MARCH

I am thankful for the hints of spring we are experiencing now. Temperatures are in the 70's and we are getting plenty of rain. I don't mind, not after the frigid weather we lived though a couple of weeks ago. Our gas heater went out and we had to live through some of the coldest temperatures we faced all winter with space heaters. We worried about the water freezing but we got off lucky. Mama wasn't as lucky. Her pipes froze. Thankfully, they didn't burst.

I don't think we would have been nearly as comfortable if it weren't for Mama and our friend, Joann. Mama gave Donny an infrared heater for Christmas, and Joann generously lent us her extra heater during our crisis. Believe me, we needed them. 

The bedrooms were cold as ice. It reminded me of the times I sent the night at my grandparent's house in the winter when I was a kid. My grandmother always stacked up plenty of quilts and usually put a hot water bottle in the bed for my feet. She also let me wear her mother's flannel granny gowns. I felt warm and toasty in my cold, cold room wrapped in my sweet great granny's old gowns.

I was basically a hermit until we got the heat back on the next week. Now, I am becoming a little bit optimist and that frightens me. I'm like Chicken Little. I'm afraid the sky will come tumbling down on my head if I get too cocky or happy.

Donny and I started walking for exercise again and I'm able to walk twice as far as he does now on our treks. He comes home after a few turns around our track and leaves me to walk until I give out. 

I hated walking when I first started but I knew that I'd eventually hit that plateau that people talk about where your body kicks in and starts to "sing" with energy. I hit that peak about six or seven turns around the parking lot where we exercise and get pumped up and want to walk faster and farther every time. I sure am glad. I missed that when I was recovering and the weather was bad.

I've been cooped up in the house too long. It's time to get moving to get healthy. Katie and Joann go to the gym to exercise now so I don't have my walking buddies any more. That's alright. Donny and I are about the same speed anyway. You know ... old farts. We get plenty of walking in when we get started.

Donny actually called me skinny tonight. I don't know if he was being facetious or was really serious. He handed me a dinner plate and said, "Here. You can go before me cause you need to eat, you're so skinny."

What do you think? Was he paying me a compliment, or was he trying to be funny? You can never tell with Donny.

We eat cafeteria style and everybody gets their plate and moves on to the dining room. Our dining room table belonged to my grandmother. I like having family dinners at the same table I've sat at with my grandparents. It's a family thing.

On another note, Donny got his drawers all in a tangle because he hates the pictures I posted of him when he had surgery last year so I decided, in the name of fairness, I'd post a picture of me when I was in the hospital. Just so you know, I look pitiful so you have my permission to feel sorry for me a little but I'm all better now so don't worry about me.

Everybody has to go through their own journeys and we all have burdens we have to deal with. The important thing is to not let the burdens own you. Sometimes you have to cling to that glimmer of hope. We all do.

I love you guys.

Are we even now, Donny?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Heather, Jami, Dana, Mike, Mary Jane, Johnathon, Jason, Alex, Patsy, Sunshine

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

RIP
Jerry White, Debbie Chitwood,
Crick Marshall, Mary Bell Carter, Evelyn Chastain, and Lela Smith

REMEMBER
Daylight Saving Time, St Patrick's Day, Spring, Palm Sunday

AS ALWAYS

PIO

Best Laid Plans

I planned on cooking turkey and dressing last weekend for my birthday dinner but didn't get it thawed in time. I tried thawing the turkey in a cooler, but made the mistake of putting ice on it right away. It froze into a block of ice. I should have let it start thawing first, before covering it in ice. Live and learn, I reckon. I finally cooked it on Sunday.

The turkey turned out great and, despite a couple of meltdowns when I panicked, everything was delicious. To make it feel like a festive celebration, I made deviled eggs, and potato salad, to go with my turkey and dressing. 

I tried calling my parents but nobody answered the phone so I called Scout and told him I was fixing my birthday dinner, and invited them. Scout promised to come by later for leftovers. He had already eaten because he forgot I was cooking.

Oh well. So much for my family party. I didn't mind, though. Donny, and Colt, and I were more than willing to tear into everything and stuff ourselves silly with our feast. I don't cook turkey and dressing very often so it was a treat.

I got to eat turkey and dressing sandwiches for a couple of days, too. I love leftovers.

By Wednesday I knew I wanted something else to celebrate my birthday, so I made a pear pie. I know people usually have birthday cakes, but I love pies.

One year a friend of Donny's gave him some pears and I made a pear pie out of them. It was delicious so now I make pear pies whenever I can. If you like apple pies, you will probably love pear pies, too. 

There is a pear tree where Scout lives so he's given me some pears that I put up in the freezer. I got out a couple of boxes and thawed them. I added sugar and cinnamon after they thawed. I also made a flaky pie crust. 

I don't usually brag on myself but I have to admit it turned out really good.

