Lessons of life by Regina Brett

 

I received this in an email and thought it blog worthy. 

Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer,
Cleveland , Ohio
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45
lessons life taught me.
It is the most-requested column I've ever
written."
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the
column once
more:
1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick.
Your friends and
parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to
disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying
alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the
present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea
what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't
be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But
don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or
joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you
stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But
the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life,
don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy
lingerie.
Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear
purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In
five years, will this matter?'
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your
business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of
anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it
now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone
else's,we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a
gift."

Hillbilly OCHA

I’m not bold enough to claim that I am from the Ozarks but I am on the fringe… a short 30 miles south or east of where I live lands me smack dab in the middle of the region known as the Missouri Ozarks.  Some think of the Ozarks as a backwards Hillbilly place that time has forgotten.  They may be right.  I’ll have to admit that it is a place that I love, live in and visit often.  The Missouri Ozarks is drop dead beautiful and the people are one of a kind.  Don’t get your hopes up, though.  No photos of the beautiful Missouri Ozarks in this post… just the Hillbilly side of it.

As I was driving up my drive tonight I had to stop.  OMG! is that an OCHA?  It is orange and it is protecting  something.  A rock.  It is protecting a rock? 

I think I’ve mentioned before that Jim is building rock walls and walkways (again).  He pulled some rocks out of our land and piled them along side of the drive.  Yea you saw that right.  Some people grow grass, wheat, crops… we grow rocks.  These rocks came out of the holes  in the ground you see below.  When I someday do my walkway/rock wall post you will get a better idea of the magnitude of the rocks in this area.  Every rock you will see came off of this place. 

 

Dear one apparently thought I would not see LARGE rocks as I headed up the drive so he posted a warning… OCHA?  You decide…

Here, there and everywhere

As bloggers, we all live for comments – well at least I do. It feels good to know that someone, somewhere is reading my nonsense. And often sometimes I’m amazed at the directions the comments take. One thought leads to another, and another, and yet another.

Most, if not all, of my bloggy friends read Intenseguy's blog. Iggy has the greatest imagination and sense of humor and never misses an opportunity to make me smile and often laugh out loud.

If you haven’t read my previous post, just scroll down and look at the pictures. Nothing unusual about them – just pictures.

My good friend Iggy commented (in part)…

“I wish I could walk all those paths - 'cept I'd have big white eyeballs all popped out bugeyed looking around for Whiskey...”

To which my other bestest friend, who also never misses an opportunity to make me smile, Junyah replied…

“IggY wAntS to Be a dog CatCher ..?? lol oH i see how it works, you place a cone and wait....lol”

And lo and behold I find my yard transformed over night!

I don’t guess anyone can guess what master photoshopper sent me this OCHA picture…

Thank you Iggy for the Doctored photo. Gotta luv it!

Shadow play

First of all, I owe hubby a big apology. Sorry babe!

You see, I have this nasty habit of not putting the card back in the camera after I’ve taken the pictures off of it. Several weeks ago he and Travis were messing around in Travis’ “fort” and Jim took some awesome pictures – or so he tells me. When I came home he proudly handed me the camera and said “look at the pictures I took of Travis in his fort”. I turned on the camera and all I saw was the message “no card”. Well shit! He should have seen that! Right? Nah, he was snapping pictures.

The camera he was using was our 35 m camera where you look through the view finder and not at the screen. I felt really bad about Jim not getting his pictures and vowed to be more careful about putting the card back in the camera each time. What’s that old saying about good intentions… oh yea, something about paving the road to someplace.

Anyway, this morning Jim saw a great photo opportunity. The sun was playing in and out of the trees along one of the paths as Whiskey dog was ambling along. So he ran into the house, grabbed the camera and… crap. At least this time he noticed the message “no card” before he took the picture.

He did get some pretty cool shots after we put a card in the camera, though.

I love the way the sun is playing through the trees. See the stack of rocks to the left? Those will soon complete the walkway. One of these days I’ll do a rock wall & walkway blog.

He did get a picture of Whiskey standing in the shadows. Isn’t he cute, Demon Dog that he is…

My cute little sheep is actually supposed to be a golf club cover. We bought him a few years ago when we were in Ireland. But instead of covering a golf club, he covers a glass and sits proudly on my table.

