~and so it is with regret~

     If I were going to repost any blog that I've written in the past year or so, it would definitely be the one from last December on the day that I learned my so called routine mammogram had turned out to be anything but routine.   I had been putting off having one for more than a few years.  Ok, ok.  It was really like about 10 even though in the blog post I believe I quoted it had been 7.

     Regardless of how many years I let lapse between them, I got the scare of my life that day at school and the next 24 hours of waiting for the second mammogram to be done were the longest ones ever.  The verdict came back clear the next day but the last thing my doctor admonished me to do was to be sure and go back in November of 2015 for a follow up one.  I promised him that I would.

     And I meant it.

     I have not yet found a doctor here in Burkburnett but sooner or later I will.  I have circled November 23rd of this year on the calendar as a reminder to me that I need to have my yearly checkup then.  No excuses.  Really.  No excuses.

     I am repeating this post again today and hope that if any women out there are putting off having theirs done that they might read it and realize that it's just best to go in and have it done.  The discomfort is minimal and the results could end up saving your life.

    It was during my lunch hour that I got the call from the doctor's office that something came back suspicious on  the X-ray and that there was an area that needed to be looked at again.  I was reminded that day of how important it is to have friends who will voluntarily step in and pick up the slack.  My good friends and co-teachers Mary and Nikki saw my distress and realized that something was really bad.  They lifted me up that day and would have taken my 20 children in with their own if I would have needed them to.  I never forgot their compassion and kindness.  It takes a village to raise up adults as well as children.

     "The 20" saw me crying and even though I couldn't tell them what it was about, they loved me just the same.  Little children are smart, perhaps smarter than we will ever know.  In overwhelming sadness I carried on for the rest of the day and late in the afternoon on the next day I went back in for the repeat mammogram.

     Thankfully, it was ok.

     If you care to read the post from now 8 months ago, it is found below.  Please feel free to share this with anyone you know who might be hesitant about getting their mammogram.  Don't be afraid like I was because one thing is for sure.

     Early detection can save you.

 They were there for me that day in December and for that I'm thankful.  They helped when Mike and I loaded the moving truck in Montrose back in May.  Even though we are now over 800 miles apart from one another, these two women will always have my back and I will always have theirs.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2014

~it is with regret~

Once back in the days of "old lefty", when my arm was in about cast #3 of a gazillion casts in all, I remember a time when I had an "awakening".  It was a personal one and it had to do with the swollen and badly bruised fingers of my left hand.  I was feeling sorry for myself and I remember that my son came in as I was getting into bed and helped to pull all of the covers up about me.  I couldn't even do that for myself and the very idea that I had to rely upon another person for the simplest of things really was disheartening to me.  I lay there in bed, left arm propped up on a pillow so the pain was not as bad.  "Stupid broken arm anyways!", I remember thinking to myself and just at that very moment I glanced over at my fingers as they stuck out of the baby blue, long arm cast I was wearing.  For the first time since the whole "I think I'm gonna try to jump that curb on my bicycle today" ordeal began, I began to take pity upon those poor fingers and the broken up appendage they were still attached to.  I reached over with my right hand and held onto those five fingers and gave them a hug.  As I did so, they sent me a message and the message I got that night now over 3 years ago was this.....

"We may be broken and pretty messed up right now but we are still a part of you."

I went in for a long overdue mammogram the day before Thanksgiving.  It had been a while.  Ok, Ok.  It had been a long while.  7 years of a long while.  For my own reasons and as the result of a very bad experience with the last one I had, I'd pretty much written off ever doing one again.  But at the encouragement of my doctor, husband and several good friends, I signed up for one during the last of November.  It really wasn't a bad experience at all this time and the technician who did it for me knew exactly how to take care of it.  I felt comfortable, well as comfortable as you can while getting the dickens squeezed out of you, and in the end was glad that I had went.  All that I had to do was to wait for it to be read and once I got the letter saying everything was fine, I'd be home free.

The letter did not come.

Today at school, I got a message on my phone during lunch time and found out the reason why I had not heard of the results.  The radiologist had found a lump in my left breast and they were scheduling me for an ultra sound tomorrow afternoon.  I was standing in the hallway at school when I got the word and I had to ask for it to be repeated many times before it sunk in that they were really talking to me.  And when it finally sunk in that they had the "correct patient", I did the only thing I knew to do.

I cried.

I was not going to write of this tonight, in fact I wasn't even sure that I would write of it at all.  But a dark cloud has been hanging over my head since I heard the news of what they found and fear has settled in.  One thing I have always known about this blog of mine is the therapeutic value it has always provided in times of great need and stress.  Back in the days right after my accident, I would sit at the computer and type one-handed for hours on end as I worked out the stress and sorrow that I was feeling after being so badly hurt.  I would pound away on those keys until I felt better.  It helped, a lot.  Tonight it has really been a blessing to be able to sit down and write out my thoughts and every once in a while, it seems like the black clouds would really love to part.  I'm so thankful for that.

Tomorrow afternoon at about 3:00 they are going to the ultrasound and take a deeper look into the lump.  There are a couple of things they might find, perhaps a cyst or maybe a tumor.  Right now they don't know and the whole purpose of this second procedure is to determine exactly what it is.  Time will tell.

And so we wait.

I was very foolish to let this go for so long.  7 years is actually pretty inexcusable and it didn't take me much time to realize that they were not kidding.  If you are so inclined, please would you pray for me tomorrow?  The "Good Book" says that we can pray specifically for something and if I were going to ask you to do that, I'd ask you to pray that I wouldn't be afraid, no matter what.  Thank you for so doing.  Much obliged to you.