I had a nice low key birthday and got to celebrate it over several days like I wanted to. It's easier to celebrate birthdays when you get older. You don't have to try to impress anyone, or do anything you don't want to do.

Nobody pays attention to your birthday when you get older so it's not a big deal. I got simple presents from my family this year and I was happy with everything I got.

I had to pick Scout up from work on my birthday so I talked him into putting my new tag on the car for me. I really appreciated that.

Colt went to Dairy Queen and bought me a hot dog and a banana split one night. I thought that was really sweet.

Donny came in with an empty 2 gallon bucket they get belzone in at work. I like to use the 2 gallon buckets for mulch buckets because they have a lid and insects can't get in them. That was useful. 

Momma called and sang to me. Who could ask for anything more?

My birthday would never be complete if I didn't get something for myself. This year I went to Kmart and bought a ceiling fan for the washroom and a bunch of yellow rubber ducks for my swimming pool. I also got a cool pink and yellow straw hat for $3 the other day.

I know we're supposed to be in a drought but it's been raining for weeks now. Every day I think about getting in our swimming pool it gets cloudy and thunders so I haven't been in the pool very much this summer.

I can't wait to get in my pool wearing my pink and yellow straw hat, and cheap sunglasses, surrounded by rubber duckies, floating around and around in circles in my backyard.

I may be old but I still feel like a little kid inside. That's why I thought it would be fun to have rubber duckies floating in our pool. Everybody needs a little whimsy in their lives. 

That's how I celebrated my birthday this year. How was yours?

AS ALWAYS

PIO

*****

Consider becoming a follower of Resaca Rose.

Thank you.

Random Shots

Bees in November?

I spy two monkeys up a tree.

60 Years Together.

A cheeky monkey ignoring me.

A monkey's mother.

AS ALWAYS

PIO

Who's Keeping Score

We have a running joke in the family about who is the better driver; or should I say, really, who is the worst driver. Needless to say, "yours truly" held the record for a very, very long time and was teased and reminded constantly. Thanks boys.

When the kids were young they were with me the time I was backing out of the carport and tore the five foot wooden gate right off the hinges. It had so much momentum it bounced into the yard. Thank goodness I was driving the Mercury Marquee. It was an old yellow station wagon, built Ford tuff. 

Another time I scraped the side of Scout's Toyota as I was backing up in the driveway in my Ford truck. I didn't even see it. Donny scraped the other side.

One time when I was driving through Ringgold, I screeched up to a four-way stop so hard that it threw the timing chain off. Don's step-daddy, Charlie, said he'd never seen anyone do that before. I didn't know whether to be proud of that, or not. I think I was driving the station wagon that time, too. It was like driving a Sherman tank. The car was practically invincible.

I was trying to pull the boat out of a campground.The axle got hung and I nearly pulled the wheels off of the trailer. It was so warped we couldn't drive it home until Don crawled under it and tried to straighten it out. He was afraid I was going to take out some mailboxes on the windy little roads near Harrison Bay. Frankly, I was too.

I've had more close calls than I care to remember. Once I almost ran over some obnoxious woman when I changed lanes in town. I was driving the truck with a big white camper on it and it was hard to see out of the mirrors. I thought I was safe so I moved into the right lane. I pulled into the Chamber of Commerce parking lot and started to get out.

I didn't realize I had cut someone off until a car whipped in beside me and a woman started screaming at me because I had cut her off. She claimed I hadn't given a signal but, since my truck is old you have to turn the signal off and on by hand, I had turned it off when I stopped and couldn't prove it to her.

She was screaming about how I could have killed her baby and wouldn't shut up. I told her I was sorry I hadn't seen her but she must have gotten in my blind spot because I had checked the mirrors. I told her that I wouldn't have hit her baby, I would have hit her side of the car, if anything. She wanted to turn me into the police. I told her to go ahead and tell them what happened and see if they cared. I hadn't done anything on purpose and nobody was hurt so she should shut up. She finally left and I never did see the law.

Those are just a few of the examples of my bad driving record. 

One day Donny, and the kids, and I were in the backyard. Donny was going to move the station wagon. At the time we had a homemade power pole in the middle of the yard. Donny backed clean over that thing! I was so happy. Finally, somebody else had done something stupid while driving. The mantle had been passed. The best part about it was the fact that everybody saw. Scout, Colt, Jason, Allan and I had witnessed it. 

Scout told me about a couple of close calls but he managed to avoid having a wreck. Scout was driving in the country on a holiday when a car veered into his lane and nearly hit him. He said he had to drive halfway in the ditch to dodge the  other vehicle. Scout was afraid he would flip the truck. He thought the driver had to be drunk as a skunk to do that.

Everything was fine until Colt started to drive. He was terrible at tailgating other vehicles. I was always telling him to back off and not get on people's bumpers. Colt drove my Buick to Dalton College every day. One morning he rear-ended a car that was turning in to the school at Valley Point. He called me very upset. He figured I would be furious. I was just grateful that nobody was injured.

