What's Your Road?

Is your road a highway, a countryside gravel, an inner city black top? Or an Interstate through Los Angeles, a paved side street to no where? Or an unstable, sometimes muddy, dirt road? We all chose the road we wish to take in life. Some are handed would appear unfair situations such as paralysis and blindness. Yet again they seem to be able to also choose which road to ride thru life on. Take my son who lives in Los Angeles. He is from a small black top main street town in mid America. Although he dislikes the traffic jams in L.A. his life follows the fast pace highways he drives daily. I believe the stand stills in Los Angeles traffic have a great purpose. They slow those folks down for a minute or two. Most of us choose the fast highways during vacation times only. I do wonder what studies would say about my paved street heart vs the fast highway hearts. Probably nothing. We all acclimate to our situations....whether good or bad. I have had visions of what I call "My Road," and whose on it. I have seen a slanted road, I have seen a sunny road, and I have seen people on my road, some in wheelchairs on the not so safe graduated gravel edges which means they need some life support to get back on track. Sometimes its a family member, other times its a friend. My other son chooses no road....he allows the Universe to bring him "his" perfect road because he thinks only positive therefore it will happen. Sometimes we are on the big magnificent highway of life and it storms....blows the trees across our road, floods the rivers and takes our road under water or ever breaks it apart and it ends. Then what? There is always another road to take, always a Plan B, Highway 151, or a Plan C, County Road T, and so on to get you back to your main road. Its called a Life Detour. Those aren't so fun and after too many lightning strikes, floods, and detours, sometimes we start to drive a little slower and find the need to pull over to the side and just sit there for a bit. Like the battery needs a charge. It's not our road that stopped, its our SELF that stopped us.

www.georgia.org/.../senoia_farm_dirt_road_lg.jpg

Terrible Accident

I was driving on Highway 12 to a clients home today. One of the first days it was above zero, in fact it was record 55 degrees....That is just to trick the trees' into budding, and the daffodils into blooming, and to give all of us North Central Folks a darn good needed break! I was enjoying the drive which is about a thirty minute jaunt north. I usually enjoy most of this drive as the countryside grows with majesty like maybe I am farther away from where I really am. Like in the mountains of some foreign land or something. ha. The snow is melting and the impending doom of the long bridge over the Wisconsin River is up and coming. I try not to think of it but it is ever present each time I make this journey. It might as well be the bridge collapse that killed so many in Minnesota. I cant help but think of the water and the coldness and how many vehicles are on it besides me. Are they too heavy? Is this one of the bridges on the list that need repair? I should have checked. STOP IT! All is well...Stop it! Turn up the radio and eat some pretzels silly person. Then I notice a trailer with its flashers on up ahead. Now what? Lord just let me get to where I am going ...no prob. Thanks. But wait. The trailer starts to wobble...yeh wobble. It then flips out and the back gate opens to what seems like a horrible unreality. I see black and white skidding and flipping, blood. What is that God? What is that? Take me away from this. I was concerned about the bridge collapsing into the Wisconsin River and I cant swim whether that would matter or not! Now this. Its a damn cow. What the hell anyway? I cant even scream, I cant call out because, to who? Take me from this now! Now! Help, help... then the adrenalin finds its way to me, from me. It is the answer I called for. I was born with it and here it is not only for me but for the moment. There is the black and white, laying aside the road wrenching in pain, dying. Why? I don't know...but IT IS! I go into some sort of mode like I always do for the dying....be they in need of living or in the need for dying I do. What the hell anyway? I park, yes put it in P....get out..RUN....sit down by the black and white and put her head on my lap....don't cry, don't cry... I love you as I look into her large eye, I care is what is passed on to her. Good positive energy is passed back and forth. I will walk through this with you, you are not alone. I am sorry for your pain but you are not alone. Let it go and move on. Our eyes meet on a plain so different from that cold blacktop. She and I meet with the hereafter on a golden pathway to a new place where there is caring for her and not only her worth in cash. What an amazing sight this was . Taking a journey with a dying animal on a highway to nowhere from somewhere ugly to somewhere beautiful and peaceful. I don't know her name or if she ever had one. I do know she was sweet and needed me on this day to help her cross over. I wish we could all have easier cross overs, but........I loved her, that Wisconsin Cow who fell off the wrecked truck on a sunny day in February. I think she was lucky. Hell is also being shot in the head at a slaughter plant where the Fed's don't pay any attention to her or how to help her pass. But I did and God did. Someone must have been praying for her somewhere. I thank them. Because my Aunt Berdie is no different. You know, the Auntie in the Nurse Home I go visit every day until she passes from heart failure from old age. I will be there for her just like I was for "Bess Cow" today on that same Highway to Heaven. Just a different place, different day different way. So did this really happen? Or was it the daily general anxiety disorder? Ya think? Or not?

