Children and such....

I was thinking about some of the funny things that children do when they are too small and sometimes too dumb to know any different. Case in point!!!! I don't know how old I was when I finally decided that there wasn't any Easter Bunny! I told you before how I really cried when I found my Mother and Dad putting the toys under the tree one Christmas Eve!!! I felt betrayed and also felt that somehow, some of my childhood had gone!!!! Then I reflected back to when my children were small and how Cappy and I colored eggs half the night and fixed up home made nests for them, (we were too poor to buy the baskets and the candies that went in them for my older children.) But with a crayon, we did some decorating before we dipped the hard-boiled eggs into the cups with the Easter egg coloring in them. Neither he nor I were very good at drawing anything. BUT a simple Happy Easter on an otherwise dismal looking egg was quite an achievement!!!! I, to get back to myself and the Easter Bunny, was able to help my Mother, (Dad didn't get into the Easter egg bit!) were coloring eggs for the rest of the family this one particular night and Mother says, "Wow, I think I just saw the Easter Bunny!" I took off and ran upstairs and got into bed and pulled the covers up over my head and stayed there! All I could think of is a huge bunny rabbit someplace out there watching us color the eggs that he was supposed to be bringing!!!!!! Talk about dumb!!!! Mom just stood there and laughed and I'm sure she must have told my Father about it!!!!! There was another incident that I was thinking about the other night that involved my sister Genevieve and my oldest two Grandchildren when they were babies!! I baby-sat the two little ones for my son Bob and his wife Marilyn, who both worked. Tim must have been about two and Brian was little enough that my sister, the day I am talking about, had Brian in his car-seat in her car! I had something to do that day and so dropped off the two kids at my sister's house while I was busy. I told Gen that if the kids got tired to take them over to my house and put them down for a nap. So, since I was longer than I expected to be that is what she attempted to do, take them over to my house and put them down for a nap. She got out of the car with Tim behind her and started to carry their goodies into the house. In the meantime she laid the house keys on the coffee table and she and Tim went out and shut the door behind them. Trouble is, her car keys were with the house key. She was getting Brian out of the car-seat and happened to think about what she had done! What to do???? She tried the front windows at the house and the only window that happened to be unlocked was the one in my youngest two boys' room! In the first place Gen was large, (shall I say she was "weighty?") and so she knew that she would never get in the through the window and besides the window was a good four or five feet from the ground!!!! So she decided to put Tim in the window and have him open the door, which he could do by just going to the front door and opening it from the inside! Why she didn't just ask him to get her keys and bring them to her I'll never know! After she got Tim in the house, she could hear him running around and she kept trying to tell him to open the front door, then she would run to the front door and tell him to come and open the door for her and then she would hear him running back to the bedroom and and this made quite a little "game" for Brian who was sitting in the car-seat and kicking his little feet and enjoying the whole thing!!!! A neighbor showed up and brought over a chair so that Gen could possibly get in the window. Well, Gen had to really pull her weight up to get into the window and said she just flopped on one of the beds in the room. When she got up and went into the living room, there was Tim trying to open the front door with his little set of plastic keys!!!! She said the whole time she kept wondering if he might pull open a drawer and cut himself on a knife or do something possibly more drastic!!!! Tim was a pretty smart little kid and was only trying to open the door with a key!!! She said she was also thinking that he might spot her keys on the table and drop them someplace and who knows what!!!! I laughed so hard when she was telling me about him running around and all the thoughts that she had worried about! I came home and neither kid had had a nap and were really all "keyed" up!!!!! I must have had someone with me on my errand because I didn't drive until I was over 51 years old! But there was no such thing as cell phones or anything in those days. Gen said she was like she was between the devil and the dark blue sea! One baby in the locked house and another in a car that she couldn't have gone anyplace to get someone!! It's a wonder that the neighbor didn't think to call the police from her home and have some man come over and let her in!!!! But in a case like that I would have done the same thing!!!!! This same Tim is an over 6 foot man now and he will get a kick out of this, I know!!!!!!

More on Dad on St. Joseph Day.....

