Easter Sunday

Happy Easter to anyone who reads this! It was a lovely day--sunny but chilly. The magnolias got frozen the night before Easter and the night before my son gave me a digital camera.

I was going to post pictures of the lovely Jane (pink) and butterfly (yellow) magnolias but they are both brownish now. Everything else survived thank goodness. The garden has been a great inspiration to me lately and working in it has been good for the soul, although hard on the body.

We had a family dinner and a special surprise when my oldest son called and said he was on lay-over from his flight from Texas, he is a Continental pilot, and came from the airport to see the rest of the family. What a treat! We were all sorry the rest of his family did not come but the grandchildren wanted to be with friends.

It has rained today and I think the garden looks particularly lovely after a rain. So here are some of the better pictures.

Tennessee--Oh How Lovely

I have two new followers--ooooh how happy I am. This could be too much fun. So a Brit in Tennessee alerted me to the series on Appalachia on PBS and I watched the first one last nite. There was a lot of geological, rock stuff and I thought of my childhood in TN and what it meant to me. There were rocks, of course, on my uncle's farm where I would walk his fields and watch his cows and horses. The rocks were large flat expanses and were level with the ground. I wonder how far down they went. We spent most summers in Jamestown in eastern Tennessee "on top of the mountain" which I never quite understood until I was married and with my pilot husband in a small fabric covered plane actually flew over Jamestown and it is literally on top of the mountain. No wonder we could not see any mountains when we were there.

Isn't it interesting the things a child remembers about a beloved place...of course it is mostly about people and they way they relate to the child. But it is also about places--small vignettes of places--certainly not a full picture with everything connected together. We were allowed to walk to the post office which still had those lovely little pigeonholes of brass doors with a little lock, not plain but with wonderful designs and curlicues on them, not at all like the big black mailbox on a post out in the country where we lived in Ohio. And there was a drugstore with a soda fountain, although we did not have many cokes for because that would be a waste of money. And there were grownups who said "howdy" as we walked along the street to the PO. I thought that was soooo friendly until after I had grown up and realized that these people knew who we were....our Grandparents were well known in town. I still like to think that people in Jamestown say howdy to small children on the street, known or unknown.

It has been a tough day. I struggle with this new part time job and feel the same old dilemmas that I had before I retired--agonizing over my performance--keeping up physically with it all. I'm really struggling with the physical--I come home completely exhausted and worn out, only to have to go back the next day and do it all over again. This week I am going to try several new things: a) get good sleep the night before by keeping the cats out of my room. b)trying to eat properly because of having diabetes by having very small portions at lunch and a reasonable snack mid-afternoon. The cats hate me for keeping them out, they do detest a closed door, no matter which side of it they are on.

That's Metairie on the left. He is very vocal and seem to know just when I have dozed off by chirping and doing his baby-cry.

And this is Julia on the right. She looks very mean in this pic but she is a lovely girl and very very sweet. She wants to sleep on my bed right beside my face as close as she can get. Does not make for good sleep. And she is really unhappy with me for that closed door.




I think I would quit this job but I really need the money to get rid of debt that should have been paid before I retired. And I would have if I had not been so sick that last year before retirement and then really sick the year after. And in this economy I am lucky to have found this work and really need to keep doing it. But I would mostly like to stay at home and only do the things I really enjoy.

I did my taxes today....yeah for me, I don't have to pay anything. At least that turned out better than I expected. Now I have to take my car in for repair and hope that I don't need a new transmission.

But back to the tough day.....I am not being successful at trying to keep a peaceful mind. I rant and rage at so many things that I cannot change. My sisters have decided that my anger is from the genes my father gave to me....he too raged particularly as he aged and although I felt some unreasonable anger in my youth it seems also to have increased with age.

I have now re-read this and what a lot of garbage. 1) I had a review at work and all is well and they do not even think of firing me. In fact, I am actually doing very well. 2) the cats are adjusting to not sleeping on my bed since I have put little beds outside my door and they really want just to be close. And I'm sleeping wonderfully. 3). I really have quite a nice life--my sister came for a glass of wine and we had a good talk. 4) I must stop feeling so sorry for myself. My good friend Kate told me her sister in law has pancreatic cancer. Oh my--I am lucky to be alive.

Is this post worth posting. Noooo. But I'm going to do it anyway