Sad, sad news....

I got an E-Mail from Janie today regarding my birthday and she asked me who the person was that had sent a regret that they couldn't come. I read the note that she, Linda Entel had written the reason that her Mother couldn't come was because she had dementia very bad!!! Her Mother is my cousin June Crithfield, who is not only my older cousin, (we always joked about that! She was born in Dec. 1918 and I was born in Feb. 1919!) It was with regrets that Linda had written and said that she could not bring her Mother because she, Linda, had been undergoing all kinds of back trouble for three or four years! June and her sisters, Nadine and Betty, were the daughters of my Uncle Lance and Aunt Gladys. Uncle Lance and my Father were always close and so we, June and I, had the chance to spend most of our childhood years together! Mother and Aunt Gladys were really good friends too! Nadine died several years ago of cancer and Betty, after many years of being practically bed-ridden, developed Alzhiemers Disease and was put into a home in Clarkston near June. June was the one who practically took care of Betty till she passed away! Betty had two sons and they lived in Pullman and had families and so June was the ONE left to care for Betty. She visited her almost every day at the Care Center and literally watched her pass away. June had a great feeling about family history and went on several trips to find out all she could about the geneology of the family! This helped immensely to my Brother Joe's wife Jean, who has taken time ( and I do mean years!) to try and come up with the geneology of the Rabideau, (my Mother) and Batty, (my Father) families. She came down the other day with a huge album of birth certificats, Baptismal certificates, etc., etc., about the families. (Anyone wanting to find out about the Farnsworth, Rabideau, Batty family is welcome to come and have copies made of the family going back to the Civil War and beyond!!!) Getting back to June, I feel so sad that we are getting to "that" age when things are no longer remembered! My Mother passed away in her 99th year and Dad was 83 when he passed away! Mother was very mentally alert and knowing even at 99 but Dad was put into a Hospital and had dementia at 83! He did not last very long, thank God, in the Hospital!!!! I HOPE that I take after my Mother mentally and I think I do! I try to keep busy, that is, I try to keep my mind busy with things that keep me thinking that I'm younger than I am! June was a gardener too, and loved the outdoors! I don't have a "green thumb" and gardening is something that I feel I "have" to do if I want to have a few flowers around!!!! I'll pray for you June, and hope that you continue to be the happy person you always were! I love you!!!

It's that time of year again!

Since I am on housing, every year I go through this same thing of having to re-apply! It seems like it takes me forever to fill out a few forms but then when I am again accepted, it's worth it!!! It's rather a gloomy time of year too! Cold, foggy mornings, sunny afternoons, but still cold! With all that is going on in the world, I should be complaining? I do have a roof over my head,(such as it is ) and I have food for my stomach and a heater that works pretty good and an air conditioner in the summer! Got me to thinking how it was when we lived on the farm when I was a kid! We had no air conditioning and I have seen it get up to 109 degrees and stay that way for days! Of course there was the good old creek that we could wade in and if Mother didn't let us go there, ( the rattlesnakes liked the creek too when it got hot!) we turned on the sprinkler in the yard and ran through that! Trouble with that place, Wawawai, was that it didn't get too cool at night either! Mother used to put wet dish towel in the windows and if there was a breeze, it would blow through that and cool off the kitchen somewhat while she was canning fruits and vegetables. The kitchen stove was a wood burning one and then when she canned the fruit, she would put them in a big pot so that the water covered the jars and then when the water boiled it caused a vacuum in the jars and thus sealed the jars! It was like an oven in the house and she used to be in there at least 8 hours a day, if not longer, canning, cooking, heating water for baths, (no hot water heaters)and for water to wash the dishes in, (and rinse them)! It was not an 8 hour day she worked, more like 15 or 20! How did she do it? We, or should I say, she never even thought about it! It was something everybody who had a family did!!! Now, at 90 years old, I'm wondering how she did all she did! She had 10 children, (I'm the oldest) and kept them and the house always spotless! (Or as spotless as one could with six boys and four girls at the age we were when we lived on the farm!) And I'm complaining about a few things like the weather, etc. I remember Mother saying time and again, "Ice and snow, Bless the Lord, cold and chill, Bless the Lord!" She got those sayings from the Psalms out of the Liturgy of the Day, which I say every day but how much thought am I putting into it? God gives us things to try our patience, and how do we repay Him? By griping over the "little things"! If I could just trust God and not try to work things out by myself!!!! Things are rough all over now and it seems like it will get worse before it gets better, but hey, looking back, I've been there, done that, and I'm here yet at 90!!!So chin up world!!!

Time and tide....

