Hallowed Even

I know'd it, know'd it
Indeed I know'd it brother
I know'd it----Weeeee!
Dem Bones gonna rise again.

NOW THIS IS SCCCAAAARRRYYY!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVE

HALLOWEEN

Kitton

She was a cuddly girl to her mama!








Strange....I have been hearing the cupboard door under the sink opening and closing...so softly...yet no one is there. I hope it is Kitton's spirit..

A Presence of Ghosts

Do you believe in Ghosts? Or should the question be 'Do you believe that there are ghosts?' I word it this way because a professor once told me that you can't believe in Santa Claus, you have to believe there IS one. I'll never forget that.
I believe that there are ghosts. I have never seen one...I have only felt them and heard them. No, it is not scary...or at least to me...it is actually comforting. My friends and I have experienced them together, my sister and I and even my dog. My dog and I had two really definite experiences together, the first I have ever experienced.
It was night..and not a dark and stormy one either. It was very near the time of my grandpa's death. We lived in a brand new house in a brand new neighborhood at the time. My children's bedrooms were upstairs~mine down. It was the middle of the night. I heard something rustling like footsteps pad along the hallway and then the first stair step creaked. My dog Schroeder sat up and cocked his ears. I sat straight up. He looked at me, I looked at him. We jumped off the bed quietly and I followed him chase the sound up the stairs. The children were asleep and he stood on the landing and just stared inquisitively at me. After that, he often stopped in the middle of the downstairs hallway, usually during the middle of the day and looked at the ceiling and howled. Dishes would break in the cupboards in that house and sometimes I would hear a child crying outside..there were no small children in that neighborhood at the time. It was located at the foot of an Indian burial ground however and many Indians died from malaria in that area back in the very early years.
A few years later, we moved to an older house in a more established neighborhood in the same town. About 2pm on a weekday... the kids weren't due home from school for another hour and a half. I was vacuuming the downstairs guest room. Of course, Schroeder was always with me. I heard the door between the family room and the garage open and shut, although it was locked. Schroeder heard it too. I shut off the vacuum cleaner as he ran through the kitchen, into the family room and pounced on the door and then ran following his nose back through those rooms and up the stairway to the children's bedrooms. I ran up also. I searched. There was no one to be found. The kids came home at the usual time.
My sister and I were spending the night in my deceased grandparents old house in which my daughter was living. She was gone for a long weekend and since the house was right next door to my mother's house and we were helping Mother clear out "a half a life's worth of stuff', we decided it best to spend the night over there. I took a shower before I got into bed. My sister was already in the bed. I fell into that alpha state, the state you go into right before the deep sleep and I heard something knocking on the foot board. I then felt a presence or a presence of several people standing beside the bed between the bed and the closet...the closet where my grandparents always kept the treasured family photo box. I stirred enough to know that I wanted to turn over to face what was standing behind my back ...as I said, I am not afraid and I saw nothing but I felt that there were several people standing in a line beside the bed. I felt calm and went to sleep. The next morning as my sister and I were waking up, I decided to tell her what had happened. She got quiet for a minute and I thought she was gonna say I was nuts. She said, "you know, while you were in the shower, I was just about to doze off and I felt something standing at the foot of the bed but I couldn't see anything so I just went to sleep". Since then, when we have been together in my Aunt Freda's third floor room in Rochester, New York, we have experienced charged energy night after night and photographed orbs and smokey like phenonmena especially in that room and the closet where family photos and documents are contained.

My experience with my best friends is illustrated in photos in New Orleans on the Christmas Eve just before Katrina hit.~flames in St.Louis Cemetery I and orbs over the house where the jilted Octoroon mistress spent the night and died on the roof of her French lover to prove her love for him one stormy December night during the brutal days of slavery



Yes, I believe that there are ghosts. Alas, I moved away from my haunted town and I have not had any experiences in this 80 year old house I now occupy. I miss the comraderie. I keep the treasured family photo box in the closet by my bed.

Jumping In The Bed

A Bed in the Leaves
By Marian Kennedy

My yard is full of leaves today
Brown and yellow and gold
I think I'll rake them in a pile
Higher than my head

Then I'll pretend it is my bed
I'll jump in very quick
And pile their leaves up over me
For covers soft and thick

I'll just lie there so nice and warm
And look up in the sky
And watch more leaves float down for me
To rake up bye and bye

Full Moon Longing

The full moon came peeping through my window this morning~what a brilliant orb~it stirred me to wakefulness with a smile~there was a message in its vibrant light~I am sure, but it is not for me to know yet. I am at one with the moon~it is familiar and I long to stand on its silvery soft texture and know that I have achieved my highest desire. Make a wish, make a wish.......shhhhh

My ??Sewiiinng AbilIiiiittyy!