I wasn't going to post this.  It was never in my plans yet somewhere tonight there is going to be  another woman reading it who may have been just like me.  I would venture to say that there are plenty of women out there who "religiously" get their scheduled yearly exams.  There are just as many women who do not.  To those women, I would say "Please do not wait.  Don't be like me."     I'd be the first to admit that mammograms are a "pain in the behind" but do it anyway.  You won't regret it if you do.  You might regret it if you do not.

Good night everyone out there, dear friends and family.  Kansas, no matter what, I will see you soon. Love to you all.

I have the worst luck with things on the left side of my body!  The right side is hanging in there though, picking up the slack for the left side. 

~the most important thing~

I got my letter from the social security administration this week, a reminder to me to look forward to the latter days of October and my upcoming 60th birthday.  It was actually kind of interesting to read and it was with a lot of surprise that I realized just how much money I have put into that system.  I'm still a few years from seeing any of my benefits but hopefully when I decide that I want to start drawing upon my account the funds will still be there.  

Hopefully.

There have been a few things in the last couple of years or so that have become a wake up call to the fact that my years have been many.  I gladly accept any senior discount that is offered to me and if it is not, then I speak up and ask if they honor one.  If I go to a motel or restaurant that accepts any of those "special" cards that we all get when we turn 50, then you can be sure I'll be pulling mine out of my wallet these days.  My body creaks sometimes when I try to jump up out of bed and my knees have begun to say "let us think about it" when I try to get up from the floor.  My normally very dark brown hair is now colored in shades of light blonde and medium brown.  When I went to my hair appointment last week, the guy who did my hair remarked that I sure didn't have very much gray in there.  

Just wait Dwight.  It's gonna be coming any time now.

Trust me.  Just wait.

Today I am celebrating my 21,823rd day of life.  I would be remiss if I did not say that I feel every single one of them sometimes during the course of any given day.  Yet even in as much as I can tell how the advancing years are taking their toll on me, I also have an extreme sense of gratitude in the knowledge that I am very much alive and reasonably well.

I am still fortunate and very blessed.  All that I have to do is look at the obituary section of today's paper and see the many good folks who are not.  Many of them will be nearly the same age as I am with an even greater number of them much younger.  

A strange thing has been happening to me as of late and in all actuality I noticed it first about a year or two ago.  Thankfully it's not a suspicious mole or lump.  It's not a difficulty in swallowing or sleeping at night.  Hey it's not even a loss of memory from time to time although I do have plenty of "senior moments" but shoot I've been having those all of my life.  The strange thing is this.

I have begun to look even more like my mom.  I see her sometimes lately when I look into the mirror and sometimes I'm caught so off guard that it scares me.  In my mind I say, how did mom get here?  But it's very true.  I've seen the photos and she will be me some day.  I never noticed it before so much but now as I have found myself entering this season of life, it has become more and more apparent.

Not that it's a bad thing mind you.

It is what it is.

My mom has been gone now for nigh onto 8 years and that's a long time to not be able to call her up and ask her a question or see how things are going.  Yet if I could see her just one more time, even if only for a few moments, there are two things that I would wish to tell her.

"Mom, I hope you are proud of what I've made of my life."

"Mom, I love you.

The good Lord above decided to take her back to Heaven a couple of weeks after her 87th birthday on September 25th, 2007.  It was a blessing beyond belief to see her pain and suffering over and to know that once again she and my dad were together.  That very same Heavenly Father decided that on this good morning of July 26th, 2015 that her little girl should arise and be well.  

And if that is His plan, then who would I be to question it?

22,813 days

Thanking God for the gift of my life.

                                                  

We were both just 17 years old.  Where did those young girls go?  Thankfully they both grew up and much older.

I've always loved this photo of my mom taken when we were living out in the country just south of the town of Haven, Kansas.  I have never in my life carried a purse this big but she always preferred one that size.  Mom filled that thing to the brim.   It was as if she wanted to be prepared for anything that happened.  Say for instance an impromptu trip to be an audience member on Let's Make a Deal or something.  I didn't always agree with her and sometimes I did things my way instead of hers but I always loved her.  In the end, that's the most important thing.

~sometimes I am reminded~

     The view from my window is a little bit different these days.  No longer do I gaze out and see the beautiful San Juan Mountains frosted over with snow capped peaks or watch the sunset each evening over the Uncompahgre Range.

The old view as I gazed out the kitchen window each day from our home in Montrose.  I grew so used to seeing it.  The city seemed like part of a little kingdom and the mountains were its protectors.

The sun disappears into the western horizon on a cold January evening last year.  That lone Cottonwood tree, barren of its emerald green leaves, stood like a sentinel that kept guard over our house.

     I miss the sights that I had grown used to in the course of my two year stay along the western slope side of the great Continental Divide but more than the sights, I acknowledge from deep in my heart just how much I miss the people back there.  Although it could be sometime much later in the years to come, I am sure that Mike and I will return there one day to pay a visit to our old home and to see the dear friends and family that we left behind.

     Here in Texas we have been making our way, slowly but surely.  Each day we find ways to acclimate ourselves to life here even more so than the day before.  Little by little with each passing day we have found ourselves much at home here and for that I am grateful.  We know our neighbors and most of the businesses in town now.  I can drive around the area without a GPS telling me which way to turn.  The road over to Petrolia and my classroom is easily navigated and save for one tricky corner, I can almost get there without a hitch.  For all of those things we are grateful.  It seems as if we are home and what a wonderful feeling that is to have.  Although Texas is not Kansas, both the state of my birth and the state where I now live seem so much the same.  Perhaps that is why it has become so easy to become a part of life here.

     Sometimes I am reminded that it took a great deal of courage and faith for us to leave the security of our jobs and our way of life back in Montrose to head here to a place nearly 800 miles away.  Truly, Mike and I both came here on faith, knowing in our hearts that it was the right thing to do.  It's a little stressful at first to not know for sure what will happen to you but in the end as all of the pieces of life's puzzle are slid into the correct place, it definitely gets better.  

