Pushing Back

Today I woke up to rain.  Big Rain.  It was before 7, and that is not my usual time.  I'm a sleeper inner.  Anyway, about the big rain.....  It was noisy, and gray and dismal, and the sun wasn't quite up.  I kind of groaned, because as I heard the rain, my thoughts turned to Jennifer.   Jennifer is a friend, not a close friend, but a friend non the less, and today, in the rain, the big rain, the noisy, big, gray and dismal rain Jennifer was burying her husband Doug.  Doug had succumbed to cancer after a 5 year war with it.  Doug used to hug me in the hall at church, his church being all finished and mine being about to start....and I would look at him and tell him I was so proud of him for shrinking the tumors in his lungs...then his brain...then his adrenal glands...then eventually his valiant try with his liver.  My stomach did a little lurching, thinking about Jennifer, and her family, going to the cemetery on this gray day.  So Not Fair.

I got to the funeral early, so I could maybe see her, and hug her, and tell her she could do it.  I did it all, I saw, I hugged, and I told.  Our eyes welled up with tears together, two women, not close friends, but nonetheless two women who had a shared experience of broken hearts.  I felt my stability shift just a bit.  My heart ached.  Ached mostly for her...but to be honest, it also ached for me. 

Its been 9 years since we have planned a funeral, dressed a body and had a burial day.  I have come a long way.  It has taken years and years. In those years I have learned better how to walk around with the wound that loss weaves into your fibers. Sometimes, however,  life has events that bring you back to the wound and you are reminded.  Reminded of it all:  the loss, the saddness, the grief.

Nevertheless,  I'm here to say that being pushed back to that place of sadness is OK.  I would even go so far as to say that it is Good. 

While they were bringing Doug into the chapel for the funeral, we all stood up out of respect.  I'm not going to lie, I started to struggle a little.   I felt an arm reach around my waist from the left.  Then I felt an arm from the right inch around my shoulders.  What is not Good about being reminded that you have people in your life who will help you bear your burdens?

While listening to Doug's children tell wonderful stories about their dad, I was sent back to the stories that my son told of his dad at our funeral.  What is not Good about being reminded that you had people in your life whose love trickled down: from them to you to your children and all around and back again?

While listening to a speaker teach the congregation about God's great plan of happiness, the Redeemer of Mankind, and the hope of an eternal  reunion on resurrection morning, I was transported to a place of hope and certainty of my beliefs.   What is not Good about being reminded of God's love for all mankind, and His plan to reunite families together forever?  What could be Better?

I believe that there is good, and I believe that there is evil in this world.  I believe that cancer is evil.  It destroys, it maims, it disfigures, it brings strong to weak.  Pure. Stinking. Evil.  I heard  a line from the funeral today, that was uttered right after Doug died. (paraphrasing here)

"Cancer has lost.  It did not win.  The cancer will not continue to grow and flourish, but is now dead, and deteriorating, lifeless, stagnant, and still.  Its remains are in a state of atrophy even now..  On the other hand, Doug has won.  He has beat the cancer, for he continues to live, to think, to feel, to care, to do, and to be.  He exists still, and he will continue on throughout eternity."

Good triumphs over evil.

Life triumphs over death.

Togetherness triumphs over loneliness,.

 Joy triumphs over sorrow.

A push back to that place, the place, while I wouldn't want it every day, is a blessed reminder of all things that are Good.

And since from time to time I have to be in the place,  I'm grateful that the place can also shine a bright light on the Good.

My wish is to soak up all that Good..... soak it up just as fast as humanly possible.

Booyah!

Will the World Be a Better Place if I clue you in on the fact that this morning I had pumpkin pie for breakfast and whipped cream from a can was included and I sounded a little like a nursing baby humming it's way through a feeding and then I sprayed a little whipped cream right into my mouth like I'm the only one who lives here?

It feels so good to do service.

Gratitude, Poof, Spanx.

I have been writing a weekly email for the women that go to my church.  After wishing everyone happy birthday and putting in an uplifting quote and sharing everybody's good news and including a  calendar with items such as a nativity festival that is needing nativities to display,  (its borderline oxymoronic) I finished the email with my own little list of what I’m grateful for. 