Inspired by http://createology.blogspot.com/blog...I thought I would let you in on an ashamedly well known secret that only my good friends are privy too! My sewing ability is for nought!
You see when I was growing up, my dear mother was a wonderful homemaker. She actually had a masters in psychology but it didn't work on me too well...or maybe it has at some points in my life, but that's another story.
My mother chose not to teach my sisters and brother and I how to cook or clean or iron clothes or sew. She would much rather do it herself, while voraciously reading 5 thick novels a week. Too much mess and too much bother and she felt perhaps that we would have time enough in life to do those homemaking tasks when we grew up.
When it was time to choose high school classes, of course she steered us to the college prep classes and not to the home economics or FTA~Future Teachers of America. No, we were driven eye and ear deep into History, World Literature, Economics and Government, Latin and Greek derivatives and French lessons.
I would go next door to my Grandma's house and sit on the yellow linoleum covered step stool by the sink and watch her cook, wash the Jadite bowls and cups and the Virginia rose patterned Homer Laughlin dishes. I would sometimes watch as she sewed a hem, darned a sock or crocheted a doily. Watched but never really put my hand to the domestic chores. Always the observer.
Well, it came time for me as a mommy to make a Brownie Scout vest for my daughter. I was so proud. I had borrowed an old funky sewing machine that my parents must have won as a prize through Readers Digest or something like that, and I sewed away as best I could while the bobbin unthreaded and the thread spool flipped off. I was frustrated but, Oh, it looked really nice. Couldn't believe how easy that was...zip, zip and it's all finished. I pinned the badges on and had my daughter try it on for my best friend Suzanne. "Mommy, I can't get my arm through the holes". "What? Why not?"
Suzanne looked at the little brown adorned vest. "Why, Kim, you've sewn the arm holes up!" Seam rippers are wonderful!
Not to be beaten though, I am after all a very creative person. I will make a lion costume for the play The Wizard of Oz my daughter was in.
Easy, peasy I thought. I had it all thought out. I will just get some tan fabric and I will have her lie down on it and I will cut around her and then sew up the front to the back. Then add fake fur and a tail. How hard can that be?.....uh...I resorted to a set of maize colored sweats and applied fake fur.
When ever there was a need for mending my children looked at me with a raised eyebrow. My children mended their own clothes and my husband ironed his own shirts.

MOre MiSCOMbobuLAtioNs of UtteraANCEs and THouGhTS

We have had such a good time with all the miscombobulations and phrases from the olden days- The great cheerleader for my blog Elaine of http://tedandbunny.blogspot.com gets a kick out of my Americana way of thinking! She featured me on her blog the other day and I am having a great time reading the comments on her blog and mine about what our Grandmas and Grandpas have phrased and anecdoted over the years.

Words to Make you laugh~from my beloved southern Indiana

dope a dick~dope addict
formicawave~microwave
cremolin-crenolin
idahomaines-for a particular potatoe
labalier blinds-levalor blinds
I'd like to buy one of those africans for my wife.~afghan blankets
"That fireplace is now the Vocal point of the room."
Let's light up some Voltive candles.
Supposably
Thilthy+filthy

SOME COCKEYED QUOTES

She's had so many face lifts she's going to have to shave her chin.

Her nose is so high in the air her belly button is on her forehead.




How are you:Fine as a frog hair split down the middle

Fair to midlin'

You'll see me Lord willin' and the creeks don't rise.

If you don't outdie me=if you live longer than me.

'Nobody will ever notice it on a galloping horse' - Don't be too self-conscious about your appearance.

If you don't want weeds, check your seeds

I could winter and summer with her (means you like her)

'Three sheets to the wind' Sheets aren't sails, as landlubbers might expect, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor

We had a verily good time

That is cute Enough!

You've got the same clothes to get glad in that you had to get mad in.

Pretty in the cradle, ugly at the table

Red sky in morning sailors take warning, Red sky at nite sailors delight

The woods are full of them (meaning families with lots of kids)

'He is so crooked they are gonna hafta screw him into the ground'

You look like you've been drug through a knot hole backward

I'll slap you clear to Sunday

He couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag

You could start an argument in an empty house.

"I'll slap you so hard, your clothes will be outta style."

Dumber than a door nail

Straighten up and fly right. My dad always said
and he said..Keep your nose clean.

“Have a cup of coffee, it’s already been ’saucered and
blowed.’”

Ahm a fixin' to do that

Favor - To resemble - "I know that's your daughter 'cause you favor."

He's a good man...he has a job...marry him...love comes later.