     Make that a whole lot better.

     Absolutely nothing that was in our original plans actually came into fruition.  We had never given Burkburnett or even the little town of Petrolia a second thought.  As a matter of fact, had it not been for an impromptu trip to the little community of Byers one Saturday morning, I might never have even known there was a place called Petrolia to begin with.  God works things out in some strange and mysterious ways.  After submitting what seemed to be a thousand different applications to school districts in the area and wondering if I would ever find a school, in His perfect timing everything worked out according to the plan.  

     In the nearly 7 weeks that we have lived here, Mike and I have made a serious attempt to get out and explore the communities around us and to learn more about what goes on in each of them.  We enjoyed the peach festival at Charlie, have gone to the farmers' markets in Wichita Falls, slipped over the state line and went to the city wide garage sales at Randlett, and made the drive to see Mike's aunt in Olney many times.  This weekend we are going into Oklahoma once again to visit the small of Duncan and partake in some of the cowboy events that are going on there.  There is more than a plenty to see and do here and even though the scenery is a whole  lot different it really doesn't matter because there is good and beauty all over this great country of ours.

     You just have to be willing to find it.

One place that I dared to venture in Oklahoma City was to the home of my friend Kyle where I got the chance to get over my fear of snakes in an "upclose and personal" kind of way.  That's the real thing that I'm holding in my hands there.  We are only a couple of hours drive away from OKC now and so who knows?  Perhaps I will go to visit him once again. (August of 2012)

I think it took more courage to do this than anything I have ever done in my whole life.  I was doing really well until it started to make its way up "old lefty".  I lived to tell the story :)



     

~in time for some new traditions~

Good morning friends and family from the plains of Texas where summertime is flying by quickly.  Welcome to this Tuesday, the 21st day of July.  

We have been here for nearly two months and it no longer feels like we are in a strange place where people say "y'all" in every sentence they speak.  Mike and I are used to hearing it now and even though we don't say it often ourselves, I suppose the time will come when we do.  It seems as if we settled in rather quickly into our lives here and for that I'm grateful.  Becoming accustomed to your surroundings helps to make for a smoother transition from one place to another that is so geographically different.  We miss the folks we left behind but know that somehow or another our paths will cross once again.

Life was good in Kansas.
Life was good in Colorado.
Life is still good here in Texas.

Texas would seem a fine place to start making some new traditions for Mike and I.  This year we are going to begin making those memorable traditions with the holidays.  In the two years that we have been married now, we always went home to Kansas to celebrate with our families there for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We have never put up a Christmas tree at our own home because it would have only been up for a couple of weeks before we had to go.  This year we plan to remain in Burkburnett for the November and December holidays instead of returning home to Kansas.  Later on in the months that lie ahead we will be shopping for our very first tree to decorate as a couple.  Although we loved going home to south central Kansas each holiday, it's actually going to be nice just to stay home and enjoy time here.

The verdict is still out on what kind of tree we are going to get.  I love the tall and skinny ones while Mike prefers the traditional round and full ones.  I suppose it really doesn't matter which one of us wins out as long as we get a tree up somehow.  This year will be Crosby's first Christmas with us here and our first experience of once again keeping a cat out of a tree.  I smile when I think of all the times that old Oblio the roundhead attempted to scale mine back home in Hutchinson.  

December of 2015, it starts all over once again.

For memories made, whether on the prairies of Kansas, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, or here along the Red River in Texas, Mike and I give our thanks.

Have a great day everyone out there! 

Mike and I really enjoyed walking through the Hyde Park area of Hutchinson on our return trip home to Reno County, Kansas last Christmas.  In all of the years I lived there, I never had the chance to do this.  

It was a lot of fun last year to spend several days back in Kansas with our families there.  A special treat for me was staying in the same motel as my sister Sherry and her husband Wes.  We caught up on a lot of things during those 5 days.

I will always smile at this photo taken during December of 2013.  This homesick girl was going to get to Kansas no matter what!  10 feet of snow on Monarch Pass would not have stopped me from seeing my family that first Christmas away from them all.  Although we miss our dear friends and family back in Colorado's Rocky Mountains, it will be a real blessing to not have to worry about crossing over the pass any longer.

~in my mother's eyes~

When my father passed away from lung cancer in 1982, he was only 59 years old.  He was the same age that I am and even though it didn't really seem so at the time, I now realize how very young he was.  I guess that happens when a daughter catches up to her own parent's age.  

My mother entered widowhood at the age of 61 and in her eyes the world became a much different place, one that she would have to navigate basically on her own.  Oh sure, she had 6 children and a passle of grandchildren who would gladly help her whenever she needed them.  Yet truly when it was all said and done, my mom would find herself alone in that small home on East 14th Street in Hutchinson, Kansas.  If she was going to survive then one thing was for sure.

She would have to learn to fend for herself.  

My folks had just moved into their house two months prior and in a way it was a blessing that my dad only lived 8 weeks there.  Mom didn't have time to get used to him living in that house with her and see him sitting on the sofa or having supper at the kitchen table.  When the cancer advanced from his lungs to his brain, it became time for him to go to the hospital so that the doctor could determine the best course of action to take.  Dad was there only a week before he died that Saturday morning in mid-December and life for my mom would never be the same.

Mom had many decisions to make in the days and weeks that would lie ahead and a great deal of them were of the financial nature.  She was only 61 and not even old enough yet to draw her own social security.  There were hospital and funeral bills to pay as well as the normal day to day expenses that we all incur.  Money was tight, perhaps tighter than it had ever been for her.  She would need to find a job somewhere to bring in extra cash to supplement my father's meager social security benefits.  Of necessity,  my mom developed a plan for herself.  She came up with the idea to earn a home health aide certificate from the local junior college and so 45 years after she had graduated from high school, Lois Scott returned to school.