After Dad and Mom moved back to the Ranch in Wawawai, the Depression took it's toll on Dad, He couldn't keep the ranch more than a couple of years and so moved into one of his brother's ranches which was just, as they say, a bit up the road to Pullman from where we were. That we lived in for a couple of years and still couldn't make a go of it! It was another ranch that hadn't been taken care of and so with the prices that we got for what produce we did have, my Aunt had to let us go from there, I was in High school then and went for a year while we were still on the ranch to Spokane to an All-Girls school in Spokane, Wash. and then my sister was ready for High school the next fall and we had to move anyway and so went to Coeur d' Alene and moved in with my Grandfather Rabideau and my Aunt Jo and Dad went on Welfare or in those days F.D.R. (President Roosevelt was then elected and started all his programs (with initials, it seemed!) and so Dad went to work for the WPA, Works Project Administration which most of the people were being paid $44.00 a month and Dad because he had had some Carpentery experience was paid $60.00 a month! We got extra help which today would be called Welfare which consisted of some food allotments and clothing, etc. and since it was in Idaho, we did a load of wood about every few months in the winter!!! Times were tough but Dad struggled through it and he and Mother had 8 children and the last two in the family were born in Coeur d'Alene. A cousin of mine heard about a mill in California and so Dad and he came to Ca. and I wrote about that experience in one of my first blogs. (Like, we looked like the "Grapes of Wrath" a popular movie out at the time!) This mill was up at White Pines, Cal. in the Sierras and in a year or so, I met and married Cappy in Angels Camp, which was where the only Church was for miles. When that mill sold out, and was sold to someone who had a mill at Wilseyville and Dad moved the family over there. By this time besides me, Genevieve was married and Bob, and Laurence. Teresa was married when they lived in Wilseyville. That mill shut down and so Bob, Laurence and families moved to Torrance, Cal. and told Dad to come down and where he got work as a carpenter, building tract houses. He was there in Torrance till his death. A hard worker, and not very many vacations for Mom and Dad, except to visit their kids!!!! When he got the Alzheimer Disease and had to go to the Convalescent home, lived about a year after that. We, Genevieve and I made a cake for his birthday which was March 12th and we took ice Cream and got in touch with others that lived down in the Torrance area and had a great birthday party, and so we got a call on the 19th of March and Teresa, one of my sisters said that Dad had passed away. I always remember the date because of St. Joseph's Feastday!!!!! In the meantime Merry Maids, came, as I told you in my last blog except this time besides one of my favorites a young man came with her. He has been here before too, in fact Jennifer helped train him for the job!!!!! Bye for now. Got to figure out something for supper, (that's "old-fashioned" for dinner! In the meantime, I think I'll have an "Ensure" , and a couple of graham crackers!!! You haven't lived until you've tried Ensure!!!! Oh Yummy!!!!

Today's Feast Day...

Today is the date of my Father's death. He was 83 years old and as I told in another blog, was the Father of all ten of us!!!! It is, in the Catholic Church, the Feast Day of St. Joseph, the Foster father of Jesus. How appropriate that my father would pass away on this Feast Day! Dad was a good, hardworking man and like St. Joseph, was kind to all of us and we never went without a meal in our lives! And even though it wasn't (what, in these days, is called State of the Art), we always had a rood over out heads! He converted to the Faith shortly after marrying Mother and never let his Faith down. He was, in fact, the only one of his family that had any religious affiliation. I seem to remember, way back, when I was a very small child hearing the family talk about an Aunt Effie who would attend whenever a traveling preacher, or whatever came to the area. I don't even remember much about her except that she was very tall and had married, at that time, a second husband, who according to the "family Gossip" was a real loser!! Poor Aunt Effie! Her first husband, I understand had left her! I do remember the family telling how clean she was and the couple of times I saw her, she always had the whitest apron on!!! Enough about her! This is supposed to be about Dad! He was a farmer when he met Mother and had gone into partnership with an older brother to buy a big ten room house and after Mom and Dad were married 11 months I came along!!! My Uncle and his wife had two children, my cousin Cecil, who was 5 years older than I and he had a sister Eva. She got into a bottle of aspirin when she was a year or so and they couln't get her to the Dr. in time. My Uncle died also a little later on and my Aunt, to put it bluntly took over the house! So Dad and Mother went to Everett, Washington where he found work down on the docks on Puget Sound, loading and unloading ships!! Then, by this time he and Mom had six children, the youngest was born just outside of Everett in a small community when he got word that my Aunt wanted him to come back and take over the big 10 room house in Wawawai! (This incidently is where, my sister Genevieve, brother Bob, and even though we lived in Wawawai, my brother Laurence was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho more Mom's sisters and her father, my maternal Grandfather lived. Grandma had died shortly after, maybe two months, after we came back to Wawawai and she died in Coeur d' Alene!) But to get back to this and I may have to finish it after "Merry Maids" have gone. Bye. Continued in a few minutes!!!

More as promised.....

