Marriage

 I/we have been married for over 46 years now.  I say this because there comes a time when, in those 46+ years you can obviously get aggravated with your spouse.  You tolerate, overlook some things but it's all a give and take, and acceptance.  I say this because lately The Hubby has been aggravating me to the point of me exploding at him.  I will admit it is all me doing the exploding.  It is 6:30 in the morning and I thought The Hubby was getting ready to head to the office where he NEEDS to be getting the invoices ready for me to come in and type, but he's not.  Let me back up a bit.  I have had a lot on my plate, mentally, what with Baby Max and being there for Af and Nick and little Min while they deal with his birth and all that may happen there.  I'm also dealing with, in my heart, the more immediate health issues that are my sister's cancer diagnosis and the thought of losing her.  I have a lot on my mind. Since my hip surgery, The Hubby has been absolutely awesome with taking care of me and stepping up with doing the dishes and stuff.  Monday morning he decided to clean the sinks in our bathroom.  He cleaned toilets the other day.  As usual there is now, never a dirty dish in the sink, EVER!  And now, this early AM, after what I thought was the sound of him heading out the door was not that!  6:30 AM, he is running the vacuum.  He said something the other day about cleaning baseboards and I just kind of put that back in my mind, but this morning, he is running the vacuum.  Okay, should I be fine with this step up in his actions around the house lately, or should I feel, well, like he thinks I'm not a good housekeeper.  I don't know what I should feel. I'm kind of pissed off about it really.  I'm telling you if I don't do something he feels needs to be done when he thinks it should be done he will do it.  Mind you we've had a cleaning person every two weeks for 30+ years and we don't now (long story.)  So all this cleaning stuff has fallen on me, US!  It's not like our house is a pigsty, it's not, just a bit dusty really.  So I am sitting here typing on my laptop, enjoying my coffee and he is slaving away vacuuming the entire house.  How would you feel if all of a sudden someone took over the management of your house.  I mean I quit doing his laundry and ironing 30+ years ago after he started complaining that I wasn't doing it right.  He has taken over the dishes thing because he says I haven't done it right for 46 years of marriage.  Ummmm, how should I feel, grateful or am I getting ready to be unleashed upon with anger.  I JUST DON'T KNOW!  Okay, DO NOT get me wrong, I love that he is doing this stuff because frankly, I DON'T HAVE TOO!  BUT, inside I have mixed emotions about it all.  

Oh, I'm making a mountain out of molehill, maybe...

continued to the next cleaning surprise.

Hope Chest of Dreams

Recently I read a book by Jennifer Weiner called The Summer Place.  It was about a family that were "stuck" together during the time of Covid when it first took hold.  They all ended up encapsulated in the parents home, husband, wife, and children, like many of us.

Because they had "time on their hands," the husband began purging the house of non-essential stuff, in his eyes.  Wow, that book triggered some marriage stuff for me.  The Hubby is constantly trying to get me to get rid of "MY STUFF"  because he sees no need for it, he has no use for "MY STUFF."  How do we get to those places.  We have been married for nearly 47 years now and we have amassed a lot of stuff.  It's not just in piles everywhere, well, maybe in my closet there is, and I've tried to cull, we all do at times.  But why in the hell is it always "MY STUFF" that he wants to get rid of.  I can tell you why, it's because the house is mostly my domain and anything he deems to collect or hang on to he conveniently has buildings to store the stuff.  I don't have that luxury.  That desire of his to get rid of "MY STUFF" can set me off sometimes, it's not pretty.

When do we start that keepsake thing.  I know for a fact that I did start in childhood.  When we were children, my siblings and I would go to Greatgranny's for a week in the summer, and we frequently went to the local junk store.  Oh goodness, that was great fun and I decided that I would start collecting for my hope chest, dishes to be exact.  Lord knows I don't have any of those things now, well, maybe a couple of knick-knacks.  But in my era of growing up there was still the concept of a hope chest, marriage is the future.

I had a hope chest.  You see that trunk under the bird cage (that's Bird, the parakeet.) That trunk I had was given to me by my Greatgranny.  It belonged to her sister Mary, who died after her appendix ruptured, she was 16 years old.  The trunk was in an outbuilding on the property and not in good shape.  At the time a friends mother fixed up trunks and gave me pointers to fix this one up.  I worked and worked on it, sanding, staining, lining the inside, all to be MY hope chest.  I still have that trunk and it still holds a lot of memorabilia, pictures, letters, my mother's wedding dress, my wedding dress...