 “A 10 Little Things Mommacita is Grateful for Which is Not an All Inclusive List”  is the title I gave this list.  And there was no premeditation for this list.  I made it  up as I went along.  And it shows.  Not a lot of thought went into it......OK???????

 This is not to say I’m not grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the love of family and friends and a body that works most of the time, and all the other big things that bless my life... Of COURSE I am grateful for those.  So don't get all harummmmphed and call me out on my dumb gratitude list.  Even if you are tempted.  Which I’m sure you’re not. Even though I just implied that you were.

I made this list to keep people reading the emails.  The women seem to need a bit of fluff and poof amidst their calendar items for the week to keep them from hitting the delete button or worse yet the send this to spam button.   I have since tweaked the list to make it blogworthy.  I hate to insult my readers, all 5 of you, but lets be honest....you like a little fluff and poof yourself.  

I hope I'm not saying anything wrong when I say fluff and poof.  I really am making this up as I'm going along. If it is an innuendo for something awful I do it in innocence.  Forgiveness mandatory and let us never speak of this again.

Soooooo-oo, Since I have not given you a blog yet, and since it is already written, and since I am lazy, and since you're saying to yourself "What the heck Mommacita just give us the silly list, because don't you think we deserve it after all this silliness, sometimes you drive us crazy with all your fluff and poofiness",  I give to you a very unspecial list:

 

 “10 Little Things Mommacita is Grateful for Which is Not an All Inclusive List”

 

1. A warm house on a windy, rainy, putrid  Sunday night, And my calendar says I can stay out of the wind and the rain and the pue and the trid.  This was not the case tonight, but maybe someday it will be.
2. Family ties- just knowing I have some is good.
3. Skin perfecting make-up.  And I promise next week's blog will not even have the work MAKE-UP in it.  Because I'm just as sick of this subject as you are.
4. A monthly day of beauty which is really just a haircut and a color 
5. Gas is not 10 bucks a gallon
6. Ice.  Yes.  I love ice.  In my beverages.  And yes.  It’s a REALLY little thing.  And by the way, I am grateful for a hot shower with just as much passion.
7. 4 granddaughters and 3 grandsons who like me.  It’s the liking me part that I’m grateful for.  This is not a little thing and technically should not be on this list but I’m a grandmother and have to talk about them.  It’s the law.  
8. When I go to Costco and the rain lets up while I’m loading my car. Any Northwesterner understands this  and if you are a NWer then we are soul sisters on this one
9. Good TV.  I just loves me some good TV.  Oh yeah, and books. And algebraic equations.  OK, I lied a teensy here but I refuse to tell you where.
10.  Eyes that are ABLE to read without Reading glasses but still have the OPTION to read WITH reading glasses if I want to or need to.  Sheesh this is tiring
11. Spanx.  And I know that’s 11 on a list that says 10 in the title.  But how could I not be Thankful for something that does so much for so many who need a little help here and there?  Spanx are truly a compassion based unmentionable.  If I happened to be an unmentionable, I might look to Spanx as a role model. 

There are more, but as you can see, this list is a little scary because I think I just said that I would use a girdle as a role model. Stream of consciousness is the devil. 

 I will spare you any more, “10 Little Things Mommacita is Grateful for Which is Not an All Inclusive List” items  which will put my act of sparing you at the top of YOUR  “10 Little Things you the READER  is Grateful for Which is Not an All Inclusive List”  

You the READER have bad grammar.  Just saying.

I'm just tired now.

Makeup Removal

Today We're talking about Make-up.  Maybe its because it might be on my mind from confessing about my eyebrows.  Maybe its from having a dream about Glitch being in a skit while shaving my head as I lay sleeping.    Despite the reason, you're getting my psychotic views on make-up, or more precisely, my psychotic views on makeup and the aging American Caucasian Woman.