It wasn't easy.  Shoot just getting her transcript from Halstead High School was a miraculous feat in and of itself.  Records were kept a little differently back in 1937 but she managed to procure a copy of her high school work and began taking classes weekly at Hutchinson Community College, only a few blocks away from her home.  She went to school regularly, studied even harder than she would have asked her own kids to, and passed all of the required tests.  In the spring of her 62nd year she began a career that would last for nearly a decade.  It hadn't been a piece of that proverbial "cake" but she did it regardless and for that example of courage and hard work, I am beholden.

I have thought of her many times in the past couple of weeks.  Even though she has been gone now for nearly 7 years, I still wish that I could sit down with her and just talk from time to time about life and especially about school.  There is so much for me to learn to be prepared for in my new teaching assignment this year.  120+ students rotating in and out of my English classroom all day long will be a huge challenge and at times I have been rather anxious about whether or not I can rise to the occasion.  I have a battery of tests that I must prepare for and pass in order to secure my Texas license for an additional 5 years.  It could be a little stressful.  So much lies ahead of me and sometimes it gets a little overwhelming but then I think of my mom.

It must have been pretty overwhelming for her too.  She and my dad were married for 42 years and the decisions they faced were pretty much made as a couple.  Even though times were hard more than they were easy, they stuck together.  They toughed it out always and when it was done and she found herself alone,  Mom did the only thing she could have.

She continued on and just like my good friend Norman who walked across America last year, she did not quit.

So in the weeks and months that lie ahead for me as I begin my new assignment, I am going to remember my mom and the example she left for me to reflect upon at this time of my life.  Even though she is now gone from this earth and in her Heavenly home, I still believe that in spirit my mom will be with me there in my classroom and when I need a "shot of courage" as I try new things, it will be as if her hand is upon my shoulder, telling me as only she could.

"Don't worry Peggy Ann.  You are doing just fine."
And if my mom could say that, then who am I to think differently?

I am so blessed to have an older sister to be my mentor not only in affairs of my classroom but in life as well.  It was wonderful to have a visit from her today along with my niece Brandy who is also a teacher here in Texas.  Between the 3 of us in this photo we have about 100 years of classroom experience :)

~a work in progress~

May 28th seems like a long time ago now.  Mike and I posed for just a moment that rather chilly May morning outside of our house in Montrose.  By the end of the day, the moving truck would be filled to the absolute point of critical mass.  The next morning we were on our way to begin a new life 800 miles southwest of the San Juan mountains on the plains of the great state of Texas.  Two days later we arrived and even though things didn't exactly go as we first planned them to, they went the way they were supposed to all along.  Instead of Wichita Falls we actually landed 10 miles up the road to the north in Burkburnett.  

The day that we moved into our new house, now more than 6 weeks ago, both of us knew that we had our work cut out for us.  This place hadn't been lived in for well over 3 years and needed a whole lot of attention and the least of it was cleaning it up.  The price was most assuredly "right" and since both Mike and I know how to roll up our sleeves and get to work, we took it.  This is definitely a "work in progress" and we should have no difficulties in finding something to do in the months that lie ahead.  There would surely seem to be aplenty.  One room at a time, things will come together.  

They always do.

We decided to tackle the living room first because it's definitely what a person sees the moment the front door opens.  As far as size goes, this house is significantly smaller than our one back in Colorado was.  The living room here is half the square footage of our old one.  We are thankful that we got rid of so many of our things back in Montrose but once we started to unpack here in Burkburnett both of us realized rather quickly that we should have gotten rid of a whole lot more.  I've said it before and I will say it once again.

We all live in the land of plenty.

The first thing we had to do was to take out an old wood burning stove that was no longer usable.  In fact it was in such bad shape that the recent rains had begun to leak though the pipes that went out the roof.  It was a mess but once it came out and the roof was repaired, it provided a nice place to put our TV.

It took a gallon or so of sage green paint to turn the once really white walls a different and more eye pleasing color.  One thing both Mike and I learned the hard way was just how difficult it was to get up and down off the floor.  Our knees don't seem to be as young as they used to be. Taping off corners and trim so that we could actually paint without making a mess was a necessity.  We were both thankful that the other was there to assist.  Getting up and down from the floor or on the ladder proved to be a painful workout for both of us.  I've long forgotten the times that I used to know where I could just pop right up from being on the floor.  Mike, who once was a cross country runner in high school, agrees and commiserates with me on this one.  

Although it is not fancy and probably would not qualify to grace the cover of a home remodeling magazine, it is our home and we are most grateful for it.  We can live here quite well and feel comfortable in our new surroundings.  The pictures below show how we finished the living room up.  

Over the years I have enjoyed collecting crystal and carnival glass.  Mike's father was a United States Navy veteran and his flag and medals earned while in the service are atop the cabinet.

Some day when we are old(er) and gray, I'm sure that Mike and I will laugh about the journey that sofa took to get here to our house.  2,000 miles from Lubbock to Burkburnett.  What an odyssey :)

The crate was actually an old coffee table that Mike's dad and step-mom once used in Twentynine Palms.  We converted it into this.  

We have a place now for all of our memorabilia from the sea and Mike's days of living along the beach in the California sunshine.

Mike's grandmother on the Renfro side of the family was an excellent artist and we are fortunate to have three of her paintings here.  They are nice to remember her by.  She had quite a talent for creating works of art on canvas.

A very important lesson that I have learned over the years is to be thankful for what you have.  Mike and I have grown to be happy with this place and the collective belongings that we bring into it.  Would we need to insure the house and its contents for $300,000?  Probably not but you know the thing is this.

We really wouldn't want it any other way.

In everything, in the least of things, give thanks.

From our house to yours~
Welcome to this good day!

