Day: November 12, 2024

Skip Today

What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?

I put off ironing until I have several pieces. It seems like too much trouble to get the ironing board out for just a piece or two. I am partial to cotton, so all my clothes have to be ironed. I love the crisp look and the clean smell of nicely-pressed cotton. I also appreciate that fact that starched cotton repels spills and spots. I never dreamed when I was a kid and hated crisply starched clothes that one day I’d be starching my own.

Odd Socks Day: Celebrate being Different

Odd Socks Day

Tue Nov 12th, 2024

Odd Socks Day

While it used to be embarrassing to be caught wearing two different socks that don’t match, now it has become commonplace and is even a fun fashion trend! In fact, many companies are now selling socks in packages where the pairs don’t even match. 

Odd Socks Day celebrates not only the freedom to wear whatever kind of socks people want, but it also makes a statement about embracing differences and being kind to people instead of bullying them for being unique. 

Hard Time Marrying Part 3

farm-wagonBy the time Joe pulled his mules to the door to unload his wagon, it was sleeting.  His life had never looked more hopeless as he brushed the icy hay from the tattered quilt covering the children’s burning faces.  Though it was unchristian, he’d half-hoped to find them already dead from the fever, solving the problem of their care.

He struggled to get them into the cold cabin where he heard the scurrying of a rat.  “Damn it all.  I got to bring the barn cat in.”

Laying them gently on his bed and covering them, he was able to rouse each enough to get a bit of water down.  Setting the cup to the side, he moved on to the fireplace to uncover the banked ashes, put a stick or two next to the backlog, rekindling the fire.  At least they wouldn’t die of thirst or cold.  It angered him to feel pity for them. That’s all he could do for them for the moment.

He hurried in with the provisions, the pathetic mercy the town had shown, leaving to get his horses tended, milk the cow and tend the stock.  Finishing his tasks, he miserably returned to the burden of the sick children fate had forced upon him.  Upon entering the cabin, the sight meeting his eyes nearly undid him.  A filthy, battered woman dressed in rags studied the little girl.  God in Heaven!  Would this nightmare never end? Had he buried the woman alive and now she’d scratched out of her grave?

Mutely, the woman clutched the child to her bosom protectively as though she thought he might put the two of them back in the grave.

“Oh my God.  I thought you were dead!”  This did nothing to set her at her ease.  Shamed, he turned his back mumbling.  “Poor wretch.  What she must be thinking?” Shame at having buried her, then trying to get rid of her sick children shamed him, bringing him lower than he’d ever been before.  I don’t know why I didn’t leave it alone when it was good enough.  He fled from the cabin and made his way to the barn, tossed some hay on a saddle blanket settled in to try to get some sleep.  Jack, his dog, and the barn cats settled in next to him, glad of the unexpected company.  He lay awake a long time, thinking of the girl who’d made him want a wife in the first place.

How to Navigate Directions: A Guide for the Directionally Challenged

            I’m not good with directions.  In fact, I’d have to improve considerably to even be bad.  Useless terms like left, right, North, South, East, and West annoy me.  If people actually expect me to get somewhere, they need to be more specific.  “Turn off the interstate at exit 5.  Go the opposite direction you’ve been going and go three streets past Brookshire’s.   Drive just a minute or so and you’ll see a restaurant with the big cow in the parking lot.  Don’t turn there.  Drive to the next red light and turn on the street that turns between the WaWa and that hardware store with the inflatable lumberjack.  Watch for the ugly house with the silk flowers in the bucket of that tacky wishing well.  Pass it up, but now you need to start driving pretty slow.  You’ll see a big, old white house with a deep porch and all those ferns, kind of like the one Grandma lived in at Houston, the one where the woman living upstairs tossed her dirty mop water out on my head when I was sitting on the sidewalk playing. Boy, did Grandma have something to say to her!  Remember, it was just across the street from that big, old funeral home.   I just love those old houses, but I’ll bet they are expensive to heat.  About six houses down on the other side, there’s a little, blue house. I believe it used to be gray. If you look hard, you’ll see an old rusted out 1950 GMC like Aunt Ada and Uncle Junior used to drive, up on blocks way off to the side of the shed.  Remember how they used to toodle around with all those mean boys bouncing like popcorn in the back?  Anyway, our house is the yellow one with the big shade trees just across from it.  You can’t miss it. There’s a bottle tree out front.”

            Now I can’t miss with those directions.

Facing Adversity: A Couple’s Final Journey Together

Jerry and JoEllen had been childhood sweethearts.  He had Cystic Fibrosis but did really well. He and JoEllen drifted apart while he was in college. JoEllen had left an abusive husband and was struggling to raise two toddlers on her own by the time they reconnected.  Jerry was well-established at his engineering firm and anxious to offer JoEllen and her boys a solid life.

Things were going well for them.  They were about to buy a house and planning a wedding when Jerry became jaundiced.  He was found to be in acute liver failure as a result of his long and complicated medical history.   I met them when it was my privilege to be his nurse.  JoEllen never left his side if she didn’t have to. They were such a loving couple.  It was heartbreaking to know their future together couldn’t be too long.

When it was obvious Jerry’s death was eminent, they made arrangements to get a marriage license so they could marry before his death.  Jerry asked for a hospital pass so they could marry and close on their home purchase. The doctor said he couldn’t legally write an order for such a sick patient to leave the hospital but was a very busy man and certainly couldn’t stop Jerry should he choose to elope.

They were married the next day and closed on their house. Jerry died in a day or so but not before he was able to make sure JoEllen and “his” boys would be well taken care of.