The Peculiarities of My Mind

Some peculiarities about me I haven't shared with too many people~~

I see numbers as family relationships...for example: #5 is the Mother and #10 is the Father of 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9. #9 is the big teen brother, #6 is the little teen brother and #7 always watches out for #6. #7 hangs around alot with #8 because she is the biggest teen sister and #9 kinda watches out for all of them. #1 is a little brother and #2 is a little sister who she thinks she is pretty mature. #4 is a regular normal little adolescent brother.) This did NOT help me with Math in school however!

I see dates in a time line like they taught us in school. I stand on the time line where we are now and look backwards at all the years in decades. That's why dates of history are easy for me to remember.

When I hear people speak I see the words spelled out as if they are being typed onto a page. This DID help me with spelling and grammar.

I visualize letters as individual colors. They have family relationships, too, but not as strong in my mind as numbers. So when you tell me your name I see it as a color or a string of colors for each individual letter. This necklace looks like my Mother's name Charlotte. The way the beads are placed on the string is how I see the colors of her name, like Indian corn. My father's name is golden brass and black~Ernest. The letter A is always red in my mind's eye. My children's names are Regan~bright golden with a red A and bronze R and Derek~ blue for the D and golden yellow for the E and white for the K.

I don't know why my mind works in this way...it wasn't taught to me. Don't know why I'm writing a post about it either. Guess I thought you just might want to know how maybe UNPECULIAR "you" are....I must have had a lot of time on my hands when I was a kid! Silly, Silly Girl!

Literary Divers

We love books so much that when our friend emptied his family home that was full of many, many books all the way back to the late 1800s, we climbed into the dumpster and gathered all the books that he and his siblings had thrown out. They were understandably overwhelmed with the 65 years of accumulation,~ they were too exhausted to even think about keeping one more book. So many pieces of literature...signed first editions...wonderful literary books from their parents college years in Minnesota, went from their family home to ours... Oh, we acquired a lovely collection since his parents were journalists and very learned. Going through the books I found his mother's diary from the late 1930's~the time just before her marriage to his father. I loved reading it and after I did I gave it to him as a gift. He was so delighted he had no idea it had been tossed..so for a gift to me he gave me a gorgeous ring that he had bought his mother when he was in Israel which she wore on all special occasions. He said he knew it would fit me perfectly. I have a bond with his mother...I never knew her.

Catastrophe A Jupille

We serendipitously acquired a few years ago a very unusual hand carved cabinet. KennyRogersLookalike found it leaning up against a dumpster where we have a storage unit. It has a fantastic albeit tragic history and it was locked. It is extremely elaborate and the carving on the front is an exact replica of the picture on Le Patriote magazine from 1961. In February, 1961 a horrible catastrophe happened in Jupille, Belgium. It was a fly ash flow mine disaster that killed 11 people, 4 women and 7 children. The cabinet has script carved on the bottom Le Roi and Le Reine visitent the catastophe de Jupille...this is all written in french. At the top are the words L'Union fait la force. It was a stroke of luck that we found the illustration of the carving on the 1961 magazine being offered on ebay at the very time we found the cabinet. The likeness is incredible as you can see. I wonder so often why this magnificent piece was so painstakingly carved with a hinged door and lock. What was kept inside and why would someone create it? Did it hang on a wall in a church for offerings? Was is created to be given to Queen Fabiola and King Baudoin? I have emailed History Detectives but they never got back with me. Does anyone have a clue about it? We have tried every skeleton key we have and have pulled and pulled trying to open the beautiful cupboard. Miraculously, my daughter's Dutch husband was looking at it the other morning and suddenly it opened for him..was it because he is Dutch and it took Dutch hands to break the spell? Was it waiting for someone that is from it's neighboring country to release it's interior? The interior is beautiful and highly polished and smooth. It has 2 shelves and in the bottom a hidden compartment...all we found were 4 little round paper punch circles. But that's alright...it is a fantastic remembrance of unfortunate ones who perished in this catastrophe and I think of them every day...they are not forgotten. If any one knows anything about this or can help me get in touch with someone who does know, please let me know. We are chosen to be the keeper of this object and we will keep it safe. One of my favorite blogs Ted and Bunny said the cabinet found us as much as we found it...I believe that! I am compelled to unlock its secret.

SOME HISTORY: One night, early February 1961, the King and Queen were woken up by a phone ringing. Six houses in Jupille, a coal-mining town near Liège, had been buried by a collapsing slag heap. In those houses, four women and seven children were stuck and rescue teams were working nonstop to try and get them out alive. The royal couple didn’t hesitate for one moment but left the palace immediately to inspect the damage and help the people. Upon arrival, the Queen immediately presented herself at the First Aid post and offered her help as a nurse to the doctors, who were baffled by her behaviour. When the slag heap destabilized even further, the security officers tried to get their monarchs out of danger, but the Queen refused to leave: “The King and I will only leave when the danger is gone.”

