THAT was bothering me before the fall, so I can't complain too much. Tomorrow is my regular work day, so I shall wear a light brace on the ankle, just on general principle. I'd like to hike back to the scene, but I won't do that today.
Instead, I have laundry going. I have scrubbed the bathroom and put Mop n Glo on the floor. I am waiting for it to dry. I emptied the bathroom trash, and noticed the plastic liner to my elderly rattan basket/ trash can was looking really bad. I started scrubbing out the plastic liner, and realized the liner had a hole in it. (In it's former life, it was a basket that held a potted plant). Instead of scrubbing holey plastic, I just removed it. Then, the notion took me, I COULD repaint the rattan. It has been the same shade of forest green since we lived in Marlow, when I painted the natural rattan to match my stenciled ivy in my bathroom. We moved from Marlow 14 years ago this week.
 I hied myself out to the well house, where my stash of partially used cans of spray paint reside. HMMMM. My choices were the same shade of green, bright red, navy blue, flat black.... and hidden behind it all, a bit of the seafoam green I got when I painted my bulletin board frame last year. Seafoam it is!

I love spray paint!

 I am trying to stay busy and creative.  This week is six years since Bill Joe's death. The day before the  March 10th anniversary has been the hardest for me every year. It was the last time I got to talk to Bill Joe. I don't know why that is harder for me, but there it is.
Tomorrow is the three year mark of the date Daniel and Samuel were dumped off in the rain, in the woods on a mountain in Georgia.

( I can't tell you how nervous this picture makes me... especially now! It was several weeks into their hike of the Appalachian Trail, I believe it is McAfee Knob.)

Well, the floor is dry, and the bathroom has to be reassembled, so I am cutting this short! Thanks for reading!

Falling Down

You know that moment of utter terror, when something goes so suddenly and terribly wrong? Yeah. Me too.
 Thursday afternoon about 4:00, I took myself on a stroll through the woods. The creek is dry again, and I got off the trail and followed the creek bed back to the cliff face. (I am on the bottom side of the cliff, not the top.) I was admiring how different the creek's path is after the recent rains.

 I got to the place where I keep a wee fairy statue tucked into an overhang of a shelf , like her own little cave. (The fairy is about the size of a golf ball.) She wasn't there, so I began poking carefully around (with a stick, lest I disturb nesting snakes or other critters). I didn't find her near the shelf, so I turned carefully to look over the ledge I was standing on... and the ledge snapped off.
I fell about three and a half or four feet, turning my left ankle. The broken off rock ledge landed on my inner (right) thigh. It was about the size of a five gallon bucket, cut in half from top to bottom. If it hadn't been adrenaline, I doubt I could of moved a rock that size. I shoved it off my leg, and assessed. I could stand on the ankle, and the leg supported my weight, so I hobbled my way back to the house. I was quite shaken up, though not SERIOUSLY hurt.
  All I could think of in the nano seconds of the fall was: I am alone back here. No cell phone. I am off the path. It is hours before anyone gets home. I didn't leave a note saying I was going to walk in the woods, and even if I had, I probably would of said I was going to walk our trails. Yikes.

I got up and went to work the next morning, fueled by large amounts of ibuprofen. I try to avoid taking any drugs, but sometimes they are necessary. By Friday night, some 24 hours later... I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. Or been trampled by a pod of hippopotumi. Or fallen off a cliff into a ravine...
During the night, my right wrist asserted itself in the mix of body parts screeching. I was convinced it was broken and I should go for Xrays in the morning. I finally fell back to sleep, and by the time I awakened Saturday, I could tell my wrist is NOT broken. It does, however feel much better in a brace, and I have one. So I am hobbling about on a cloudy Sunday morning, ankle braced, wrist braced, bruised... but feeling much better than yesterday.

I have developed an action plan for future walks. First of all, ALWAYS leave a note if I am leaving the yard. It should state my time of departure and be left in a prominent spot. I need to always carry a "daypack"/ fanny pack and not JUST my camera. The pack shall have water, and probably a small air horn. IF a cell phone is available, I will take it along. As a matter of fact, I may even have one that I can charge, and use if I need to call 911. Did you know your cell phone can be out of time/ data and is still supposed to be able to dial 911?

 Sam went for a walk back to the face of the cliff. He went a bit further, and found my wee fairy where I had moved it, to a more accessible and  sheltered place along the walls of the ravine. That had been my next destination once I had searched the first location. I sometimes move my gnomes and fairies to different locations along the trails, fun little things for people walking or riding the trails to perhaps discover. As soon as I am up to it, I am going back to where I fell to take a few pictures... from the  creek bed, not the wall!

I have been "feeling my age"... something I haven't done in years. Last time I acknowledged I am not as young as I used to be was when I sprained my arm trying to do a cartwheel a number of years ago.
This getting older business is for the birds!

Mother's Day, 2011

The card envelope from Dan and Sam

Flowers from Bill

Flowers from Dan and Sam

Drawings of my kids as anthropomorphics, by Sam. his caption says, "Well its mothers day and this is your mothers day gift... here you go" He is currently coloring it for me.

My Mom also came up and spent Mother's day with me. She is working with her cousin Ruth at The Sugar Shack in Russellville. All of my kids who were able to gave me a call on Mother's Day. (A couple were kind of late, but hey, at least I did hear from them!)

That time of year....

It is that time of year. I have to focus on positive things, like grand daughter birthdays and the coming of Spring. Happy 9th birthday to Nickole, on February 25th, and a WOW! I can't believe you are going to be 15 in just a few days! to Alana. Her birthday is March 5th. My Dad's *39th* birthday is the 6th. (It's the 44th anniversary of his 39th birthday.)

Alana. Photo by TJ Jones

Nickole

My Dad, Robert 

Changes are coming to my life and I don't necessarily deal well with change. I may be doubling my days of work, from two days to four days a week. I have no idea yet what my new duties would be, or whether I would still be washing dishes. Several people have given notice at work, and there are many openings.
Daniel almost has his in depth application to SAFD completed. I think I am stressed about him moving away- I will have to find that "new normal" again.
 We have been planning our garden for the year. Here it is, the first day of March. I am eternally pessimistic about winter being over with, at least until some time in May... I have seeds to start and little starter pots to get them going in, yet I haven't actually planted the seeds. I keep expecting a blizzard to creep up on us.
Sam's bees are beginning to forage on the nicer days. He is feeding them again, breaking the winter seal of the hives to add food to the trays.
It looks like we are in for another rainy week. At least we haven't had all the rain at once!