In the 70's and before, all the future had to hold for most young women, me included, was to get married and have children.  I was not different in that desire.  I filled that trunk with all kinds of things I thought I needed when I got married, tea towels, dishes, salt & pepper shakers, hope chest kinds of things.

I really didn't have any other kind of prospects or encouragement from my parents or grandparents for anything else.  I was an okay student because I just did what I needed to do, no more than was needed to get out of high school and fulfill that dream.  

I did just that with average grades.  I graduated, worked in my Daddy's machine shop for a bit, met a guy and got married. 

Don't get me wrong it WAS what I wanted and I achieved my goal, and it was the best thing ever.  I have had a wonderful life.  Sure there have been ups and downs, you can't be married for 47 years and not have ups and downs.  It is a journey and I would not trade it for anything.  My life is the best, I have two wonderful daughters and two beautiful granddaughters and a precious grandson on the way, two great SON'S-in-law!  It IS what I wanted out of life.  In achieving that goal I did add going on to college and 13 short years later I received my bachelors degree.  We have also maintained a highly successful business for 43 of those 46 years.  Honestly it has been the best life I could have ever had. 

 

A Purging I Will Go (and more)

Tulips, red and pink tulips.  Yesterday one of the health people who sat at Gloria's bedside for many hours sent flowers to us.  I think the girl actually went to high school with one of the grandsons and not on Gloria's care but she cared for the family and spent time sitting.  She sent the tulips because during some of the rantings that my mother-in-law was rambling on about was that her favorite flowers were red and pink tulips.  It was so thoughtful of the sweet friend and classmate of Jason's.

For the past several days I am finding myself bored, yes bored.  I don't feel much like painting and am spending a lot of time just sitting on the couch staring out in space.  These losses lately are almost more than I can stand.  I'm also finding that I am angry.  I'm angry at a lot of people and things that are happening in my life and the WORLD!  I'm finding it tough to have a voice, not finding my voice, and to be able to express it.  Honestly I feel my vocal cords are tied, so to speak.  If I open my mouth I am quickly shut down for expressing my opinion and I'm finding that almost intolerable, which is making me quite angry at everything and everybody.  Yesterday I had a luncheon with some of my high school friends that I haven't seen in well over a year.  While nearly through with my meal one says something about NOT being vaccinated, not going to get vaccinated!!! My mouth dropped to my lap.  (Luckily I wore my mask and the restaurant was nearly empty and I was at the end of the table pretty far from the others that were saying this stuff!)  They went on to pop off about it being experimental, they already had Covid and were never sick, some saying they've never had vaccines...blah, blah, blah...I said WHAT!!!!!  Then I said, "that is why...." but I couldn't finish that statement.  I didn't want to get into an argument, and it was going to be one.  I acted like my phone got a text and that I had to go to handle some "funeral" stuff for The Hubby and I was OUT OF THERE like lightening!  STUPIDITY, and I will not be going again to any of the luncheons they have for a very, very long time.  

Now...on to something else.

With the help of my girls I've been purging various things from my house.  (This act has some issues too.)  One of the things I've been wanting to do is purge my cookbooks.  I had probably close to 100 cookbooks and I most never use them.  Oh, I do enjoy reading them when I get them but I almost never use them.  

There are some exceptions:  Pioneer Woman, Barefoot Contessa, Jamie Oliver and I have The Cake Bible and Pie Bible that I gave to Momma and Daddy many years ago.  There are, of course, a few others that I have kept that I do use and cherish.  I also have some extremely old ones.  One of them I checked is 121 years old and I believe came from my Grandma's.  I even had duplicates of several of Ina Garten's (Barefoot Contessa) cookbooks.  Not sure how that happened.  Those boxes in the first photo are gone, BYE-BYE!  The Hubby carted them off very quickly.  I had THOUGHT about having a garage sale but he apparently had other thoughts and took action before I had a chance.  This is another place where I'm having some issue.  Yes, I do have a few "collectibles" around the house.  They are not invasive, well, maybe my books and Longaberger baskets could be seen that way.  But, the books are on shelves, not lining walkways down the hall and the baskets were in a closet on shelves.  It is my house too and these are my things that I love.  The Hubby is just too quick to agree to get rid of stuff, MY STUFF in particular.  He sees no value in my things, and chooses to take it all to Goodwill without thought to what I want to do with it.  I am not a hoarder at all but I can see where a person could go off the rails with that.  It kind of takes me back to an incident that happened just before I married The Hubby.  