~and about the seasons~

     We are deep into the heat of summer here along the Red River in Wichita County, Texas.  At the end of the day the bricks on our house emanate a steady stream of warmth far past the time when the sun goes down each day.  The "9-year old" kid that still lives in me almost tried to cook an egg on the sidewalk yesterday afternoon just to see if it would work but the nearly 60-year old that I have now become said "No!  You may not."  

     
     The hot temperatures and high humidity that goes along with it seem to take their toll on folks all over the Great Plains.  After living away from this part of the world for two years, I had forgotten what it was like to swelter through the summertime days.  It didn't take long to remember.  57 years of my life were spent on the plains of Kansas where hot and sticky weather was the "norm".  I guess you could say that I was a little spoiled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

     
     When we were kids growing up on the farm in south-central Kansas, I can only remember my folks having an old water cooler to keep our house bearable during the summer.  From time to time, my dad would go outside and take the water hose to it and soak up all of the pads in the back.  It was fun to stand in front of it and cool off before heading back outside to play in the heat once again.  When you are a little kid you really don't know all that much better.  You get hot.  You come in for a while.  A couple of drinks of something cold and back outdoors you return once again.  Shoot, sometimes we didn't even bother to come in for a drink from the faucet.  As long as we could get to where the garden hose was hooked up, we had all the thirst quenching liquid we could handle.  Life was good.

     
     It still is.

     
     Back in the old days, long before we had wonderfully insulated coolers to carry drinks in, my mom would make my dad quart mason jars filled with koolaid and ice cubes.  She'd wrap them up in old gunny sack material and tie them off with twine before carting them out to the field where he was working.  They always seemed to stay plenty cool and would help my dad stay hydrated after working in the fields all day long.  I can't help but to think of it once in a while, especially when I go into restaurants where they serve their customers' drinks in modern day glass jars.
     
     I love the months of June, July, and August.  Always have and always will yet even though it once was, the season of summer is no longer my favorite one.  I've become an autumn person now and I look forward to the days when the leaves change colors and fall to the ground.  I'm partial to pumpkins, wearing my "oldie but goodie" Haven High School sweatshirt, and drinking a big mug of spicy hot tea on a cool October evening.  I doubt that you will ever hear me say that my favorite season is winter but then again I sure never thought that I'd say that summer no longer ranked at #1 for me.  
     
     These long days of summer will not continue forever but while they do I remain grateful for a home with air conditioning to keep us cool and comfortable, water to drink aplenty at the present time, and the ability to "soldier on" even though you get the feeling you could succumb to 63% humidity at any moment.  There are plenty of other people in this world of ours who would gladly step in and trade places with me right at this very moment.  
     
     In the very least of things, even with sweat upon our backs and upon our brows, we still give thanks.

                                            Winter high atop Monarch Pass in 2013.

Spring back in our old home in Montrose as I prepared to plant sunflowers in 2013.

Summer on day #2 of the Bike Across Kansas in 2011.  I believe the temperature on the day that photo was taken was 99 degrees.  (Scott City, Kansas)

Autumn in Montrose last year.  I saw these trees on my way to the store one evening and I just had to stop to take this picture.  

Spring and the days of our youth.  We didn't realize how wonderful our young lives really were back then. 

Still in the "summer" of my own life~High school graduation day in May of 1973.

We are enjoying the "autumn" of our lives here in northern Texas.  God has been so good to me.

          

     

    

~not one little bit~

     When school begins once again in now just 43 days more, I will be teaching 4th, 5th, and 6th graders English, spelling, and writing.  It will be a brand new experience for me in my 38th year of teaching but I like a challenge.  Variety is good in all aspects of life and for me as a teacher, it has kept things interesting.  There is no room for complacency when your teaching assignment is the same year after year and certainly no room for it when you are beginning a different assignment either.   Good teachers constantly are learning something new and that's important whether you are teaching the same classroom as the year before or when you are starting something totally different, just like I will be doing.

     Looking back now over the past nearly 4 decades in the field of education, I have had such a wide range of teaching assignments.  When I first began in August of 1979, I was so thankful to have any job that I would have gladly accepted whatever I was offered.  I meant that too! 

     Just give me a classroom please!

     The greatest amount of time that I spent at any one position was a 16-year stay in the combination first and second grade room at the small public school in Yoder, Kansas.  Yoder is a part of USD 312, Haven and at the time I was there 95% of the student body were Old Order Amish.  It was a teacher's "dream job" and my heart is full of many good memories while I was there.  Those were the early days of my being an educator and from 1981-1997 that little school along Yoder Road was where you could find me.  I was blessed to be there in the first place and felt sadness upon leaving yet after being there for close to 2 decades I knew that it was time to move on and try something different.  

     The grade that I have taught the longest in my time as a teacher has been first grade.  Including the 16 years at Yoder and additional ones at Haven Grade School, Morgan Elementary and Lincoln Elementary in Hutchinson, Kansas as well as last year at Olathe, Colorado, I have been gifted with 22 years in all working with little people.  Two of those years were spent in Developmental First grade classrooms where the students needed an extra year after leaving kindergarten in order to be more ready for first grade the following year.  

     My first classroom was offered to me even before I graduated from college in 1979.  The late Harold Voth of USD 312, Haven happened to meet me in the post office in downtown Haven one Saturday morning in late April.  Mr. Voth had known me all of my life having been my superintendent when I was a student attending both Burrton and Haven Public Schools.  When he asked me if I'd like to come and teach for him the following school year, I did not have to think twice.  It seems strange to realize it but my first interview for a job was completed in about 4 minutes while standing on Kansas Avenue in downtown Haven. Those two years as a Title I math instructor gave me solid and much needed experience in classroom management and I found it rewarding to work with kids who were having struggles in math.  Having had my own challenges with math as a kid, I could identify with them so much.  I went on to have four more years of teaching Title I students in both reading and math in the years that would follow.  Those years helped me to become a better teacher as I had to balance preparing lessons for many different grade levels.  