My big question today is:    

HOW LONG IN AN AGING AMERICAN CAUCASIAN WOMAN'S LIFE  

(assuming she is NOT a natural beauty and is CLEARLY a woman who needs to wear 

makeup every stinking day of  her life)  

DOES SAID WOMAN HAVE TO CONTINUE WITH THE PURCHASING 

OF MAKEUP, THE APPLYING OF MAKEUP, THE TOUCHING UP OF MAKEUP, AND THE REMOVING OF MAKEUP?  

Or in other words...  is there an end to my maddeningly boring makeup ritual?  Is there mercy in this lifetime?  Is there?  IS THERE????? 

I've been doing an informal study over the past, say, 500 months.  I have been studying the faces of women who are at least 10 years older than I am (yes, I am at least 500 months old.  At first I wasn't sure, but now I am because I just did the math on a calculator that (oddly enough) has keys that are 1 inch by 1 inch so aging people can see them)

While studying, my feelings went from a "hmm-m how odd" to full on fear.

These are some of the things that I fear:

1.)     I fear I will become that woman who doesn't know that less is more.  You know her.  Eyelids a little too turquoise, lips a little to red, cheeks a little too circular, skin a little too puttied.  I fear that sometimes I have crossed that line.  I have tendencies.  Particularly when I'm experimenting with some eyeshadow that was free in a gift with purchase that if truth be told, I know is wrong for me but I just keep trying to put that square peg in a round hole.

It could happen

2.)      I fear that I will become that woman who can't see and her kids should step up to the plate and take away her lip liner so that she doesn't go to church with "Plum Crazy" eyebrows.  Don't scoff.  I know a person who did this.  I also saw a woman who drew her eyebrows ABOVE her real eyebrows.   And all four corners were squared off as if a stencil was used with a can of spray paint.  The whole thing was a rectangle arch situation.  I became paralyzed, absolutely paralyzed with fear.  She had double eyebrows.  Like a rainbow.  The top set were dark.  The bottom set were hairy.  I couldn't stop starring.  Or feeling scared.  I think this is the woman who I fear the most. 

 No eyebrows AND outside the lines.  Behold my future

3.)     I also fear I will be that woman that says waaaaaaaaaay too soon, "Hey, I'm over (insert age here), so I don't need makeup any more" and so she, after covering her age spots up for (insert number here) years,  just relaxes and lets them flap in the breeze.  Like a tush in a hospital gown.    I especially don't care that when 'flap in the breeze woman'  was 13, she and her friend down the street used to lay out in the sun with baby oil smeared on every surface while listening to the Monkeys on KPIX Radio and were even known to call the station to request a song for a boy named David Croft that someone not me was crushing on.  Should anyone have to look at  45 year old sun damage or a tush that is flapping before they absolutely have to??.

they don't call 'em liver spots for nothin'

I could avoid all this dopey stuff if only I turned down the vanity knob a notch or two.  

But then I would have to blog about my fears of loosing my inner beauty as I age, due to repressed anger from man's inhumanity to man. 

You like the shallow me.  I just know it.

Sabbath Confessional

So. 

Racking my brain here.

Trying to find a subject.

From my mundane existence.

Don't get me wrong.  I cherish the mundane.  I seek the mundane.  The mundane pleaseth me.  Because even in the mundane, there is always TV. 

So in desperation, I've decided to tell some of my secrets.

Since I have never leaked these secrets to only those who know me well, I stand at the edge of risk.  Now you will all know these things.  Am I ready for it?  Am I confident enough for this kind of exposure?  I don't think I am.   But onward I trudge through the muck.  Hold your head high, Mommacita.  You're about to  reach unalterable exposure.  This is almost like TMZ.  Without the cameras and high risk paparazzi chase down I-5.

So, now, I give to you my 5 readers, some unknown facts about me, a delightful woman of mystery.

Please be kind I implore you.  Just because I'm writing it here, doesn't mean I want to talk with ANY of you about it face to face. If you do, I will turn into a 13 year old girl and run screaming from the room with a door slam that will quake the earth.


