A Post To Ponder...

Yesterday I went into town to the hospital's Breast Center to get my mammies slammed. Always a fun trip for any of us, but that's not what this post is about. While waiting for my turn on the mashing machine I picked up a magazine that I hadn't read (the one with a picture of Palin with a gun slung over her shoulder on the cover) and was flipping through, scanning the articles.

Then one caught my eye, so much so that I read it over again. The author, a woman, was writing about being a member of a grudge holding family. So much so that after a particularly bad argument with her mother over the phone, she and her parents did not speak for 12 years. 12 YEARS!

She would receive a Christmas card, signed with their last names every Christmas, but other than that, no communication. One day she received a note from her father with, as she called it, three magic words... "I'm so sorry."

She said they began to write letters back and forth in which she found out from her father that her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Soon she and her husband drove six hours to visit her parents and she asked her husband what she could say after a 12 year separation. He said "How about hello? Ask them what they've been doing."

Her father set a turkey loaf on the table and they sat together for a meal, the first in 12 years, and it was the first to come for several years before her mom died. She had a chance that first year to take walks with her mother and talk about old times before the Alzheimer's took first her mother's mind, then her life.

That is what this post is about... lost time due to holding grudges. While she was fortunate enough to reconnect with her mother and her father, how awful it would have been if her father had not written those three 'magic' words and her mother had died with the grudge still being held. I have sibs that hold grudges, not to the point of not talking if we are at a family get-together, but it makes me sad that they cannot just let go and let it be.

And since I'm into keeping it real, I held a grudge against my sister for years and did not go out of my way to talk with her or to just drive out to see her when we were younger. When our mom became senile and didn't know us kids, I started thinking how much it hurt not to be able to communicate with her or anyone I loved and I decided during that time it took too much from me, physically and emotionally to carry a grudge. It just got to heavy to bear.

Since then, I've made the trip to see my sister, I've called her and we visit and talk about all the times we missed due to my stubbornness (my words, not hers) and my anger (again, my words). I feel better and lighter around her now. We can laugh and we can cry together. We can be sisters as sisters should be, relaxed and at ease with each other.

So if you have the "grudge family history" think about it. Is it worth the weight of carrying it around? Is it, like mine was, a defense mechanism to keep from being hurt by words or actions of someone else? And do you want it to be an example to your kids as how to act towards problems with other people, to carry that anger and pain around?

Just think about it. Her words sure struck me and I don't like the years that I lost, but I felt I needed to share my story with you. If this touches a nerve in you, you might want to just say, "Enough.". I'll get off my soap box. Getting my poor little mosquito bites slammed just made me pensive, I guess.

Next post I'll be all sweetness and light, maybe even funny.

I promise.

Okra In Oklahoma...

This is our little okra patch. Being novice gardeners, we decided that okra was something we needed to try growing, along with squash, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, garlic, green beans, blackeyed peas, watermelon and cantaloupe. Oh, and corn. But this is about okra. We planted two rows, about 20 feet long and we have had okra out the kazoo... Now, I love fried okra, but I'm going to have to start freezing it, I guess, because I've sent 3 batches to Texas to family and friends, I've sent several batches to friend around here and we've still got okra coming on...



This is a closer photo of some of the plants. There are some plants that have grown to over 5 feet tall. This shows the flower and also an okra pod.



This is the spent flower. Inside the flower the okra pod (or whatever you call it) is forming. As the pod grows, the flower shrivels up and sheds off as the pod gets longer...



Here is the flower, and in the background to the left is a spent blossom and you also can see, directly at the left of the bloom, the okra pod that is ready to cut off, take inside, cut up, roll in corn meal and fry up for supper with fresh out of the garden sliced tomatoes.... I would've taken a picture of that but was too hungry and I ate it allll up... burp... excuse me.



Here's a "did you know" for you... Did you know that okra is a member of the hibiscus family? I sure didn't and when I commented to my Bro that the flower sure looked like our hibiscus, he said, "duh... because it is a member of the hibiscus family." Well, duh, Mr. SmartyPants, if I had known would I have made that remark!? (If you click on the image, it will show you a bigger image and you can see how beautiful the flower is...)

Sibs... Whatever would we do without them...

Home Again...

Last Saturday my brother and sister-in-law called me and wanted me to meet them for brunch. They had driven up to Okla. City for a medical meeting, and since they were in the vicinity, decided to call so we could have a visit while they were up this way. We met at a Cracker Barrel (love those pancakes) and to make a long story short, they kidnapped me. Well, not really kidnapped since they had to follow me out into the country so I could get some clothes and drop off my truck and tell my friend that I was being abducted for a few days. They had not been to my home since we got it last year so they got to find out where in the boonies we were and got to see the garden and I dug up a mess of red potatoes, picked some tomatoes and okra and loaded up and headed south to Ft. Worth. My sister-in-law had finished her schooling a year ago to become an ordained minister, and while she is not looking for a church to be assigned to, she can, and has, married 'em and buried 'em and she tries to save folks souls in between, but last Sunday was the first time that she was going to take the pulpit of their church for the main Sunday service. Now, this is a fairly good sized church and she had been asked, instead of the associate pastor, to preach while the pastor was at conference , so she was, understandably, pretty nervous and she really wanted me and other family members there for moral and emotional support. I don't really understand why she wanted me there, since I basically am pretty much a heathen even though I do believe in God, about the only time I go to church anymore is when I'm in Ft. Worth visiting at their home, but she and I get along real well and she does value my opinion, which, of course, I don't offer unless I'm asked.... or mad, or just in the mood to opinionize. So that's the reason I've been away. I was abducted and my brother couldn't un-abduct me until yesterday because he was on duty at the hospital, but I'm back now and looking forward to speculating, cogitating and agitating on any thing that comes to what little mind I have left, and am glad to be back to my slower paced way of life.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Rejection Dejection...

I get so frustrated when my body rejects me. I was going to leave today to go visit a friend in Big D (the place I hate to drive in) and then go to Fort Worth to see family for a few days. I had running around I had to do yesterday, from pillar to post on the map, and was in the dang car driving for what seemed like hours....(7, I think) and I'm so wiped out I had to postpone my trip for a day. Fibromyalgia sucks big time. I know there could be a lot worse things to have to deal with, but this one is mine and I get angry, frustrated and depressed when my body says no more, thank you very much, but you have to lay it down. For all my life I've done pretty much anything I've wanted to do physically. I could go to work and come home and repaint the house, mow the lawn, weed eat and clean up, get up and do it again the next day. Now driving all over hell and half of Oklahoma puts me down for at least a day. Crap. I hate it, it sucks and now on to other and better things...

One of the reasons for going to visit down south, other than the fact that I also have to deal with withdrawal from my funny and slightly off the bubble sibs, is I'm going to help my baby Bro put tile on the walls of the shower in the master bath at their home. I love to do stuff like that, demo stuff and make it better than before. I don't claim to be a decorator, but I know what looks good to me and since he was born on my 3rd birthday (a Friday the 13th), I know what looks good to him and I feel like I can contribute to making something better for him and his wife. Other than that, we'll just hang out and laugh and enjoy each others company, maybe go see our oldest brother and get some coneflowers from my middle brother before I come home. Sis, I don't know if I'll make it out west this trip, but will talk to you at least.

But rest assured, I'm taking my 'puter with me so if I have any flashes of enlightenment, hilarity or bitchin'... I can pass it on...

That's all folks...