Grandchildren

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

For Grandchildren

My grandchildren live in Texas.  I live in Oregon.  One of the great things about retirement is that I am free to go and visit whenever I get the urge.  I'm a pretty regular visitor to Texas.  For the first time in my life I have medallion frequent flyer status on Delta...and just about the only place I've gone is Texas!  We are also regular users of FaceTime.  

The grandchildren come and stay with us in Oregon during the summer.  The first year they came for three weeks.  The second year it was six weeks.  This year we're picking them up in South Dakota in early June in the RV, and they'll be with us until August 8.  I can't wait.

These are my grandchildren last summer on one of our adventures to Fossil Oregon:

and at Multnomah Falls:

They are such a big part of my life.  I find indicators of their influence everywhere.

You know you're a grandparent when strange pictures show up on your iPad and you have no idea how they got there...and sometimes you have no clue what they are:

You know you're a grandparent when your purse contains bandaids, random crayons, wet wipes, and emergency snacks, weeks after visiting the grandchildren.

You know you're a grandparent when you can sing the theme songs from Wonder Pets and Backyardigans and your children are in their thirties.

You know you're a grandparent when you plan your summer RV road trip around what "the girls" would enjoy.

You know you're a grandparent when your email is is filled with the latest offers from Gymboree, Carters, and Striderite.

I can't imagine life without our grandchildren.  I wish we had a lot more of them.

Funeral

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

For Funeral

I did no advance planning or writing for the A to Z Challenge.  I've just trusted that the universe will provide inspiration.  On Saturday I attended a funeral for a neighbor.  During the service a light bulb went off in my head and I realized that funeral started with "F."

I haven't attended many funerals.  Since my family immigrated to the US when I was small, I had no extended family in the US.  I missed out on all that funeral pageantry when an aging relative dies.  When I attend a funeral now, I feel rather like an anthropologist exploring a foreign culture.  This was especially true at Saturday's service held at the "Cowboy Church," which is a store front in a strip mall on highway 395.  The room in the back held rows of second-hand chairs and an overhead garage door.  The minister, a woman, (apparently in Cowboy Church culture females lead the worship) managed to get the name of the deceased wrong, but covered nicely.  Ten minutes in to the service a young relative arrived.  She walked through the crowd to the front to sit with the rest of the family, carrying a small dog.  Was I supposed to bring a dog?  I just don't know the cultural expectations, but looking at the crowd I realized that I wasn't the only one who didn't know funeral guidelines.

The woman who died was a lovely person.  I wish ministers who conduct services did a better job of actually celebrating the life of the deceased.

Equality

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

For Equality

Perhaps because I was raised during the era of the civil rights movement, I've always been a supporter of equal rights.  In my formative years my heroes were the leaders of the civil rights movement: the Freedom Riders, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, and Medgar Evers, to name just a few.  I greatly admired those who, at great personal risk, used civil resistance in the fight against racial discrimination.

Throughout the 60's my family never bought grapes, honoring the grape boycott organized by the United Farmworkers who were boycotting to improve the working conditions and pay for farmworkers.

Although I never burned a bra, I certainly supported the women's liberation movement in the 70's.  I was still naive enough to believe that centuries of domination would be overturned within the decade.  We have yet to pass an equal rights amendment to the United States Constitution.

I can probably blame my leftist leanings on my mother who marched at the U.S. border in support of immigration reform and donated to every liberal cause, and probably to more than a few scams in the last years of her life.  My brother saved the bumper stickers from her car...

It should come as no surprise that I am a strong supporter of marriage equity and LGBT rights.  I was stunned in 2004 when Oregon passed a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between one man and one woman.  Try as I might, I can't understand why anyone cares who anyone else marries.  I understand that some people cite religious reasons for not supporting marriage equity, but those people are certainly free to not marry a same sex partner.  Government has no business legislating who we love.  Consenting adults should have the right to marry any other consenting adult.  Groups in Oregon are organizing to once again challenge the legality of the ban on same sex marriages in Oregon.

Today's theme is equality.  To find out more about Marriage Equity visit Freedom to Marry.org

Dave, I'll Miss You

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

 for David Letterman     

David Letterman announced his retirement today.  It feels like I'm losing an old friend.  I've been watching him for over 30 years.  When my children were babies, and I was a stay-at-home mom, I watched his morning show.  When my kids were in preschool and I went back to college to get my teaching certificate, I wrote my Master's thesis late at night with Dave to keep me company.  One of the benefits of retirement has been staying up to watch Dave on the "Late Show" without having to get up early in the morning to go to work.  