Look Whose Sleeping With Me Now.....

And isn't she precious! Both of them are but it does get crowded on occasion. Lucy cat stays over on her side top right. Gracie dog on the other hand has much more faith in my love and honor for her as you can see. She lays out right next to me. As I put the covers back upon awakening, she gets a blanket avalanche. By the way she is not sleeping...she is faking it. Why? Because she hates the camera flash. The Granny flowered pillow is supposed to be her bed, but has turned out to be a large lump centered in my beautiful bedding ensemble. I cant spell that! Then we make morning coffee and I turn on the computer to see who has checked in. That is when Lucy makes her statement of need saying, "I sleep quietly on the top right but now is my turn." She sits on the scanner staring at me. After she has her one fresh large shrimp she beds down again in the chair in back of the photo where the old computer sits. So these are my friends. Wish they could dance, or help me clean the house, or drive the car sometimes, or get the mail, fold clothes, wash some! Bake cookies, make a meal, or just pic up after themselves. O Well, they don't talk back, spend any money, put others down, talk negative, wreck the car, drink alcohol, buy expensive toys like boats and baby tractors and so on. They just love me and sit next to me, sleep with me, watch TV, and go for walks with me. How much more peace could one ask for. Except a million $ anyway.

"OK, I'm Ready For You"

I found my snowcoat! My comforter coat! The Weatherman said tomorrow will be back at below ZERO once again. Oh yes we in the North Central area are quite wishing for a bit less below ZERO and bit more Sunshine. I wore my comforter coat to visit Auntie Berdie at the Nurse Home and even she noticed I was totally tucked in. From headie to toe. She asked me if I could fit in my car. I told her yes I figured it out but I never in my life want velour seats again. Maybe its just the cheap ones we stick to I don't know. Just never wear corduroy because you cant get out once your in. It's like Velcro and velour are from the same family and they definitely love to stick together. No matter what you want.
Back to my point! The Ground Hog's of America all saw something different today....me, I see the Sun shining in my front window brightly. How happy that makes me. Until I have to take the dog out in the below ZERO snow and ice covered yard. The only green in sight is a fake wreath across the street, second floor balcony. Thank God for Green trees at Christmas. It helps.

Wisconsin Lemonaide

This is how we folks in Wisconsin turn lemons into Lemonade! I happened to pass this scene this morning and found it to be so cool I turned around and took pictures thru my car window because it is so blasted cold here right now.... There is snow everywhere, hard snow, soft snow, dirty snow, iced snow, and more snow. The streets are snow covered as well as most roofs and decks and porches and window wells and cars are squeaking due to salt dried on the brake drums and everything else underneath and around them. It was like fingernails on a chalk board each time I tried to open my car door it was so white with salt from the roads. So I sat in line at the Octopus Car Wash so I could get the underflush only to have my trunk freeze shut on the way home. Snowmobilers are running into deer and ducks and people are doing circle donuts on the way to work, some coming out alright and others not so good.... So when I saw this snowbank painting the first thing I thought of was, "Now that's how Wisconsin people turn Lemons into Lemonade. Or Snowbanks into art, or unhappy mailman into happy again! We should all make art .....this is a good time for the Graffiti painters to get out and paint away without destroying property....Graffiti Snowbanks!