    I spent a year teaching 3rd grade and 3 years as the ESL teacher at Avenue A back in Hutchinson.  I even had the chance to teach Spanish to middle school students for two years as well.  I love the Spanish language and have enjoyed all of the times that I've been afforded the chance to work with ESL students and their parents.  It has been during these times that I've been able to teach English to adults and that is a rewarding thing to me in and of itself.  

     While it probably would have been much easier to stay put in one classroom or even one district for the last 37 years, I'm really glad that I did not.  Moving around from time to time has given me the chance to meet new people and to learn from them.  

     Once I was asked what I felt one of the greatest character traits of an exemplary teacher was.  That answer came very easy to me and the answer is this.

     Exemplary teachers are those who are willing to learn something new each day.  Sometimes the lessons come from their teaching cohorts and other times they come from the very students that sit in their classrooms.  

     I look forward to the challenges that the new school year upcoming will present to me.  Will it be difficult?  Perhaps sometimes.  Will I make mistakes?  Oh yeah.  Plenty of them.  Am I sorry that I didn't stay retired after leaving the classroom back in 2010?

     Not one little bit.

The very first exemplary teacher that I ever knew was Josephine Marmont.  She was my kindergarten teacher at Burrton (KS) Grade School and the greatest "kid wrangler" that there ever was.  She handled all 30 of us on her own and we all grew up to be good boys and girls.

The 4th graders that I taught two years ago at Olathe Elementary in Colorado could not have come along at a better time in this school teacher's life.  I needed them and they needed me.  Hard to believe that they are now heading to the 6th grade.

This is my sister Sherry who was a teacher for over 40 years.  She has grown to be my mentor and I will always feel that I learned how to be a better teacher just by watching her.  Although she is now retired, Sherry still is helping to encourage me as I prepare for my own classroom.      

~life's adventure and the kindness of strangers~

Southern hospitality.  
The kindness of Texas folks.
The joys of living in small town America.

Whatever you call it, when it happens Mike and I just look at one another and smile because each of us knows what the other is thinking.  Since we arrived here 6 weeks ago, we have been the recipients of it over and over again.  

Yesterday we stopped at a peach stand near the little town of Charlie hoping to find a small container of that delicious fruit to take home and enjoy.  We'd never stopped at this particular one before and so we gave them a try.  A wonderful young woman met us at the table as we looked over the peaches that had just been picked.  Her name was Ashley and she asked us if we had ever stopped before.  When we told her that we just moved to this area and it was our first time to come by, she immediately picked up the basket that we were looking at and placed it into our hands.  Ashley said it was "free" and that it was her gift to us as newcomers.  We thanked her for her kindness and stood to visit a while with her before going home.  It was such a nice feeling, one that was provided by the kindness of someone who was a stranger to us before.

We are strangers no longer.

This week we had to take my jeep into the shop in Wichita Falls for some recall work to be done on it.  The man who checked us in and took care of making sure everything was done correctly ended up being someone who lives here in Burkburnett.  He was a kind man named Harold and after we signed the paperwork that needed to be done we had a nice visit with him.  He told us about life here, what living through the drought was like, and that it had been a fine place for he and his family to live.  You know Harold could have just gotten my signature, said "thank you" and went on but he chose to stop for 5 minutes and make us feel welcome there.  He used to be a stranger to us but if we ever seem him around town, now we'll know who he is.

This new place where we live is filled with people who are good and kind.  They are everywhere we seem to go.  Literally, we have been witnesses to it each day. At first it seemed so strange to hear every single soul we came across utter those famous words....

"Hi there!  How are y'all doing today?" 
Followed by those also oft heard words, "Would you like a glass of sweet tea today?"

But now I am actually getting used to it.

For 57 years of my life, the good and kind folks of Reno County, Kansas were there for me.  They encouraged me as a young girl growing up, supported me as a mother to three fine children and as a teacher to so many others.  I was sad to leave them behind when I got married and moved away two years ago.  Yet even in the distance between Montrose and Hutchinson, they were there for me and by the way, are still so today.  They are why I will always consider myself a Kansan, no matter where I might live.

For a brief two year stay in Montrose County, Colorado the wonderful people that I worked with at Olathe Elementary and many others in the area gave their support to me as a very lonely and homesick Kansas school teacher.  They essentially became my second family and they helped me get through the despair that I was feeling about having to leave my old Kansas home.  They saved me from myself, time and time again.  When we left to move to Texas, now 6 weeks ago, it was with sadness once again.  The 800 miles distance and one hefty mountain range that now lies between us is huge and I know that it will be a long time before we ever see one another again.  But they are still there for me and for that I will always be grateful.

Now we are here and only the good Lord above knows what lies ahead of us.  Things are coming together as they should with more and more pieces of life's puzzle being slipped into the proper place.  It took a lot of courage to leave and come to a place where we had no certain future but come to think about it, even living in Colorado we didn't have a certain future.  No one does.

We are thankful for a home to live in, for food in our bellies, vehicles that run and money enough to fill the gas tanks, water to drink and even a bit to spare now that the drought is over, a cat and dog who actually get along together quite well,  the clothes on our backs and the shoes on our feet, and one other thing.

The kindness of strangers.  
In the very least of things, we should always give our thanks.

We are alive and well and we pray the same for you all, our dear friends and family.
Welcome to Friday, the 10th day of July and such a very great day to be alive in.

dear Colorado friends, Nikki and Mary.

                                         finding our way here in Texas

While going through our boxes of things yesterday, we came across this poster that was made by a young student at Lincoln Elementary back home in Hutchinson.  His name is Ezequiel and I've known him since he was a little kindergartener.   His fourth grade teacher made our wedding cake and commissioned him to design the top for her.  It was so precious!  It was the start of this great new adventure for me and now for Mike as well.  