When my father was young his mother was peeling apples one evening and my dad and his friend were whooping it up over this bombshell of a girl they thought was really sexy. Oh they wanted to take her out. My grandmother showed them a pretty apple, all shiny and red and then she twisted it open ... there was a worm inside. That was all she had to do to make them think about this hifalutin' woman. My dad said he had no idea how his mother knew there was a worm in the apple.

I haven't seen you for a long day.

When something is bad then you say, "that ain't no count."

If something is hard to do, it's "like trying to herd cats."

“She's got enough wrinkles to hold an eight day rain.”

Getting sophisticated - "In high cotton."

I feel like I been rode hard and put away wet.

Her behind in those pants looks like two pigs in a gunny sack fightin.

Here's a prize one...it contains expletives though..but it is what KennyRogersLookAlikebeforetheplasticsurgeryfailed's mother said in the nursing home
'Well, ain't that just a shit'n bitch.' Don't know where she got that from...she never cussed before the dementia set in.

A Nap and a Dance

Miscombobulations of Utterance and Thoughts

When I was little, I watched my grandmother stick hat pins into her hat before she left the house. I couldn't wait till I grew up so that the hat pins wouldn't hurt when I stuck them in my head.

"I always use IdahoMaines", a lady from church told Mrs. S. She asked her what that was. She said "they are a particular type of potato".

When I first entered dentistry in southern Indiana, people would call up saying they had "The" toothache. I puzzled over that...there's one tooth and that particular person had it that day?


I like to come visit to your house, she said. It's always so clear and I can see you very well there.

My cousin told us that the little rubber tips on our sneakers were there so that the mosquitoes couldn't bite our toes.



"Come pick us up, Mom, but don't come with that wayback flapped open again."-How to embarrass your kids.

My neighbor told me she was so glad they invented Formicawaves to cook meals fast.

His minister preached that we should help heal the "Dope A dicks".

Her cleaning lady said she doesn't do windows but she will dust the Lavalier blinds.

Our building contractor says we need more "installation" in the walls of the garage.

My great aunt that always wore her mink coat, metal woven purse and wedgie shoes with the fruit on them was always Flustrated by something, my grandma said.

Grandma always said to move the waxed fruit bowl off the coffee table so that Uncle Bernie doesn't get his teeth stuck in them again.

My mother wore a black floppy hat to a big ceremony for my Lieutenant Colonel Uncle Russell. She was cutting the cake and her hat caught on fire. She never wore that hat again.



I took my kids to Hills Department store when they were in Jr. High. Hills was not the place to be seen but they had great prices. In the check out line I dropped my change purse. My kids stood there and looked away.

Tintypes fascinate me. They were the first form of instant photography. Some people call them 'instant relatives'~I call them 'instant tales'~my imagination runs wild as I sit on a rainy day and wonder who they were and what they wondered about...did they live a full life with happiness and disappointments. Why did I choose to pick up these particular little pictures of tin and keep them close~close so that on a rainy day I can look and again wonder at their little imposed faces on blackened metal?

Dilemma -
A dilemma is a problem offering at least two solutions or possibilities, of which none is practically acceptable.
Well, we are approaching the cool season, and I have such a soft heart..really it is a flaw, and if ever I am in an interview mode and am asked the question, "What is your biggest flaw?" I would have to say having a soft heart.
It truly is a detriment to the smooth flow of life sometimes...more than not for me. I can see every side of a problem and I can feel it,too. I have said this before, I think too much...and some folks say I don't think about the 'right things' what ever that is, but I do think too much about 'things' right or not so right or just plain a little screwy!
Anyway, I take in anything that is homeless or having a bad time of it. My family members and animals. I live in a very, very small house...just enough for two people really but, somehow, some way, people and pets are drawn to this little cottage and KennyRogersLookAlike and I are the innkeepers.
My neighbor's kitty, Gracie, has now adopted us in the middle of taking care of family members, nursing along a 126 year old matronly alpha cat called Miss Indy, and trying to keep this boat afloat in this economy! Gracie has not gone home for a long time and I finally emailed her mom to tell her that she has been visiting us every day. Her mom asked if I wanted to adopt her..she wants her to be happy. I have written about Gracie before...she doesn't like the other cats in the neighborhood...they all spend time in our wildlife backyard bistro alongside of the squirrels, opossums, chipmunks and woodpeckers~they are entranced by her~ she is not a bit enthralled by them. And Miss Indy gets all verklempt when she hisses. KennyRogersLookAlike and I spent an unusual amount of time last night enjoying the warm October weather and swinging on the swing with Gracie between us. After 2 hours~I can't believe we actually sat there that long~she stayed in the swing all night after we went to bed.
It's going to get cold and I am not sure that she will go back home. I don't know why she is attached but we are getting attached too..Another dilemma...Always a dilemma at our house!