My family lived in a small two bedroom house for a family of five.  My sister and I shared a bedroom and a bed.  I was 19 getting ready to marry and in the living room I had a trunk that I had recently refurbished.  It was a trunk that came from Jay, and was in one of the barns.  It belonged to my Greatgranny's sister, Melissa, who died after her appendix ruptured at age 16.  I cherished it, still do.  It was beautiful when I finished and was full of some of my things to take into my marriage and memorabilia from my childhood.  The Hubby and I had rented an apartment a couple of weeks before we were to be married but were NOT living there because it was being painted.  My father (probably drinking) became enraged about the trunk in the house one evening and wanted it out immediately.  The problem was the apartment wasn't really ready but he was yelling in my face and threatened to take it to the trash.  He was going on and on about some of my other things like a few of my books (I only had a few at that time.)  He was absolutely unreasonable about it.  I was distraught.  He was almost wanting me to move out right then for some reason I felt.  I think there was even talk that I move to Granny's.  I ended up taking it all to my Granny's and moving it to her garage until we could move to the apartment.  This incident has plagued me for years and I often feel that The Hubby is doing the same thing my Daddy did.  I feel devalued and well, angry.  I have dishes that I love that were my granny's and his mother's that he is on a tear for me to get rid of too.  This hurts, it hurts a lot.  I'm in agreement that it is time to declutter my cabinets but frankly why is it all MY stuff!  Why is he after me, like a child to toss out my things, things that I value, not monetarily but with memories and ties to the past.

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Back to purging my recipes.  Now that the cookbooks are purged it is on to the mountain of recipes that I collected over the years.  

I've ripped, cut and glued so many recipes to little index cards. I have four index boxes and another basket of loose ones, not in any kind of order at all.  So yesterday I started going through each and every single card purging.  If I ripped it from a magazine then generally I am tossing.  I have some criteria that I will keep though:  a list of few ingredients, still looks like I want to cook it, handwritten.  Those that are from magazines and I keep I plan on trying and if they're good I'll keep if not, then out they go.  My goal is to possibly make the recipe, take photos and have either a blog or a Facebook account that has nothing but these recipes, maybe a recipe a day or something.  It's an idea and I hope I can make it happen.  It has been suggested that I scan all the recipes and I may but honestly I love going through the cards.

I also ran across this little jewel, a Strawberry Shortcake spiral notebook.  Actually, I know the lady that created Strawberry Shortcake.  She lives in Tulsa and is in my art group.  When I opened the notebook I found it had several pages of handwritten recipes that were in Granny's handwriting.  There were some of hers, family and some of her friends. Best of all it was Granny's handwriting.  I will never get rid of that.  

THEN I saw this one from Mrs. Boggs.  If you are a lifetime Tulsa (or Broken Arrow) person you would know of Boggs Farms in Bixby (not Jenks where Granny wrote that.)  Mrs. Boggs lived on the huge property in a two story house and there were fields and fields of veggies that she grew and sold.  It's where we got our Silver Queen corn, green beans, tomatoes for canning, okra, peppers, cucumbers, etc.  We even got to go in the fields and pick sometimes.  I will try this for sure.

My question, how many more of MY THING are going to have to be tossed to the trash heap before he is satisfied.  It's a feeling of my self worth being challenged.  

Happy Anniversary To US!

This past week this guy, my guy and I celebrated 44 years of marriage.  I CANNOT believe that much time has passed.  It just seems like yesterday that these very young babies, US, met, fell in love and said "I do!"

Lots of stuff has happened in those 44 years, good, bad, ugly, wonderful, magnificent...the words can go on forever.

We've forged a wonderful life together, a business together and created a fantastic family together.  Our daughters, oh our daughters.  I cannot be more proud of them and their journeys in their lives and they've given us two beautiful granddaughters that I love more than life itself.  

Happy Anniversary to my one and only...here's to another 44.

Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo Baggins, yes that was his name.  About a year or two after we moved into our new house there came a horrible rain storm.  The Hubby came inside and told me to step outside and listen to a sound he wasn't sure of.  I did and from around the house I heard a kitten screaming.  The Hubby ran out in the rain and there in a huge deep puddle in the grass was a very, very tiny kitten splashing around, drowning.  I knew we had some feral cats around and possible kittens but had only seen the momma one.  And there she was under the bushes watching as one of her babies was drowning.  I snatched him up and rushed inside to dry and warm the tiny thing.  He was still nursing a bit as I quickly found out as he started nuzzling on my t-shirt.  The Hubby went to the store and bought canned food and baby cereal and I mixed it up with a bit of milk and he was able to lap it up.  That sweet little thing became my constant companion after that.  Momma said to NEVER EVER have a male cat or dog as they would pee everywhere but I didn't care.  I loved this little guy like nobody's business.  He grew and grew and grew and became a loving pet for both of us, even though The Hubby did not like cats.  I named him Bilbo Baggins as I had just finished reading The Hobbit and he reminded me of Bilbo.  When I sat down he would get in my lap and suckle my t-shirts all the time which told me that he thought me his mother.  That big ole' Tom cat was huge and still nursing on my t-shirts.  We took him to the vet, got him fixed and gave him a very loving home, better than living the life of a feral.

That was about 1977, then September 1979 sweet Ms. B came.  The whole time I was pregnant Bilbo would sleep in her infant carrier and her baby bed, because he was my baby, or so he thought.  It's funny too because when we came home from the hospital he ceased altogether nursing on my t-shirts.  He weaned himself because a new baby was in town.  Don't get me wrong that big boy still loved to cuddle and nuzzle my chin and purr like crazy.  

BILBO BAGGINS

Sadly, about 5 years later he started getting very sick and taking him to the vet we discovered he had feline leukemia.  It was when the world was finding out about the disease and there were no vaccines yet.  I nursed him back from death's door a couple of times and then one day he just crashed.  I rushed him to the vet but it was too late.  He passed away while the doctor was trying to examine him.  I was heartbroken.  He was our first pet as a married couple.  My sweet boy.  Miss him still.  

Of course we went on to have a few more kitties after him but he will always be my first as a grown up.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

I have been silent lately as we have been dealing with some important life decisions and have kept it pretty quiet until family knows.  As many have seen here on my blog the pictures of our "second home," the cabin.  We have enjoyed this lovely slice of heaven for 13 years now but things are about to change.....

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The Hubby turned 60 this summer and my 60th is coming up in June.  Well, retirement is looking him in the face and he is obsessed with it.  It is all he thinks and talks about and even when not talking I can actually hear the squeaky wheels in his brain thinking about it, CONSTANTLY!  We....He have decided that we need to consolidate a bit, pull in as he feels stretched too thin with properties and all they entail to take care of and obviously the first to go, in his mind, is the cabin.  It WOULD NOT be my first choice but he is right we have not been going up there as much as we've been too busy with work and just stuff.  There are a lot of other reasons but those are the main reasons.  

So, reluctantly I am a partner in this 40 year relationship, we have to get on the same page, so we have officially put on the market our little slice of heaven. 

He says we may buy back in the area again but I would only want OUR cabin back, not any other.  I am really heartbroken about this decision, HEARTBROKEN! 

 

Clayton will miss the runs in the meadow.  I will miss my backdoor friends!   

It may take a few weeks or it could take a year to sell but now every time I go there I will be saying goodbye and maybe for the last time.  I am going to take it in, every single inch, every time we are there.

Messy vs Neat

They call me "Messy Marvin"

 (my closet)

They call him "Neat Nick"

(his closet)

Opposites attract!

Once Upon A Time

Once Upon A Time

This sweet little girl dreamed of meeting a boy.  

She rode her bicycle, round and round the block, playing with friends and dreaming of marriage and babies.

 This precocious little boy wanted to play his with toy soldiers and friends and climb trees.  Life was an endless summer day.

Then one day some friends decided to play matchmaker and unite these wayward souls. 

It was as if their worlds were meant to collide, to unite.  

37 years ago today they began a life,together.  They built a stable foundation of love, laughter and unity.

They created a wonderful life and brought into it two beautiful girls. They raised them to be strong, intelligent, and independent young women, and sent them out into the world to take it by storm!   

Their girls have created great paths for their lives.  Bringing new life and loves to the fold. 

Once upon a time, 37 years ago today a young couple dedicated themselves to each other in marriage and created this great life.  

Today, 37 years ago, Robert and I were married and set out on our path, together!  

Happy Anniversary my sweet mister!  I love you!