~to have had a very good life~

In her early 80's, a few years before entering long-term nursing home care, my mom made all of her funeral plans.  A very nice lady from the local funeral home came to her house and brought all of the information and paperwork to sign that she would need.  Everything was done.  Not one thing was left to take care of when she passed away at the age of 87 just two weeks after her birthday that year.  Mom left a spiral notebook that detailed all of the plans she had made for us kids in the event of her death and kept it in a special place where we could find it when she was gone.  She loved us very much.  I know that she didn't want us to worry about anything so on the very last page of it, in her typical "Lois Scott" scrawl, she left us a 7 word message.

"I have had a very good life!"

And looking back it, she was right.  
She did.

How quickly time goes in this thing called our "life".  I am thinking at the present time that 59 years sure flew by me.  One day you are a kid having the time of your life dragging Main Street in Hutch with your high school friends and the next day you are getting ready to begin your 38th year as a teacher.  In between all of those years a lot of things happen.  Some of it is good and some not so good but it is what it is.

Life.

I have tried to chronicle my own life for over the past 4 years now in this online blog.  It started out simple with the intention of only going a few weeks or so but then it became something totally different and this morning's post will be number 914.  I wanted to do it mostly for my children so in the years following my own passing, they could read it and remember what their mom was like.  Yet as I continued to write it, a different reason for creating it appeared.  I found that writing out my thoughts and feelings was very therapeutic to me and helped me to fight an occasional bout or two with depression.  Sometimes I write every day and other times only a few times a week.  I don't know when I will stop or even if I ever will stop.  I never dreamt I that I would write 100 blog entries let alone nearly 1,000.  

Yet amazingly I have.

It's funny in a way.  Once I write something and publish it online, I nearly all of the time forget what it was that I wrote about.  Really, no kidding.  In only a matter of an hour or two.  I mentioned that to a dear friend once and told her it was kind of concerning to me.  How could I write something and then just totally forget what it was that I wrote about?  I loved the answer she gave to me.

"Oh Peggy don't even think of worrying about that!  It just means that you had something on your mind, you wrote about it and got it off your chest, and then went on with life."

You know, I like to think that she is right.

I'm not a professional writer and never will I profess to be but one thing I can make a claim to is this.  Just like my mother, on the last page of my own notebook of funeral plans, I too shall write the same words that she once did.

"I have had a very good life!"

And I will be right.
I have.

My mom was a writer too.  For 6 years, she kept a daily diary of what life was like for her.  The one above was her very first one.  Sometimes her messages were short and sweet while other times a bit longer.  How wonderful it is to pick up this journal and to read my mother's words once again.  

Life.

The first 6 of us kids.  I'm that little baby on my mom's lap.
Our little sister Cindy was just "the twinkle in daddy's eyes" then.

~lessons from the drought~

It rained yesterday here in Burkburnett, not quite 3 inches worth before it was all said and done.  It came down so heavy and hard that the street gutters began to fill up rather quickly and it reminded me of what it was like sometimes back on 14th Street in Hutchinson.  It was strange to look out and see this running river of water heading south towards the creek about a mile away.  

Rain is good!  Especially here in north central Texas.

The 5-year drought for this particular area was broken with the more than 17 inches of rain that fell during the month of May.  The flooding that came along with it was definitely an inconvenience but sometimes you must take the bad to receive the good from it all.  Little by little the flood waters receded and things were once again cleaned up.  Life returned back to normal.

Even though the days of the drought appear to be over, the memories of what the people here went through will remain with them for some time to come.  One of the first things that Mike and I noticed in our initial few days of living here was that no one, and I mean NO ONE, had any kind of flowers growing anywhere.  There are 10,000+ people who live in our town and to think that no one had any type of pretty baskets, rows, or clumps of flowers decorating their porches and yards seemed unreal.  Yet when you must live in a Stage 5 water restriction, there is not a whole lot of extra water to go around.  Our front porch is covered with beautiful flowers and plants but even though the drought is over, you still don't see a lot of people planting them. The local stores, including big national chains, didn't even bother to carry flowers and plants because they knew that no one could keep them alive.  It all seemed strange.

Mike and I went over to the little community of Charlie on the 4th of July to see some of their festivities and partake in some cherry and peach cobbler with ice cream.  We had never been there and wanted to see what it was like.  While we were standing in line we met a wonderful young lady named Allie who visited with us.  Only 12 years old, she knows firsthand of what it was like to live through the drought and talks about it like a learned scholar.  She told us of how it was to not be able to ever go outside and play in the sprinkler like other kids do on hot summer days.  There was no going to the pool for her or her friends or no chance to have water balloon fight with the kids of the neighborhood.  Allie told us of how glad she was that last year there were fireworks even though the fire danger was so high.  With a smile on her face, she reiterated the thoughts and feelings of this entire community.

"I am so glad the drought is through!" she said to us.

And I am glad that the rains came too.  

When we got here in the very last days of May, one of the first things that I did was to make several rows next to the fence in the backyard.  I wanted to try and plant the zinnia seed that I brought from Montrose as well as the hollyhock seed that Mike and I gleaned from old plants in Ridgway last fall.  It was late to be doing so but I thought that since I had nothing to lose anyways, why not try it?  I sowed it in heavily as my mom always did and thinned the seedlings out as they arrived.  The rains came again and fell upon that red Texas dirt and they began to grow.  I was so happy!  After two years of failing miserably in planting zinnias in the clay soil of Colorado, I finally saw some success.  Yesterday between all the rains, I ran out to check on how things were doing and was able to see my very first bloom of the season.  It may have been a little late on the planting side but everything worked out great.