I wasn't going to blog for awhile but after reading my son's blog I had to write and tell him that that was one of the first things I noticed about the local news media. Hey, you had it made with even a hint of a notice, (even if it was from the wrong side of the fence!!) There was nothing at all in the Lodi paper. Tomorrow a group of brave souls, (yes, you wouldn't get me near the place!) are having a march in San Francisco!!! One of my friends has been getting together a group from here to go down to S.F. Lydia is an ardent soul with a heart to match, and she is really a worker for the right causes! I saw somebody on T.V. yesterday, yes, EWTN, carrying a sign that said, (What if your Mamma decided to abort you, Mr. President? Would you be standing in the White House making all kinds of laws that are so against human life? And what about your Grandma that died recently, did she abort her baby or did she allow the baby inside her to grow and eventually bring you forth into this world! Just think of all the really GREAT men and women who have good families and bring children into this world who turn out to be maybe even greater than they? Murder is murder, no matter at what age life is taken illegaly and by what means! People seem to forget that the Great God who created us is doing a good job of it but when men and women decide they know better than Him, as a for instance Adam and Eve. God has given us a second chance here. Hey, let's show Him we appreciate it!!Are you really so selfish Mr. President, that you wouldn't like to have Grandchildren and Great-grandchildren to carry on your name! I think all you are thinking about is today and how much money YOU can make and spend and how many "toys" you can accumulate while the taxpayer suffers!!! I really don't think you have a "clue" as to what it is to run a country! But you WILL find out when all your "friends?" in Congress start treating you like the dirt you were made from! God, Please God, help us all! And I ask this sincerely.

Just a few....

Just a few memories that were brought to mind when I heard that my eighth grade teacher's daughter was coming to my 90th birthday party next month! Thelma Earl and her folks came into our lives when I was in the sixth or seventh grade! Mr. Earl was a retired barber and of course Mrs. Earl came as a teacher to the Wawawai school! What a relief after the first couple of teachers we had! Mrs. Fuque was not bad but Mrs. Shawn did nothing but assign the lessons and then sit at her desk eating chocolates or sleeping from what I remember. I do remember that some of the kids, (not me, I was afraid of heights!) crawled out of the window and played around before she realized what was going on! Then Mrs. Earl came! There was no place for them to live since there was the three of them so the schoolboard, where Grandma Batty was the head of that, etc. decided to fix up the basement of the school as living quarters for the Earls!!! If I remember, (Thelma might have other ideas!) it turned out to be quite comfortable. Mr. Earl, having been a barber, cut all the men's hair in the area of the school! That was not all he did! It got very cold there in the wintertime and Mr. Earl would make big pots of soup and bring it upstairs for the students to eat with their sandwiches!!! And if it was not that kind of weather he would help us warm up our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the big pot-bellied stove in the classroom. He did all the janitor work, etc. Mrs. Earl gave piano lessons to all who wanted them! They cost us nothing! My folks bought a second-hand piano and so my sister Genevieve and I took piano lessons! Teresa,our younger sister benefitted from them by learning to play by ear at home after we would practice and go to school!!! So when she and our cousin June's sister Betty went to school, they both took the lessons! Mrs. Earl was a very diligent teacher and we really were taught spelling, (she would have spelling bees!) reading writing and arithmatic! Thelma has kept in touch, along with her Mother and her Father till their deaths, all these years. She called me last summer and told me that her best childhood remembrances of school and growing up were the years that her folks spent in Wawawai and the friendships that they made with the Clarence Batty family! We were the closest farm to the school and so I remember many evenings when the Earl's would walk up the road and spend the evening! Mr. Earl played the violin and so did my father so it was a very musical , what else can I say to describe it, happy memorable time of my life too! God Bless you Mr. and Mrs. Earl, (both gone now!) and Thelma too. I'll be very happy to see you again!!!

Thinking...

I am going home this weekend, after which has been a really enjoyable three weeks or so, visiting with family and friends. Weather has not been all that great but after all this is winter! Went to Bible Study at Cathy and Pat Sullivan's (my niece and husband) last night. There I met a woman who has relatives in Mokelume Hill where I lived at one time! What a small world and it keeps getting smaller! I recognize the woman's last name and am pretty sure my sister Barbara would have known the family since she lived in the area almost all her life! ( And incidently why I moved there at the time I did!) I am now looking forward to my 90th birthday in February! My children are giving me a birthday party up in Lodi where I now live and have lived for over 35 years and have many relatives and friends! One son, Steve, (my youngest living son) lives in Stockton which is only about 14 miles from where I live. The others are scattered from Arizona to Texas to Ohio to Georgia to California! (One reason that the above location was decided on for my party!) I can hardly wait!!! Time flies by so fast! I was at my son Bill and wife,Wendy's house for lunch on Sunday. I see them all when I come down here as I have for the past several years but their "children" now have children and my oldest Grandaughter"s oldest child, my great-grandaughter is almost ready for High School! She will be going to Bishop Alimany High School where her father went, and where three of my boys and two of my daughter-in-laws graduated from!! And speaking of small worlds, our present Bishop of the Stockton Diocese taught school in Alemany but after my boys and their wives graduated but about the same time my Grandson-in-law went to school there!! Ho-hum! Makes me tired just thinking about it! So I probably won"t write any more till after I'm home on Saturday and see, hopefully, see my newest Great-Grandaughter, Liliana Noelle!!