A Whirlwind

Hello, I'm so sorry to be awol lately but things have been a whirlwind lately...Please oblige for my absenteeism.  You all have been on my heart and mind...So many people have.  Life is funny like that.

We have a new little granddaughter, Margaret Rose, Isn't that a pretty name?   Jem and I just celebrated 45 years of marriage, now isn't that something?   

Being a wife, Mimi and Mom and only child daughter of a 95 year old mama with dementia is serious business I tell you, being a homemaker is also serious business and actually it's a wonderful creative outlet as well, composing nice cozy meals gives me joy.  Ministering to our grandbabies is also serious business.   Those little children know the grandparents who take time for them and think about them.  They are not fooled and I want to be that grandparent that was thought of well, I want my grandbabies to say...."My Mimi and Popo took time for me and made stuff with me and were thoughtful and showed love, care and time to me."  It doesn't have to be expensive, they want our time, for us to be thoughtful and pick little things up for them here and there, to make stuff together when possible.

 

Little JJ sporting a hat Mimi made for him.

My life lately is quieting my studio.   Things have gotten so very out of hand there for this creative messy, and I'm just moving all things out and going through them on a separate table.  There are art supplies, sewing supplies for my designs and Little Dresses for Africa, party and school supplies...Books, and more books.  ...The list goes on.  

I'm decluttering.  I've decluttered some very-hard-to-declutter things too.  It was time, my heart and soul felt a release.   I'm glad I waited and did not force the release of these things prematurely.  

I must say some of the decluttering is exhilarating!    

Some of the harder things though... is I have given the huge modern glass platter that was my dad's at his restaurant to our daughter and her pastor husband, our son in-law for their church, I have given away the pretty nautical sleeveless  shirt I wore the last time I saw my father in the hospital that horrible day.  I have given away a bottle of cologne my dad gave me probably twenty years ago at least.  

...I've been thinking of my stepdad, Al and how he was such a good man and oh how I miss him.  Things were never the same when he suddenly passed from a heart attack in '91.   It left my mom by herself.  Not easy.  Not.  Easy.  My mom is not an independent person, she depended a lot on me to make her happy.  It was a very alone time as far as friends went, at that age not many had lost anyone in their lives.

But on with life, we all have disappointments, some more than others it seems.  I'm not sure what I would have done without God.

This  brings me to a video that Jem and I heard yesterday, I thought it was so good and so meaningful.  I love the late David  Wilkerson, When my stepdad, Al passed suddenly I called the World  Challenge ministry and a lady answered the phone, I was so in the depths of  despair and the lady was so kind  and I noticed she said the word, God in an interesting way...Kind of like, Gawd.   It sounded like the way David Wilkerson said it, and I asked her who she was and it was David Wilkerson's sister, Ruth. She helped me so very much that day over the phone.   I was home with our three little girls, one was a little tot at the time, our fourth was yet to be born.  I was a young homeschool mom and we had just moved out to the country.  Gravel roads and all friends were long distance.  

It's funny, some of the things that I was so not used to in the country, and in smalltown are the very things I am so charmed by now...

Allow me to share the youtube video here, For Those Who Carry Pain by David Wilkerson.   

If you would like to look up David Wilkerson, I think you would be fascinated with his life.

If you tell me this afternoon you don't have any disappointments, I want to know what planet you came from.

~David Wilkerson

Me and Jem on our Anniversary.

  Admiral Nimitz and  I, we are very close buds don't ya know?

Jem holding down the fort!

 Me and Jem holding little Margaret Rose.

I'll close with a cozy recipe I have made several times and just love it.

Pasta Fagioli Soup

Diced onion.   2 cups

3 cloves fresh garlic or 3 tsp. jarred (Yay for jarred when we're in a pinch)

1 14.5 oz. can crushed tomatoes

1 small can of tomato paste

1 T Italian seasoning

A little black pepper

3 cups water

Nutritional yeast to taste

1 can 14.5 oz. kidney beans rinsed and drained

4 cups baby spinach

A tiny sprinkle of red pepper

I sauté my onion in a generous amount of olive oil and put the garlic in at the last, only til fragrant or it will be bitter, who in the world came up with roasted garlic?  Haha.  My Italian grandma definitely would have made a yuck face on that one! : )    

You just put everything together and season until your heart's content.   It's a wonderful soup, very comforting and I serve this over gf pasta of course. : )   I sprinkle pre-grated Pecorino (sheep's milk) Romano over the top, I use the Boar's Head brand in the little tub
and it is delicious and is not loaded with sodium.  Bella!