Seeing RED

In between thunderstorms and rain showers, I’ve been busy in my gardens lately. 

 

Don’t these strawberries look yummy?  This is the third bowl of strawberries I have picked.  The patch is small and gives us just enough to have fresh berries for a few weeks. 

They are so sweet!

A week ago my cherries weren’t quite ripe enough to pick…

The weekend of rains changed all of that…

Thanks to the help of grandson Travis, I now have enough tart cherries in my freezer for eight cherry pies.  These are hands down the best pie cherries in the world!  The trees came from an old farmer friend many years ago. 

For years I fought the birds for these cherries.  Sometimes they were wormy and not worth messing with and other years beautiful, without a worm in them.  We have no idea why some years are wormy and other years not.  I wouldn’t dream of using pesticides!   I get enough of that when I buy my produce in the grocery stores.  It finally dawned on us last year that the cherries were beautiful with no worms and the birds hadn’t bothered them.  Finally after all these years we figured out that the only time the birds bothered our cherries was “wormy years”.  We vowed to never fight the birds for our cherries again.  Fortunately we had no bird problems this year, which meant no worms – just beautiful cherries.

I don’t do snakes!

My last post showed a cute little camouflaged toad hidden under my weeds strawberry plants.

Several of you were expecting a snake. Let me repeat… I don’t do snakes! There are several reasons for my irrational fear of those slimy creatures.

When I was a little girl we spent a day at our cousins’ house digging worms for fishing. These weren’t just any cousins, though. Two of them were boys of the worst sort. You know what I mean – the kind who found great pleasure in taking an innocent little worm and chasing you around the yard with them. Yuck. Well, that night I dreamed that each and every one of those innocent little worms we had so carefully placed in old, rusty vegetable cans filled with dirt, turned into a snake. Not just any snake, but long, slimy black snakes. I was young enough to think that a big ol’ black snake must be the worst of the worst. Hey, I was just a little girl. What did I know? Anyway from that day forward, I have had a dreadful fear of snakes.

Now fast forward about 25 years. We had a big family get together here. My sis and her family were visiting from Arizona. One of the places set up for eating was a picnic table on the back porch. I had put a table cloth on the table to make it a bit nicer. After everyone went home, Jim and the kids helped me clean up. Somehow the tablecloth ended up on the porch floor and stayed there for who knows how long. When I finally got around to doing laundry, I scooped it up and threw it into the washer with a load of towels and then into the drier. How was I supposed to know that a snake had found shelter in it? Now I’m sure nobody else has ever done this, but I didn’t get to the dry clothes right away, so the next day I air fluffed the stuff before folding.

Now picture this. I pulled stuff out of the drier one at a time, snapped it to straighten it out, and folded it. About the third towel out, something flew across the room. A snake!!!!! A nice clean, washed and dried, shriveled up snake. OMG! I screamed and screamed and screamed. Jim came running. The kids came running. The neighbors cam running (they would have if we had neighbors…) Nobody could get me to stop screaming. I was truly hysterical. Finally Tessa yelled what has since become the family mantra anytime I get upset about anything. “Slap her dad, slap her!!” I’ll have to admit that brought me to my senses. But it took me years before I could hear the word snake and not shudder.

In my memory this snake was a long, shriveled up black snake. Jim claims it was a tiny, dried up green snake. I’m sure he remembers wrong in his hysteria and all. Right?

Peek-a-boo – I see you

  

My strawberry patch kind of got away from me this year.  No excuses – it just did.  So I was determined to fix that the other morning.  Look at the clover taking over things!  And the strawberry almost red enough to eat looks so tasty.  Yum!  Wait…  Do you notice anything else? 

I was pulling the weeds like a good gardener should when I shrieked like a girl (wait, I am a girl, so that is ok…).  Jim came running, like the knight in shining armor that he is (even if he doesn’t have any hair, but that isn’t a bad thing)!  By then I had my camera out and was snapping pictures.  Do you see what was snuggling up with my strawberry?

Do you see him now?  Isn’t he cute?  And before Iggy asks, no I did not check to make sure he is in fact a he.  I’ll just go with my gut on this one :)