I am thankful that the guys will try to fix everything. They worked together to cut and replace the front of my Buick with another front end. Thankfully, with Scout's car expertise and Donny's skill in building, the car was perfectly square. No shop could have done better.

The title of worst driver has been passed on to Scout's girlfriend, Kim, now because she hit Colt's truck after it had been restored. She scraped the fender. She hit it while it was sitting in our driveway. Sound familiar? Welcome to the family, Kim. 

AS ALWAYS

PIO

Old People

One day Scout called me from his cell phone to ask me if he had left his keys in Colt's car. I said I didn't know but I'd go check for him. It was about to come a storm. I ran out to the car and checked the passenger side in the front and back but couldn't find any keys. I looked between the seats and then went around to check the driver's side in the floorboard. Colt's and Scout's coolers were in the car but I didn't check them. I took Colt's cooler out so I could pour the water out and came back inside.


Colt had climbed in the shower and I was waiting on him to get out and check everywhere again before calling Scout back to tell him if we found them. Scout called me back to ask if I had found his keys and I told him I looked everywhere, even between the seats, and I couldn't find them. I told him I'd let him know if Colt found them and then I hung up. Colt finally got out of the shower and ran to the car to look for Scout's keys. I told him that Scout said they could be in the back seat or maybe they were in the back of Bob's truck.


Colt went outside to check. He couldn't find them. He came back inside with Scout's pink cooler. There weren't any keys in the cooler so I called Scout and told him we couldn't find his keys. Was he sure he had lost them there? Did he need them to drive his car? And did he need a ride to Bob's to look for his keys since we couldn't find his keys.


Scout finally told me he was looking for his SHOES, not his keys! That's when I knew I was deaf but, in my defense, he was talking on a crappy cell phone. His alarm on the cell phone didn't go off till 8 o'clock this morning. Yeah, it was the crappy cell phone's fault. That's right. Oh yeah. 


I bet Scout thought I'd lost my mind when I said I even looked between the seats for them.

Times like that slap you right back into reality and remind you how you are no longer the young person smirking at the poor old goofy person who couldn't hear and misunderstood everything. I am now that poor old goofy person that misunderstands things. I don't want to be that old fart. I want to be the hip, young, cool one. 

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Donny cleaned out our fenced in garden where the squash had been growing. He mowed down weeds and raked up debris. He only left a few pepper plants and a couple of vines running up two sides of the fence. One vine was growing five beautiful double bubble birdhouse gourds. The other vine on the opposite fence had loofah plants all over it. 

I was so excited and hoped they would survive. I wanted to dry them and use them. Everything was about halfway grown when I noticed someone had stolen the gourd growing outside of the fence wire. That had to be the horrible neighbors. I only had four gourds left.

Naturally, I went inside and told Don all about somebody pulling the gourd off the vine. I was mad for a couple of days but I still watered them and checked the vines every day.

I was outside one day in the yard and noticed the leaves on the loofah plant were wilted. It shouldn't have wilted that bad. I tried to water it until I saw it was cut! Don had cut it with the weedeater. I yelled at him for killing the entire plant. I couldn't believe he would do that since he knew they were there. Men!

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I have a little crock pot that I use to cook dry beans. The base is separate from the pot. I cooked some October beans one day but they weren't done by dinner so I put the little crock pot in the refrigerator for the next day. The next day I put the crock pot in the microwave to warm the beans. I was going to put it back in the base to keep them warm until I fixed dinner.

I needed to run to the dollar store to get a couple of things for dinner so I told my husband that the beans were in the microwave. He was getting ready to take a bath, but I stressed that the bowl was in the microwave. All I wanted him to do was put the beans in the (base of the) crock pot after they were heated. I ran to get pet food and salmon.

When i came back home I unloaded the car and started to cook supper. I looked over at the crock pot and saw the white crock wasn't in the base. I looked in the microwave but they weren't there. I saw the crock pot sitting on my butcher's block but it was empty. Don had dumped the crock pot of beans into the base of the crock pot. I flipped out. Old people!

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I've decided this is the way to let off steam. Rather than rant and rave I'd be much better off just blogging about it. Nobody listens anyway and Donny and I are both deaf so it doesn't do any good to yell. He doesn't even listen when I'm not yelling.

AS ALWAYS

PIO

Girls Night Out

It seems funny calling it a girl's night out when we're all in the grandmother stage of life, but Debbie and Melissa and I enjoyed a delicious and pleasant night out at the local Great Wall Chinese restaurant in Calhoun Georgia. 