Confessional #1

I DRAW MY EYEBROWS ON EVERY SINGLE DAY EXCEPT THE DAYS I MIGHT HAVE FOOD POISONING OR MORNING SICKNESS.  NO, THIS IS NOT AN ANNOUNCEMENT.

Yes.  This is embarrassing.  Mainly because when people see me without eyebrows on they can't help themselves by saying something obnoxious like, "Gee, you look so different" or "Gee, you look like an old woman"  The latter was said to me in my freshman dorm room the first week of my college experience right after I had left the bosom of my childhood home.  Yes.  I was scarred for life.  But mainly because the scenario was repeated each time I got a new roommate, a child learned to talk, I went to girls camp etc. etc. etc.  Sometimes I look at older women and think, hey, you don't draw your eyebrows on and YOU'RE getting away with it does that mean I will get away with it at 40? Then I turned 40.  So I changed the age to 50.  Then I turned 50.  Well, you get the drift.  I will be drawing these babies on until I die.  And don't tell me to get them dyed.  I've tried.  My eyebrows are made of plastic fishing line and have you ever tried to dye plastic fishing line?  So yeah.  I became an art major in college so I might draw.

PS  I was at a ST Louis Nordstrom 2 years ago and a Mac Representative finally showed me how to do it right.  I love thinking about walking around for 55 years with stupid eyebrows.  Dig hole, jump in, pull dirt in after me.

Confessional #2

My dirtiest little secret is that I READ OBITUARIES IN THE SALT LAKE CITY DESERET NEWS AT LEAST ONCE MAYBE TWICE A WEEK.

I know.  IT"S WEIRD!!!!!!!  I was visiting my parents once, and while watching the paint on the walls age I picked up the newspaper and saw an obituary in the Deseret News for a DOG.  You heard me.  A DOG.  It was a little white one.  It was mixed right in there with everybody's beloved Daughter, Wife,  Mother, Sister, Grandmother, Aunt, and Friend.  The dogs owners really missed that dog alot.  So after reading about the life of the dog, I started reading the obituaries around it.  I kind of liked them.  Everyone was different.  Some were mushy:  "Grandma was the most sweetest most kindest  most cutest Grandma in the universe."   Some were succinct:  "Jerimiah is dead.  Obituaries cost a fortune.  The end."  Some were for little babies.  I always felt true sorrow.  Some were for children.  Same reaction.  Some were for family members of people I went to school with.  Some oozed love.  Some were full of respect.  Some are poorly written which would most likely pose the question "Got Proofreader?".   Some were beautifully written which really did leave the world a better place not like this ridiculousness piece of bleh.    Anyway, I've never found any obits that rival the ones in the Deseret News.  It's because they'll obit anyone including a dog.  Even though I've been searching and searching, I have never found another dog one.  Dog ones kill me.   I'm sure there has been one, but its just too weird to look online in another city's obituary page more than once maybe twice a week.

I just like thinking about a person's life and their weird family.  Is that so wrong?

Aren't you glad there's people out there who appreciate  other people's efforts?

What? 

No.  I am not trying to make weird normal.  Its weird and I own it.

Confessional #3

I CAN"T WATCH ANY OF THOSE 'HOARDER' SHOWS ON TV BECAUSE I GET NAUSEOUS AND I START RETCHING.

This is NOT a lie.  The thought of a house full of cat skeletons and rodent poop makes me sick. Not to mention all that stinky junk. 

Confessional #4

I HOARD HAIR PRODUCTS.

I love everything about hair products.  I love the smell, I love the thought of trying a new one, I love the thrill of finding a really great one, and this goes for everything from shampoo to hairspray.  And my friend has a niece with her beautician's license and sometimes I get to go with them to the beauty supply store, and the thought of hair products at a discounted price makes me absolutely giddy!!!!  I can't stop buying them because what if I never ever ever get to go to a beauty supply store again (even though they will take me whenever I want).  I am compelled to buy 5 of one thing and then I find a better product so I'm stuck with 4 bottles of Sugar Shock up in my closet.  It is a problem people.  I'm not a rich woman. 