I got down to Teresa and told you about her and now comes Gerry or (Thomas Gerald, as he was named). Gerry was born in a little small town between Everett and Seattle, Washington. He was another happy-go-lucky kid and was a pleasure to be around!!! Seemed like he never got into trouble, (like Bob) and so it goes. We moved back to the big farm in Wawawai, Wa. (where I was born) and then along came Don. He was also a pretty good kid, (or maybe by this time I was just getting old enough to know that they were just little kids!) I will go more into detail at a later date and tell a few "stories" about each one of us!!!! Yes, me too! Eleven months later and by this time the Great Depression had started and Barbara was born!!! She also was a very cute baby and a pretty happy one. She was small in stature growing up but I guess she eventually got to the rest of us! We lost the farms, two of them to the Depression and so moved to Coeur d' Alene, Idaho where my Aunt Jo and Grandpa Rabideau had a small house but also Dad could find work with the W.P.A. and so at least feed us and clothe us!! Then along came my brother Joe. Joe wasn't much of a rebel either and a year or so later David was born! He is the youngest of the family. He was always a friendly, easy going sort of youngster. And there you have it!!!! Mother didn't have any more babies after him. She was getting up there in age and all too!!!! But we pretty much got along together!How I'll never tell you!!! But life was much slower and calmer in those days and one felt safer! It was nothing for my sister Genevieve and I to go to the movies alone about every other night, ((when we were teens!) We went to every change in programs in town and we had three movie houses!!!! We walked the mile or so to get there and were never afraid! (Or almost never! But that's another story!) Oh yes! the movies cost a quarter at the best theater and 1o cents at the cheapest and that one had all the Westerns! Tom Mix, etc. Fun! Fun! You'll have to read the blog before this one to get them all in order. I should have started with the youngest and end up with me! Oh well!!!!

A few more thoughts...

I was thinking in the night how families, though different, are still family. Take my Mother and Father's family. There were ten of us children, ( I am the oldest!) I have through the years watched them and their likes, dislikes, and whatever! I guess I'd better start with myself. I was spoiled no end by everybody, parents, grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, etc. I guess you could call me a "rebel". I had a mind of my own and even though I grew up as a pretty nowmal child, I still had a rebelious nature, or wanted my own "way" and usually got it!!! When my sister Genevieve came along, we had fun together as children but she grew up with a calmer, easier tempered nature. My brother Bob came along and he was adored by everybody!!! But he was not a "leader" either! He, even as a child, pretty much did whatever anyone told him to do and agreeably!!! He was like that all his life!!!! He was very neat, clean, and went about his own business of just "getting along!! Then came my brother Laurence. He was another "rebel"! I think that is why we fought so much, we were two "peas in a pod"! Nobody could tell him what to do!!! But I will go more into details later about some of my siblings doings! My sister Teresa was born, after two boys, so even though she was very sweet and sunny, (always!) she still was very tomboyish and tried to do everything her brothers did, (climb trees, etc .) I've gone halfway with the family and so will stop and get on later, maybe even later today! There is a lot to "tell" on my family!!!!

Some thoughts....

I was thinking the other day about my Aunt Pearl. She lived, from the time that I recognized her, which must have been when I was about two or three, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. What got me to thinking about her was that a very good friend of mine moved to St. Paul last fall. Aunt Pearl came out West quite often because our folks, most of them lived in the West!!!! She was married to my Uncle Ed Peltier who worked for the Great Northern Railroad and so was able to get pretty much discounts on her traveling, (if not free rides!) She and Uncle Ed had two girls, Eleanor and Helen, who grew up and married and lived in St. Paul too! After her girls were able to take care of themselves, Aunt Pearl started to do catering for the Cudahay Meat Packing Co. They were quite a large concern with plants all over. In order to sell their meat and meat products they would put on dinners,etc. for some of their business clients!!!! My Aunt was, I guess, a pretty good cook because she worked for them for years and I can remember as a teenager, her visits and how enthused I was about her cooking and used to ask her for all kinds of recipes!!!She always obliged and would even cook some of them with "my" help! My oldest Aunt, Jo, would tell me, "Sure, she can cook but do you see how many dishes she uses?!" (Aunt Jo usually cleaned up after one of our "cooking sessions!) After Cudahay shut down , or moved or whatever, she had quite a reputation of being a good cook and got invitation from lots of people to cook big dinners for them!!!! Maybe that's where I got my love for cooking! The last time that I saw Aunt Pearl was in the 1970's. She, of course, had retired and came out to California to see her Grandaughter who lived in Ventura County. She went home from that visit and passed away later that year. She was always quite a lady and of course had to keep herself well-dressed and "neatly-combed" as the saying goes. She was very pretty and had the most beautiful white hair for years!!!! Uncle Ed died before she decided to go to work. I saw Eleanor and Helen when they were young and that made me very young! Then I remember Eleanor and her family, (this grandaughter I mentioned was just a little girl and Eleanor and Bill had a boy, Billy too. Bill was an accountant for some big firm in St. Paul and he had a nervous breakdown and sometime after that he died! ) Helen didn't come out West too often and I didn't know too much about her family but some of them did move out when my folks still lived in Torrance. Anyway, God bless you Aunt Pearl for giving so many "wonderful" memories of you and as I said at the beginning, I think she gave me the real desire to cook!!!! I always helped my Mother cook when I was a young girl and we all had "tasks". My sister, Genevieve, liked to "baby-sit" and as I said in one of my earlier blogs, I liked to iron, cook, etc. I didn't mind doing the dishes either (as long as I could wash them! I hated drying them and putting them away!) Enough of this! Hope you are reading about this, Ann, and I do wish I could remember where my Aunt and her family lived in St. Paul, It would be interesting to know which Parish they belonged to, etc. Probably St. Paul Cathedral which wasn't I'm sure not a Cathedral in those days!!!!! Bye now!!!!!