Family Intro

Well, the big party I was telling you about has happened for my daughter Regan and her Dutch Boy! The introduction to the Family... with the big family party which was the best party we have all had together since my parents have passed. We had really warm weather, unusually warm weather till the day of the party! Of Course! Then a cold front came in with a huge blow of a Zephyr. And this zephyr was not gentle, however, it was calm by the time the party got started and even though it was chilly we all sat around the fire pit and criticized each other's Lebanese cooking! No one cooks as well as our grandma but everyone tries. It just can't be done! But that is our dynamic. My sister brought me a homemade~ from~ scratch Lemon Meringue pie for my birthday... of which I got a sliver and she got none...every bite of food was gone in no time. (note to self~make three dishes of each recipe) The guys did shots of Chivas Regal..some loving it...some not so much. Took lots of pictures~ much too much according to some family members..but I noticed they were sure to smile while they were complaining.
It was a whirlwind visit with the guests of honor arriving at midnight on Friday night, family party late afternoon till the wee hours of the morn and whisked off for the other side of the family's dinner on Sunday a good two hours of driving time away. We did have one day together on Monday and we chose to see the canals and aqueducts in downtown Indianapolis. We also visited the famous Monument Circle that boasts a very emotional obelisk full of sculptures of the various wars that Indiana has been represented in...statues emoting parents pleading the young son to not go to war and cannons with gunned down soldiers careening and hanging off the upper ledges so lifelike you might think it had just happened and they will fall straight into the fountains. There are 32 flights of stairs to climb to the very top to Miss Liberty if you can bear it and a Civil War museum in the belly of the monument. We didn't choose to climb the 32 flights but we did buy some french pastries and sat along the ledges and studied the workmanship of this magnificent landmark.
Tuesday morning was the sad morning...the guests of honor had to catch a plane and KennyRogerslookalike and I had to bolt off to work...but we will all be together again in July for their wedding...I hope her Dutch boy survived the meeting of the family!

May 5 & May 6 Birthday Girls

Yesterday was my dear Mother's birthday. She would have been 88 years old. Today is my birthday. We always shared our birthdays together. However, she told me the night of her birthday while I was in the womb that I was not to be born till the next day so she could finish out having her grand celebration....dining on lobster and champagne and dancing till the wee hours of the morning. Like the dutiful daughter, I waited...I always listened to what my mother said...not that I always did what she bid...I saw the path she chose for me I just had to meander off here and there a while then I would get back on..la te da..you know what I mean, don't you? So because I also got to dine (intravenously I guess you would say) on lobster and champagne in that bubble like stage of my life, I enjoy lobster very much and one of my favorite things to do is dine in fine restaurants. My friends tease me because I don't know how to order at fast food restaurants (really it's true). But I don't feel like I am missing a thing. Now I'm not too much on champagne and wine...much rather have a glass of juice but none the less, fine dining and dancing are my ideas of a happy birthday...oh, and not to forget...breakfast in bed! That was a tradition my parents always spoiled us with (my sister didn't really enjoy that because she said she felt lonely in her bed breakfasting by herself. Not me...I enjoyed the tulip in the special vase and my egg cooked in olive oil with Syrian bread to lap up the yolk and the fresh grapefruit that my mother always sectioned for me and of course a very tall frosty glass of orange juice. When we became of age...18 in my mother's eye..she would give us a cup of coffee with sugar and cream. It was alright..but still I would just as soon have 2 tall glasses of juice! It would also make me happy that even if the day turned dark and stormy, if the morning light that hit my eyes was bright and sunny..it made it a perfect day. My parents always gave me a poetry book for my birthday and I remember one in particular..the first pages said "If a little toad winks as you walk by, or you wish he would, this little book is dedicated to you" It was a book by Gwen Frostic and it was called A Walk With Me. I still have it, of course, still have all the books my parents gave me, and it sits beside my bed and it is the first thing I look at when I wake up..right after I look at the sunshine.

Stormy Weather Party Preparation

Gosh, makes me feel kinda weird that I do a post on the fun times my son and I had in Nashville, Tennessee and now they are devastated by serious flooding! I sometimes think of a person or a place before something happens. Do you ever do that? It's creepy I know. I'm not a psychic but perhaps I get "vibes" about things. The news says that the Grand Ole Opry is damaged by flooding waters and they mentioned since it is the music city a lot of musical instruments will be in jeopardy.
It is storming here in Indiana tonight but not as much rain as 14 inches in 36 hours! At least I hope not. The temperature has dropped quite a bit since I got home from work which always brings about a rash of storms. I love storms but not storms with bad consequences. Hopefully, the weather will clear up because we have a big party planned for this weekend! My daughter and her Dutch Boy fiance are flying here to meet the family before their wedding in July. We want to have the party outside where we have been working so hard. You know the feeling, I'm sure. You have to beat yourself up with projects before a party! Instead of relaxing and getting into the groove of partying, we are hammering and mulching and planting and cleaning and cooking! Well, we're trying to mulch..weather isn't cooperating much. The Kenny Rogers Look-Alike will probably be laying mulch as the party guests arrive! Ha Ha! It's been done before!!! And he has to fix the fence that warped over the winter. Now, any suggestions on what to serve that is easy and stress free for a bunch of relatives~say about 11 of them, for a party that will start in the late afternoon till late in the night?