This needs to be over.  I can't take any more confessionals today.  I'm all vulnerable and naked now and I've spent my life trying to be clothed because, just trust me, it's better that way.

And I'm all about the world being better. 

Whatever People

 I argued with my niece Annie that my life has nothing to blog about.  If I were, to say, live around grandchildren I could make you so impressed with mine and unimpressed with yours that you would go to bed tonight feeling slightly bad about yourself.  And you would think that there were indeed perfect people out there and you are INDEED a slub on the fabric of your life.  I think my exact words to Annie were:

"Do you REALLY want to hear about how I killed a spider with my backscratcher and now I have to use the handle end to scratch my back so I don't get spider guts or the thought of spider guts on my back which transfers to my nightgown which transfers to my sheets which interrupts my TV watching in bed.?"

Ok.  Not my exact words because remember people can embellish on blogs and remember what I said about how I threatened to make you feel about your grandkids?  I mean it people.  I might become desparate.

I might be desperate because  I am finding that I am obsolete.  Blogging Obsolete.  First of all when I came in here last week to post, the landscape of blogspot.com  had changed (don't get me wrong, it needed to....I had frustrations) and the changes left me feeling like I was the Rumpelstiltskin of Bloggers and that in my 25 year sleep they had changed the way to do everything on this sight.  I can't get from place to place.  I can't import pictures...really great pictures.  I just don't have the fight in me people.  I don't have anyone to kill my spiders OR scratch my back and now this.  GeezeLouize 

I had a great blog planned for this week.  Glitch was here visiting.  We visited The Grandmother who is 88 or 89 (Her age is a question mark because she has two birth certificates...and she works this fact to her advantage whenever she can so now SHE doesn't even know how old she is...)  GloBug took Pictures and sent them to me.  I had a picture of GrandmaLoveIt sitting as close to Gitch as she possibly could without sitting directly on his lap.  Glitch was laughing and he really has a terrific smile which you might have enjoyed.  I had a picture of Gitch protecting his earlobes from a earlobe chewing crazy person in their late 80's.  I DID NOT have a picture of said Crazy firmly reiterating that she HAS NOT been to a garage sale in over 6 MONTHS.  6 MONTHS people!   I had a picture of Grandmaloveits' dining room table which contained the following items:

An Autumn Leaf Magnetic Mailbox Cover

A Red White and Blue Wooden Elephant hanging on a Jewelery Hanger Thing

A Red Teddy Bear

A Giant Clothespin

A Cement House Ornament with a Bird on it that says Flycatcher underneath the Pink silk Flowers it holds

A Brass Bell

A Glass Candelabra

A Porcelain Egg that opens to Hold Crap

A vase of fake tulips

A Christmas Ornament with Jake's name on it in the shape of an airplane

 More glass stuff

Yeah.  All this and no not one garage sale.  It would have been a sweet blog.  Only I COULDN'T SEEM TO GET THE PICTURES TRANSFERRED FROM MY COMPUTER TO MY BLOG.  Yeah.  I'm THAT stupid. 

I can't even find out how to go in and edit blogs.  

I can't move around the site.

I'm starting to feel like a slub on the fabric of my life and it pretty much stinks because my job is  to make you, the reader feel like that.

Go me.

Wouldn't you Know this would be Gross

So Yeah. I shook hands with my darling niece Annie and her brother's wedding to start doing this again once a week.  She's the reason I started up a blog in the first place, so if you want to get scientific about it I guess we can assume that Annie has blogcontrol over me.  All Powerful.  All knowing.  All Seeing.

And This is going to be short this first time, because:

A.  My suitcase is still in the trunk of my car from traveling home from her brother's wedding. (I've been home a day and a half.  And yes, this might be thought of as lazy pants)

B.  I think I might be dead or dying. 

Lets address A.

I chose to leave my suitcase in the car because after driving home from the airport in the dark with torrential rain, white knuckling it all the way because when I say torrential rain, I really mean it this time Oh shoot, I've lost my train of thought and I'm currently sweating profusely (see B).  Anyway, I spilled out of the car onto the garage floor and dragged myself into the (hem) powder room to (hem) how do you say vomit nicely?  So My suitcase is still in my trunk and I don't care who knows it. I don't know when It will be lifted out.  Perhaps when Mitch comes for a visit.