Ass-r-Face

My Auntie Berdie, et al GodMother is 96 or 97 years of age...She has been moved to a Nurse Home two blocks from my home. That should be all I need say eh? Not! I have been to see her daily for a week now..... She has congestive heart failure which means she is good for two days and bad one. It means her organs are not doing so well because her heart isn't doing so well. The good news, (or is it?) her mind is very good. What that means is she knows when the nurses suck canal water at their job which is caring for her @ $8,000.00 a month give or take a grand.

Back to my point. Tonight I curled her hair, (yesterday we did her nails a pretty pink) and picked up her dinner from across the hall, be that ten feet, and fixed her blankets just like she needs them, not to heavy on her feet. Then after dinner she rang for help to get herself ready for bed. I asked her where was the cream for her face? She didn't know so I searched it out. It was in a little cup or so I thought. I brought it out and started spreading it on her forehead as I had done the other day also. From outer space or somewhere a strange a voice came into mine and said outloud to Berdie, "Lord I hope this stuff is for your face and not your ass!" We both started laughing so hard it scared me that Berdie might stroke out on my watch! A Nurse heard the commotion and came in and I told her the funny I made, thinking it really was a funny.... she said, "That lotion is for her butt!" Then we started laughing once again.... Berdie may live forever if we keep this laughing gig going.....

Then it was back to the waiting game for aide Barbara to come and ready Berdie for bed....Barbara lacks true kindness...I have tried to reach her to no avail because as she told me herself, "I would rather be home!" I watch her ignore patients at dinner time when they ask for help. Very sad to watch human beings come to such disrespect from a few fat women, or youth with no sense of life. Let me add there are some very wonderful helpers at this Nurse Home. The elders have so much to offer and even if they don't they deserve love and kindness and respect. Their bodies are shutting down and they cannot help it. That gives no one the right to mis use their existence. I am knowing there is a reason Berdie was moved two blocks from my home! Ya Think?

msnbcmedia4.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/

The Funeral

Everyone at funerals always says, "Lets hope we meet at a different setting next time." But what setting would that be? None except a wedding and depending on all our ages, that may be a stretch. I saw folks I hadn't seen since the last funeral. And do watch the mouth...I saw someone say, "Ya, (Wisconsin lingo) I remember you when you looked so pretty." LOL LOL S H U T U P DUDE!! Then my Mother pipes in and says, "Oh he didn't mean that, I remember you then also." Double whammy ya think? There were the people whose memory cells were on high alert vs love alert. There were those we love to see, those we don't love to see, those we tolerate, those we hug, those we dismiss, those we don't know, those we do. That's a funeral or is it? What about the dude that died? I remember him...and his brothers and sisters, and Aunts, Uncles, and me..... I remember him. He died on Christmas Eve all by himself in his truck while plowing snow. Wisconsin Snow can do that crap to a person this year, (damn too much of it.) He had children, and a wife and grandchildren and EMPHASEMA! He was tired and he couldn't seem to beat the smoke. So he is gone and we are here and we need to find something positive about this. So I did. I loved all who were there as well as the deceased.And I ate a barbecue and some chips which are still biting me back. I then went to my God Mother in her new nurse home (she is 96+, hell I lost track) and I instigated discussions about her dead husband and all good things I could think of. She is dying......you try to think of good things to say to a 96+ aged person who is dying. I am good at it and did what I am good at. Bringing forth good news.....even to a dying person. Bless you David who died alone in the snow. Bless You! And thank you for the opportunity to see all the relatives and love them no matter who or what they are like... Thank you for your life no matter what it was.....cause its not my call to judge it. Just to honor and love you as a person who lived here and did what you/he could to live here and get through it good or bad or both. Love you Forever David.