We swapped stories and stuffed ourselves to the gills. Well, I did, at least. I never watch other people eat so I can't say about them. I learned that lesson when the boys were growing up. If I watched Scout eat I would get upset and ruin the meal for everyone. Scout salts his salt when he is eating something. Instead of griping about it I finally decided to ignore it. Hence, the reason I don't watch people eat.

The blonde, the brunette, and the redhead.


Debbie and Melissa and I went to the Wal-mart in Calhoun and I showed them a couple of routes down there and back. We rushed around until we located a pillow sham Melissa was looking for and then we came back to my humble home.

 This is a picture of my dogwoods in the front yard. We have two white dogwoods we got out of the woods and two pink ones that I bought at separate times. One is light pink and one is bright pink.

I hope we will be able to go on a picnic sometime when we plan our girl's-get-together. Melissa will have more time after she retires from teaching and tax season is over. I'm starting to have fun. (Shhh . . . . don't tell anybody!)

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Girl's night out's not like it was in the old days.

PIO

My Dental Visit

One thing I always dread is my dental appointment. I developed gum disease and have to go to two dentists now. My dental visits are staggered between dentists. I love Dr. Frank and started going to him after his father, Dr. Frank Sr. retired. But I love my hygienist even better. She is gentle and knows me. She knows I get scared and she takes pains to make sure I am comfortable. (Haha I made a joke and didn't even mean to.) Anyway, I want to keep my smile as long as I can.

Smiling at ya'

I really like having my teeth and being able to chew things. I don't think I'd be near as happy without them.

See that glamorous gap in my front teeth, ala Lauren Hutton? That's what happens when your teeth shift.

Getting old is not for the faint hearted.

Rachel says everything is looking good. Some of my gaps aren't as deep. The new gum graft is looking good.

My teeth aren't as loose as they once were. That's good news. I just have to keep my dental appointments and let them treat my disease.

Did I mention I hate going to the dentist?

Getting them cleaned.

Rachel and I have deep conversations while she is working. She is cheerful and upbeat. She's in the right profession. I, on the other hand, am a nervous wreck.

I learned that Rachel became a hygienist because her older brother was a dentist. I think that is neat.

Rachel's son went to SPSU so I tell her about Colt going down there.

Oddly enough, this is one of the most relaxing places I've been in a while.

Rachel gave me a clean bill of health and the usual encouragement that I always need.

It's a lot less stressful since I've been going to Doctor Frank and Doctor Phillip, my periodontal dentist.

Note the cool bow-tie and bright shirt. Doctor Frank is a character. His old bird dog was laying in the hall when I came in the exam room.

He thought I was funny for bringing my camera. I told him I might as well put my pictures on my blog. Little does he know I'm going to make him famous.

Doctor Frank

He thinks I am doing very well. It looks like we will be able to keep my smile for a while. Doctor Frank is a mountain climber. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (I think).

Doctor Frank's father Doctor Frank Sr. was my dentist for years. After he retired I didn't know what to do but I finally came to see Doctor Frank.

Hygienist Rachel

That's my girl Rachel. I've been going to her since I was first married years ago. She's a wonderful person.

I found out that Donny and Rachel went to school together when we went to one of his class reunions one time.

Rachel is a beautiful woman and a gentle hygienist. I am grateful to Rachel for her calm nature.

AS ALWAYS

PIO
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Other dental visits are JUNE and SEPTEMBER

I am having lots of traffic to this post. I would like to know what is drawing so many people to this particular post. Are you all in dental school? My next dental visit is in JUNE  Check it out. 

Thanks for your replies. Or not.

Old Friends

MELISSA

Melissa and Debbie and I were good friends while we were in school. After we graduated we went our separate ways. Debbie and I saw each other sometimes but we lost touch with Melissa until we started having class reunions. Debbie and Melissa have been encouraging me to have a girls night out once a month. I reluctantly go even though I don't like driving after dark. God, I feel old. We are trying to get to know each other again

PAM

I don't usually get to go out to eat so Debbie and Melissa and I have been taking turns picking restaurants to visit. My favorite is Red Lobster but we've also visited Little Rome and Chili's and Logan's Roadhouse. Debbie has taken Melissa and me to the theater. We saw Eat, Pray and Love, Easy A, Secretariat, and No Strings Attached.

DEBBIE

Debbie and I have a lot in common. We are "only children" so we have always felt a special bond. People never seem to understand that just because you don't have any brothers or sisters, it doesn't make being an only child wonderful. I've actually heard people say, "You are so lucky you don't have a brother," (or sister, or both). Yeah, right. Who do you think your parents are going to blame when something happens? You can't say, "I didn't do it." because they know it has to be YOU. You can't hide anything when you are an only child. I know.

AS ALWAYS

PIO

                                                     Now that Debbie and Melissa and I are older we are trying to rebuild our relationship and build a bond with old friends who know who we were before we became who we are today. Melissa and Debbie are kind and non-judgmental and supportive. It's nice to have old friends come back into your life.