Now for B

I think I gave it away in A but I feel compelled to warn you that if you eat a chicken pecan apple salad (but I didn't see one single pecan and I was looking for them the whole time ) with no dressing at the Wendy's in the Southwest terminal at the Salt Lake City Airport then you will want to die and die quickly.  Only you won't die like you want but will linger on, sweating, chilling, and experiencing other unmentionable tortures which my boys came home from their missions calling boo.  With out getting totally sickening, let's just say, I am experiencing all the pleasures of a good and tasty food poisoning.  Including an IV drip in the ER.

Let's digress a little.  I drove myself to the ER.  I don't think that I should have.  I thought I was being self reliant and noble.  I was being stupid.  I include this as a warning to all five of you.  Don't scoff.  I just may have saved someone else's life.

Back to B.

So Yeah.  I'm a mess.  And I slept on a bed without sheets last night and trust me you don't want to know why.  The sad part is is I just might do it again.  sniff.

So anyone out there who MAY have made a comment on Allpowerful's blog about me not having posted a blog yet, who called me a liar,  and you know who you are yomama,  just feel my pain.  Go on.  Feel it.  

Excuse me now, Gatorade calls.

I feel fortunate to like the Purple.

Good Ol' Fashioned Bloggie Blog

I don't understand it. 

After all this time.  After all those "When are you going to blog?"s. 

 After remaining silent during the royal wedding.

 

After remaining silent during the great Christmas 2010 illness that had me tethered to the ladies room.

After remaining silent after hearing the news that I'm having another granddaughter.  (Go Lisa! Go Lisa!)

After remaining silent after taking up knitting.

  Remaining silent after Thanksgiving in St. Louie.

Remaing silent after many world class freak shows were witnessed by me, Mommacita.

  

Remaining silent after the Navy Seals reminded me that Dubers and his friends used to play Navy Seals Training in High school and stand there and torture each other with face slapping episodes to prove their toughness while I stood there and wondered what the heck.  

And last but not least, remaining silent after the Great Pinkie Toe Break of May 2011.  No Picture to follow even though I took one.  I don't know how to upload it from my iphone.  Just so you know it hurt like Crikee.  You don't ever want an appendage to be perpendicular to the thing it appends from.


If I examine too closely the impetus for coming back to this blog, then I might have to become my authentic self.  (By the way, if I hear the term authentic self one more time I might become inauthentic in order to spite the authentics. And then it would be requisite for me to take up spitting out the car window.  I've seen it done alot and I think I could do it if need be.)

So yes, ladies and gentlemen, here is my reason to stop my TV watching and express myself to the world.  Here is my need.  Here is my desire.  Here is the wind beneath my upper arms that sufficeth for wings. This is what moved me.  This is what caused the stirring of my heart.  My breathing in. My waiting to exhale.  This is it.  Here it is.  Finally.  The Reason:

Dear Doggie People,
If you are going to dress up your doggiechild in humiliating doggiechild skirts, and if you are going to go to the Subway drive through, and if you are going to let said doggiechild prance around in the back window and then after the prancing is finally done you let your doggiechild stand in your back window with it's rear end to the driver BEHIND you, then please please PLEASE PLEEEEEEZE put some underpants on your doggiechild.  Today I felt like I was looking up someone's dress through your back window.

And that goes for all kittiechilds as well.  Girl or Boy.  No matter.  Just don't want a tulle frame around all that stuff.

 Good Night and Thank You to all who when they want to wear a costume, they wear the entire ensemble.  Its the only decent thing to do.  You know you feel the same.

.

All is Well in Wellsville, or, I Think I Found Stars Hollow

Can you hear it?
Wait for it.......Waaaaaaaait for it.......   YES!  There it is!  Can you hear Andy of Mayberry whistling the theme song?  And can you see Opie kicking up dust with his fishin pole over his shoulder?  And can you smell Aunt Bea's blueberry pie comin' right out of the oven?  And hear Barney Fife shooting himself in the foot?  Yes?  ME TOO!