 That Quiet Time in the Evening

I'm listening to audio books after supper in small increments when getting ready in that quiet time of the evening, I call it PJ time. You know how it goes, we brush our teeth fooling ourselves thinking we won't snack?  ...And then it' time to catch an old 40s or Halllmark movie with hubs and sometimes our youngest adult daughter.

The audio book series I'm listening to:  I'm so enjoying once again The Mitford Series.   I have the entire series on cassette and am listening to it on this wonderful cassette/radio Victrola player I found on Amazon, open box special.   I also have cds for some of the books and that is very nice too.  

A New Doggy!

We have a new watch dog and he's a sweetheart, just so very precious.  His name is Duke.  He had been in the shelter since a puppy for almost three years.   When our youngest adult daughter brought him home, the volunteers at the shelter cried and took pictures...Is that not so precious?

Speaking of pictures....I'm having a horrible time with any newer pics and I'm going to have to get busy and learn a different and new way it seems.  I have a new pc but it's a unique animal and it seems Pinterest has changed some things too.  Please pray I can work out some sort of system, it's become very discouraging for me. 

I sure hope everyone is having a wonderful day and are doing okay these days.   Let me know how you are, I hope to be stopping by sites this week.   I always covet your prayers.   As I wrote...It's been a whirlwind.  Please oblige, it seems I'm doing good to check my email once week and that's no joke.   ...Oh dear me 

You all are on my heart and in my prayers,  until the next time,

~Amelia

Now...We Have Lost Our Precious Gracie...Our Sweet Gal and Fearless Protector

 

This is our sweet Gracie-Girl taken just a few weeks ago.

Two weeks ago we lost our precious Gracie.  Gracie was our sweet gal and most loyal protector.   Oh how it hurts our hearts.

Eleven years ago on a literally freezing cold day our second born daughter, Joycie was driving down the long - what we call the skinny road (built for Model T cars back when)to smalltown, an extremely historical little town where we do our grocery shopping and make our stops at the little Walmart and many other little places in what used to be a thriving oil boom town.  As Joycie drove home from smalltown Gracie was waiting for her at the side of that road near a gate as if waiting for her ride.  It was her ride alright, a ride that saved her life here on this green earth.  She had no fur and demodex mange all over her body, Gracie's grey skin had the texture of potato chips.  Joycie who has a gift for seeing animals in need, immediately stopped the car and grabbed a very large elegant red tablecloth still in the trunk from Christmas and threw it over and around this huge skeleton of a dog.   This poor creature truly was like a skeleton that we see on the ASPCA commercials but worse.  Joycie called me immediately and said..."Mom, I have this dog with me and it's the saddest thing I've ever seen..."   

 

I was ready for our new arrival... Joycie came to the laundry room door next to our kitchen with this very large creature wrapped in the elegant red tablecloth...That part was kind of humorous, a large dog with no fur and demodex  mange wrapped in a huge elegant red tablecloth in Joycie's arms.  Gracie had a strong will and even stuck her large paws out at the doorframe holding back so she would not fit in the door, hesitating to enter into our home not quite knowing what this doorway held for her on the other side...I still remember those big paw pads pushing away from the door frame.

We prayerfully watched her after we laid her down on a comfy bed there we set up for her, she lay there shaking.   The room was plenty warm, but the shaking persisted, we moved an extra little heater in there to make sure it was toasty and placed a little night light in the room so she wouldn't be frightened at night.   The next day Joycie went to our old vet in oldtown and told them of our plight and showed them the photo of Gracie's condition...Demodex.   Demodex is what the gal at the front desk said.   This was eleven years ago when we had the comfort of our old vet's office and they treated us as friends.    We treated her with special  baths and  before we knew it we had a special hound dog.  She was large and lanky and looked like a grey hound because she didn't have fur and all we saw was   grey.  We were so amused when the golden fur came in.  She was soon scheduled for a spay and I have to smile til this day as our daughter said they had to drag her as she was sitting on her hiney up the hallway to await her surgery.   We soon learned our big girl, aka Miss America was a Black Mouth Curr.   Dr. Bill scrawled it on the spay certificate and that was that.  

This gal was long and leggy, thus Miss America although one back leg was slightly shorter than the other and gave her the funniest little funky gait when she trotted... but truly....Gracie.  It was by God's Grace that she just "happened" to be out on the road waiting for Joycie and Joycie had her eyes out for precious creatures such as Gracie.    She was such a character...She would frighten people out of their wits with her bark, lead down the driveway like a male but when it came to us?  She would throw her head back and smile at us.  Yes!   She would smile at us with her teeth!   Just like Mr. Ed the talking horse.   