Sometimes!!!!!!

Sorry that I have been away from my blog again for so long!!!! During the time I have had another Birthday! My 91st! I think that sometimes time goes so fast that I can't keep up with it!!! I had a ver nice birthday with son Steve, and his wife, Marilyn and their family! First, Steve called me up about a week before and wanted to know if I wanted to go out for my birthday with he and Marilyn and I told him that I hadn't been feeling all that well but would let him know later! Then he called later and sked me where I would like to go for dinner and I told him that I really wasn't all that crazy about going "out" to dinner!! So the next day or so he called again and asked if I would just like to go to their house for some ministroni, etc., for my big day! (Marilyn, in my notion really makes a good ministroni!) So, I said, "Yes, I would love that!!" They have a big old chair that I can sit in and put my feet up, (which is one of my problems these days! My ankles sweat like crazy if I don't!) So he came up and picked me up around noon and off I went!! There was just Steve, Marilyn, Alicia, and Sarah, their daughters, an d Alicia's "intended" Lorenzo, G.G. Lily, their baby. Sarah's boy friend, and Marilyn's Mother, Pat! The ministroni was very good and with it they served sourdough rolls, and whatever one wanted for a beverage! Then they came in with a yummy chocolate cake that Alicia had made and of course, since they didn't want to burn the house down, she had put three candles on it! The usual "Happy Birthday" song and then the gifts! By the time dinner was over, I was really getting tired and so Steve took me home!!!! Thank you all, family!!!! I wound up going to a Dr. on Tues. Not because of the dinner!Ha, ha. But because of an on-going problem that I have had for quite awhile and didn't want to call the Dr.! I just knew I would have to go in to her office!!! And I didn't feel like it! I think I was afraid that she might find something really wrong with me! But the medication she put me on, (an anti-biotic) really made me sick so after the first two, I called and had the medicine changed and so now this A.M. I took the last of that!!!!! Hopefully that will be the end of the problem!!!!! But I haven't felt up to it to do anything and my apt. really shows it!!!!! I'll see how I feel tomorrow and maybe I can get a little washing done, etc. if someone else hasn't got the washers tied up!!!! Bye for now!!!!

Some more thoughts!

Well, it's still raining and is supposed to really clear up by Sunday but we'll have to wait and see!!! I got an E-Mail from a niece of mine about aprons! Do any of you remember aprons? Seemed like I remember them as a very small child! My Aunts, Grandmothers, and my Mother all wore them! They were part of one's "everyday" wear. As the E-Mail said they were used primarily to keep your one or two dresses in your wardrobe clean! But they did so much more! As she said, they made very handy dust cloths when "unexpected company" was seen coming up the walk to your door! And they were useful to wipe a little one's eyes, or nose, if that happened to be a problem!!!! They were good "oven gloves" for taking something out of the oven, and were even used to wipe one's brow if the weather got too warm. I would love to have one or two to put on over my "Sunday go to Church" clothes, instead of having to waste all that time changing into something for around the house after Church!! All the things that my niece described were what aprons were used for and more. My Mother-in Law never went on a long trip by car that she didn't come out of her house wearing a clean apron over her "good" clothes. And I asked her about it one day and she told me that usually there was a little one or two in the car with them and instead of having to be careful not to get her dress dirty, the child could sit on her lap on the apron!!!!Made sense to me!!!! I just got some good news a few minutes ago from my son, Steve. He said my latest "Great" finally took a little walk of about 5 or 6 steps! She has been taking a couple of steps and then down on her knees for about a month but she was finally brave enough to walk!!! Watch out world!!!! Here comes Lily-bug!!!!!