Because I was there in person today:  Mayberry RFD.  I was coated in retro.  This morning Jaqueostinky's family and I headed off to Wellsville (real name) for a 'Founder's Day Parade" even though it is really Labor Day today. 

(ps.   There's loads of low quality pictures to come....I was so excited by what I saw that all I did was point and shoot.  Aesthetics be forgotten.....  Lighting be dar ned.....)

First, the po-lice started off the parade with a bang.  Please note Gracie and Sophie off to the left side, not so impressed with them,  holding their WalMart sacks waiting for the candy throwing to begin.  And That Girl in the pink and white striped shirt?  Lets be keeping it real and say that she was strictly a kid from 2010.  She kept gathering candy in her space and then would run over and steal what had been thrown to my two little angels.  I wanted to kick her real hard and that was not very Mayberry of me.

Next we see the satisfied face of an assertive child who problem solved by running up to the candy throwers and flashing her dimples.  How very Grandma Margaret of her.

Next we have a larger woman being pulled by a smaller pony.  I'm just sayin.  It might have been too hot for this.

Next we have a softball team and one girl dragged her barkalounger up on the truck.  I know there is a sign that advertises a raffle, but that thing looked like someone's dad had already put several miles on it during 7 or 8 consecutive March Madnesses.

Here we have the Wellness Community Band.  Most of it's Participants were over 65, not that there's anything wrong with that.  My biggest regret of the day was not snapping a pic of the 85 year old woman

 that was banging on the bass drum.....Don't you just kick yourself when you miss the golden moment? 

 ps.  There were alot of suspenders in the band.

Band Enrapture

Wellness's Oldest Sweethearts.  So MAD about the blur because they were the cutes.

The UNREAL homemade glazed donut that I bought from one of Jaqueo's scouts

The Preston Idaho High School Marching Band.  Remember?  It's Napolean Dynamite's alma matar

SO EXCITING!

Pedro is the student body president AND plays the trumpet 

Socially Concious Demolation Derby-ists

Socially Unconcious Home Care Givers who make their Patients ride in a parade

Members of the A.M.R.S.  (American Medieval Re-inactment Society).  A particularly poignant quote from their flyer:  "A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act, and Monarchs to behold the swelling scene. . .

- Shakespeare, Henry V

If you join, there are CAMP OUTS!!!!

Please do not be offended by the next two pictures.  I just pointed and shooted like the camera said to do.

So now you've got yer wild ones, that at first glance have gotcha wondering:

"Are they or aren't they???"

.....And then you see the two blonde ones with red goo slathered on them and there's no more doubt. 

Just lots and lots of confusion and an urge to cover up your grandchildren's eyes.

For those of you who think my blogs are too long (you know who you are Glitch), you may find it rather noteworthy that I did not include pictures of Wellsville's Oldest Citizen which included a man in a straw hat, my grand kids bearing down on the candy throwers, the Queen of 1856 who really might have been THE queen they are talking about there, a ninn-compoop wearing a real bearskin and a real bearhead on his head, a float that celebrated the Golden Spike that had a woman who left her dentures at home, two tweens carrying a flag that announced the Excess Material Disposition Crew who were really just people who scooped up horse manure,  a cowgirl in sparklie tight pants, and a float carrying princesses that was covered with so many silk flowers that the first thing that popped into my head was "40% off coupon at Michaels."

So yeah....I edit.

If You're Not Family, You Probably Won't Be Interested in How Beautiful my Grandchildren Are, But if You ARE Family, then Buck Up & Act Interested

For a look at some BEEEEEEEEEEautiful Grandkids, click on this link:

LINK

and then leave me some unbelievable comments. Grandma Margaret, I Hope that you understand that you take the mouse arrow, position it over the word "link" that is just above, and then click. When you get to the page, then scroll down until you see some beautiful blondies in the orchard.

And then you will sigh and say: Mommacita, darn but you're blessed.