I've not been the best steward of water in my life.  I'm pretty sure that I've wasted my share and then some.  My shower water has run longer than need be.  I've gotten a glass of water and poured what I didn't drink right down the drain.  I've run dishwashers with only a half of a load and put a small load of laundry though a full size wash cycle.  Yet as I have gotten older and somewhat wiser, I have become better at not wasting as much as I used to but there's still a long ways to go.  

Living in the area formerly known to be in extreme drought conditions has already taught me a lesson or two on that subject.  It's a lesson that most folks around these parts don't care to learn a second time.  

~as this day begins~

We had forgotten what the humidity was like in this part of the world but we found out pretty quickly once we got here in late May.  Such a difference between Montrose and Burkburnett in that respect.  At present a quick check of the weather report says that we are at 87% humidity this morning.  Time to swelter a bit.

Mike and I lived for the past two years in a home without air conditioning back in the mountains but I never remember being hot or that uncomfortable.  Opening a window at bedtime was all you needed to do in order to get a decent night's rest.  Ceiling fans took care of the rest of the house.    Here in Texas the AC has pretty much been going nonstop since we moved in.  Crosby and Sally spend a good part of their day lying belly up on the cool tile floor. 

Despite the weather, we are doing fine here and just like everywhere else on the great plains, summer's excessive temperatures don't last forever.  It only seems like they do.

Every single day things get better and we are finding ourselves at home in this new land.  We continue to meet good people and occasionally a bad one or two but that's a given no matter where you are at.  The "good" in this place greatly outweighs the "bad" and I'm not sure we could ask for anything more.  

Settling in has taken a little time but we are managing to do that.  With the arrival of the last of our belongings from Colorado last week (thanks to the wonderful Morris family!) everything that we own is now in one place.  Mike and I are finding out that we really have more than we need now so looks like another garage sale is in order.  So thankful that we were able to get rid of so much that we didn't really use back in Colorado before we made the move here.  This house is smaller than our old one and there's only so much room to go around.

We live in the land of plenty.

Mike and I had something in common before we got married and it was that we both liked collecting old wooden boxes.  Each of us had been doing that for a long time.  When it came time to pack the moving truck that morning, those old wooden boxes served a useful purpose in holding the small items that really didn't fit anywhere else.  I had to stop and think of all the stories I had read "the 20" last year in our classroom about the travels of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Ingalls family did the very same thing as they moved from place to place in the 1860's.  Probably wouldn't have worked out too well for them to run to the local supermarket and ask for their boxes from the recycling bin.  

We have more than a dozen wooden boxes in all.  Last night Mike had a great idea about how to put them to use here in our new house and when everything was done, they ended up looking pretty nice.

The sleeves of my record albums from the days of my youth are getting worn and a bit faded but I will never give them up.  Those 3 old crocks are a small part of the old crockery that I have collected over the years.  Mike likes old books and so he put a few of his out there too.  The small dish, right hand side in the middle, was my Grandfather Brown's and is well over 125 years old.  His initials "AJB" are penciled in on the back side.  It came from England with his family when they came to America in the mid 1800's.  

We like old stuff and the stories that come with it.

The day will soon begin and much lies ahead to finish up.  I told Mike all along that there was nothing that we could not do as long as we stuck together.  That is proving to be most certainly true.

We are alive and well here.  
What shall the day bring to us that lies ahead?
Only God knows but we are soon to find out.

Back in Hutchinson, Kansas on a cold February day in 2013.  I had built my very first snowman ever at the age of 57!  It was freezing that day but I was determined to create something.  There probably won't be any snowmen made in Texas today or ever.  For that moment I was doing something that I need to do more often.

I was having fun!

~and some of those people were soldiers~

Happy Independence Day 2015 everyone~
"Old Glory" has withstood the test of time and trials.  
Truly, long may she wave.

On our first 4th of July together, Mike and I visited the traveling wall that honors the over 58,000 Americans who gave their lives in the service of our country in the tiny southeastern Asian nation of Vietnam.  It was a very humbling experience to see it at Baldridge Park in our old home in Montrose, Colorado.  Having never seen the full size and permanent one in Washington, D.C., I was glad to finally have the chance to at least see it in its smaller scale form.  

It was time well spent.

I went to pay my respect to all of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam.  I was looking for the names of 3 men in particular.  Two of them were from my hometown of Haven, Kansas and were killed in action just a few weeks apart in June of 1967.

And I found them.

Sergio Albert was the brother of a high school friend of mine. 

He was laid to rest in Laurel Cemetery, a beautiful and peaceful place between Haven and Yoder, Kansas.  His grave is covered with the inscription of a letter he wrote to his parents telling them that he was not afraid to die.

Henry Fisher was in my sister's class in school and had only graduated from high school 2 years before.

Henry was buried in the same rural cemetery as Sergio was.  Each time I go home to Haven for a visit I try to stop by their graves and pause for a moment in time to remember them.  I was only 12 years old back in 1967.  Life was just beginning for me yet for these two young men life was now over.  

You know, I write in this blog for many reasons, one of which is to chronicle my life as a virtual diary of sorts for my children and grandchildren to remember me by.  But today I have a different reason and that reason is this.

I want to honor my country and by the way, it's your country too.  I stay far removed from political controversy on purpose.  There are other times and other places for that.  As Americans we need to continue to realize that the price tag for our freedom has been paid for by the blood of men and women throughout our history. Henry and Sergio were only two of them.  We continue on life's way each and every day, forgetting most times just how "free" we really are.  

I am so very guilty of that.  How about you?

So today if you get the chance to go to a great July 4th parade, watch for that beautiful flag to come by you.  Teach your children and grandchildren to stop and be quiet for that moment, to remove their hats and to place their right hand over their heart as they keep their eyes on our country's flag.   Showing respect for the flag is showing respect for its people.

And some of those people were soldiers.