Me! Again!

This has to be a surprise since I have been delaying in writing daily and I guess it's just because I keep putting it off and "wow"! Another day is gone! Where has it gone and why haven't I done anything I want to do that day???? I heard from my "older" cousin, June yesterday and she told me that she had a heart attack in Dec. My "older" cousin was born in December 1918! She is now home, though I feel that she should be with someone, I know the feeling! As long as I am able to do for myself, I like my own bed, my own food, (such as it is!) and my freedom and the quiet that comes from living in one's own place!!!! June and another cousin Esther, were both born in December before I was born in 1919 in February. She has always been very active. She had the most beautiful gardens and the vegetables that she planted and canned!! Oh, Yummy! She was very active in her Church and when her husband died several years ago, long before my Cappy, she did things like make quilts for her Church, and several other activities. She has most of her family living near her which makes it nice and they are always right there to help her!!! My family helps me out too but I only have one boy that is nearby so he really gets a workout!!! June and Byron had a boy and a girl and the boy lives nearer to Pullman, Washington but Linda and her husband Marvin married and lived right there in Clarkston, Wash. where June moved after Byron passed away. Both of June's children had families who had families and so as I said before she has plenty of people to take care of her!!! Now to get back to today. It has literally poured down most of the time since Sunday! When we came out of Church at about 11:30 A.M. on Sunday, it was pouring and has been off and on ever since! Today it not only poured rain all morning but we had really heavy winds!!! But who's complaining? This State really is suffering for want of water! The flooding of streets and all are minor casualties. In the San Fernando Valley where last August they were hit by such terrible wildfires, now the hills are literally coming down to Sts. and homes in the areas!!! This is pretty usual for them down there too! First comes the Santa Ana winds that dry everything out and then starts the wildfires! Some are delibertly set and others are accidents! Some years are worse that others but it seems that this past year has been very "extreme" in everything!!!!! The thing that I worry about with all this rain is the tule fog that sometimes happens after a good rain in our area!!!! Well, God's Will be done but I do pray for all those who are hit in these "bad" things! Got a call from my son in Ventura County and he said that they had had a tornado either yesterday or this morning down in the Long Beach area!!!! Wow!!!

And so another year!!!

Hi everybody! I know that it's been quite awhile since I have attempted to regale you with my thoughts and "memories" but hey, I'm almost another year old and time does seem to really fly by and I don't even seem to have time to do the things that I really want to do, or should do!!! My legs bother me quite a bit and walking seems to be a little slower and if I stand at all for a few minutes, my legs cramp up on me! But I don't remember whether or not I wrote about Thanksgiving this year but, it was fun and the weather was beautiful up at Arnold and the people were fun! We had Liliana this year to join the fun and at 1 year old now, she is in my opinion the smartest, cutest baby that ever lived!!!! She has a continual smile and now and then gets the "giggles"! She eats almost everything and almost walks! She takes a few steps and then finds it is, I think, faster and easier to get down on her knees and crawl where she wants to go! She chatters like a magpie, and even though no one can understand her, we all "converse" with her and that satisfies her!!!!. At her 1st birthday party, she was quite the card!!!! I left the party and went to Mass with Steve because we were leaving for Simi Valley the next morning for Christmas! I, was, that is! Steve was just my "bus driver"! I got up the first morning with a sore throat and a cough and of course, had the dumb cold for a couple of weeks! Christmas was fun, as usual at Bob's and what made it extra special was that Bill, Wendy, Afton, and Alex came for dinner! Alex had finished Basic training in Georgia and had "leave" for Christmas!!! He looked really great and I had time to talk quite a bit to him! After all, he is my Godson! He is now in Washington State for further training!!! I just hope that he doesn't end up in Iraq or Afghanistan! I guess that's what Godmothers are for, praying constantly for one or the other of their Godchildren! Tim arrived from Texas after Christmas, (my oldest Grandchild. Alex is my youngest!) He stayed until the 3rd of January. It was good to see him!!! Steve came after me on the 9th of January and I have been trying to get back into "living" ever since!!! So much mail and I had put out a few Christmas things so that all had to be tucked away! I just finished this afternoon, shredding things in my shredder! Good thing to be doing on a rainy, rainy day!!!! Love it!!! And is it ever needed! As soon as I can get together a few "thoughts" about the "old days" I will be, I feel, back on track! I had a lot of great things thought up while I was in the Simi Valley but I didn't want to disturb the routine too much!!! Now that is a story! Shame on me!! I just didn't "feel" like doing a blog!!!! Sorry!