Gracie was our loyal protector and frightened quite a few people, grown men, especially delivery people and repair men would be taken aback by her.   She never ever bit anyone but looked like she would coupled with her bark and her snarl, and trust me, everyone believed her!  .

Gracie's eyes were very soulful and loving, one of her favorite things was chasing snakes.  Yes.  Chasing snakes.  She would go after the snakes with her hound nose to the ground like a little vacuum cleaner side to side full force ahead-darn the torpedoes, her tail just-a-wagging!   She had been bitten more than several times and  always pulled through as we treated her.  Gracie was a tough girl.

Gracie was a champ, she's been ill for the past month and a half.  I've been nursing her, the house has looked like a mini vet's clinic as I had giant syringes big enough for a horse, antibiotics, all kinds of treatments for our girl.   The days before she passed, I would find her staring at me as if to remember me forever.   It was so very precious and brings tears to my fur mommy human heart that many a day she would only allow me to care for her and that was that, as I opened her mouth placing the food and med in and she obediently and trustingly took her meds.   And there were also a lot of ups and downs, adjustments of meds etc.  

 

The week before she passed to the other side, Jem was trying to put her in the little 'mule' terrain vehicle, and she couldn't get up into the vehicle, her legs were failing her and she seemed to not want to be hoisted up either.   Poor Gracie hobbled all the way back to our property where Jem was taking the 'mule', and this is a loooong stretch, I would say at least half a mile.  Oh my heart, just watching our Gracie doing that.  She loved it so much going back there with Jem, going into the forest...chasing snakes of course.  We were tickled pink that she felt so well.   The next week Jem placed her in the 'mule' and she let him this time.  She stayed a little closer to Jem in the back there but still went into the forest for a while.  We wonder now if she wasn't bitten and with all of her health issues that might have been just too much for her body.   

We were at the zoo with our oldest daughter and grandbaby and I knew Gracie was not doing great before we left, I could  see she was having a hard time with her back legs...Jem brought her out on the screen porch to enjoy the fresh air, Jem used a log carrier to slip under her when she had episodes and couldn't hardly walk, he would carry her with the log carrier as I held her back side.  

Later that day Jem and I were in  one of the zoo exhibits and the Holy Spirit whispered to me to get home, the whisper was a loud whisper and sent a chill to my soul.   Jem and I got on the freeway and got home...Sure enough things did not look good.  Jem gently placed the carrier under Gracie and we got her back in to her familiar bed.  Liesl, our sweet white lab mix lay with paws up front on her tummy, very alert watching over Gracie very alert, just as Gracie once did for our Charlie when he was so very ill.  We didn't know what was to become, we had seen this before and she got over it but this time Gracie was to pass over night into the early morning to the other side.    

We sooo miss our Gracie, she was preciously loved by all of us here at the Forest Cathedral and oh how I miss that girl.  Oh how I miss her.  Our youngest daughter was just saying that when she comes in she looks to the orthopedic dog bed still there in it's proper place and expects to see our girl, Gracie.  

We don't know how old Gracie-Girl was, we don't know how old she was when we got her those eleven years ago...  

Faithful, fearlessly protective, loyal, a fellow introvert at heart, we got each other.   Just last Christmas she lay on one of the dog beds here and things were becoming a little noisy...I looked at her sweet face and knew she was probably getting a little stressed with the normal children's laughter and excitement...I whispered to her...Gracie?   You want to come in our room to be quiet?   She got up slowly off of the bed and walked into our room with me as I brought her for safety from the noise (although a joyful noise).  She lay on the rug there by our bed as I gave her some pets on her head and back and she gave me a look of comfort and being loved as she lay her head back down looking up with those beautiful big brown eyes to rest in quiet as I went back out with our human family.  Yes, Gracie-Girl and I understood each other...We sure did.   

We sure miss you, Gracie-Girl....We sure do.

I'm plodding along here at the Forest Cathedral and honestly haven't had the time to write.  My mom has dementia, it's so very cruel and it's heart breaking, many highs and lows...So as you can imagine my heart and theatre of my mind is overflowing, overflowing is an understatement, actually.   I've been sewing some summer clothing for myself, some needed things and that has kept me busy along with composing and cooking our dinners etc. along with caring for our sweet fur angels we have in our care, thank God we have them.  I'm sure they wonder where Gracie is?   Little Leelo was sniffing her still face the next morning and asking with his little junior puppy 'talk'...What's wrong?  Why aren't you talking to me?  

I hope to be around a bit more often as I am able.  Please oblige, I've felt so helpless, feeling spread so very thin lately.   

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In the back with Jem...Gracie so loved this day a week or so before she passed.

 

 

Signing off from the Forest Cathedral, until the next time dear Friends,   I appreciate you all...    ~Amelia