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!!!