Dave has had his ups and downs.  I commiserated with him when he didn't get the Tonight Show and I admired how he dealt with the very public disappointment.  His frustration became material for his comedy, and while he sometimes sounded a little bitter, he was always funny.  I appreciated that he didn't deny his disappointment, but he went on and achieved even greater success.  

Years later he had another very public humiliation when his sexual relationship with a staffer became public.   He he made a public apology.  He showed us that he was human; he made mistakes, and he moved forward and tried to rectify them.  He's a pretty good role model.  He's demonstrated that you can fail and still achieve, make mistakes and make amends, and be a celebrity and human.

Although I will miss his company late at night when the rest of my household is fast asleep, I wish him all the best in his retirement.  I hope he will find, like I have, that retirement is one more opportunity to find joy every day.  

Thanks, Dave, for sharing so much of yourself with us for so many years.

Clutter

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

Today I gave in to the urge and started spring cleaning.  To be absolutely truthful, I lost one of my hearing aids in the pile on the table next to my chair and decided that it was time to tackle the clutter.  When I didn't find the aid after clearing off the table, I was ready to expand the search area to the vacuum cleaner bag in case I had sucked it up in a brief cleaning frenzy.  Fortunately the spouse found it under the coffee table.  Whew!   The pair of hearing aids was $6,000.00!!!  I don't have an extra $3,000.00  around to replace a lost one.  Tragedy averted! 

So, I had one small clutter-free area in my living room and I was encouraged to continue.  Right next to my chair sits a basket that holds my reading material.

It's a big basket.  I hadn't gotten around to reading that Oprah magazine on top of the pile.  Notice the banner that reads, "De-Clutter Your Life 2014!"  In fact, I hadn't read most of the magazines in that basket.  I filled a tote bag with magazines to drop off at the library's recycle reading box; some of them were from 2011.  I still have a full basket, but all this month I'll take at least one tote bag a week to the library.  I'm going to work my way through the bookcases this evening as I watch The Voice.  Books I recycle through paperbackswap.com.  

The dust bunnies are gone and even the baseboards have been cleaned.  Now there is one relatively clutter-free zone in this house.  Tomorrow I'm going to declutter the utility room and pantry.  I'll probably have to slay some spiders in there.  

...and the spouse will start putting up the sheetrock in the bathroom and fill the house with dust.

Bathroom Renovation

All this month I am participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Today's letter is...

The closest the spouse and I ever got to divorce involved plumbing.  That's why, when the spouse said, "It's time to redo the bathroom,"  I thought it was a good time to leave town.  I spent spring break in Texas with the grandchildren.  We took walks to the park and went shopping for shoes.  We went out to eat and did craft projects.  We went to Dallas and learned about history (the Texas School Book Depository and the grassy knoll,) explored the Perot Science Museum, and visited the Fort Worth Zoo.  I came home after 10 days and the bathroom was completely gutted...not remodeled, gutted!  Here's what it looks like now:

 

Believe it or not, this is progress!   This bathroom is tiny, the size of a small walk-in closet.  The new shower walls are framed in and the plumbing is hooked up.  New sub-flooring has been installed and is ready to be tiled.  Most of the minutes on my cell phone have been used this month for plumbing.  No, I haven't been calling the plumbing supply company ordering parts.  I stand in the bathroom with my phone while the spouse, out in the pump house, turns on the water.  My job is to monitor for leaks so he can turn off the water before there's a flood!  

I love watching those remodeling and renovating shows on TV.  They can renovate an entire house in a half hour show.  I have noticed, however, that they never have to run back and forth to Home Depot for missing parts and supplies.  That's probably why we're into month two of this project, but, we haven't called the divorce lawyer yet.

All Of A Sudden...

All this month I will be participating in the A to Z Challenge.  Every day, except Sundays, I will be writing a new post starting with the letter A on April first and finishing up the month with the letter Z.  Let me know if you have suggestions for topics.

All of a Sudden it's spring.  The sun has returned.  Our yard has gone from brown and barren to green and blooming overnight.  The daffodils are in full bloom and the tulips won't be far behind.  The tulips are still short stalks with tight  green bulges at the top, but soon the yard will explode with their color.

These are last year's tulips

All of a sudden it's April. I signed up for the A to Z challenge at the beginning of the year, and had plenty of time to plan and prepare.  Now it's April and I have done no planning and haven't written a word.  I haven't even posted the A to Z Challenge banner on my sidebar (because I can't remember how to do it!)

Why did I think this year would be any different?  I know I like to work under pressure.  I've done some of my best work when the clock was ticking down to a deadline.  I would like to be one of those people who gets everything done early, but that's just not my nature.  Heck, I've still got 15 days to get started on my taxes...