http://lillinda50.blogspot.com/

I am officially moving my blog. If you want to find me, click on the URL above.

 I have had two blogs for awhile and I find it easier to manuever at blogspot.

Hope to see you soon. Linda

I told my son it was "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and he responded with,"Sure and begorrah !"

 I laughed and asked him if he was a leprechaun pirate !

He was trying to say "Shiver me timbers".

Then we had a merry make-believe about a boat of leprechaun pirates. Hmmmm........ maybe we should write a book.

The Mayor of Lynn Street

Mr. Willie, we'll miss you.
There is just  no way of describing just how much you meant to us.
When we moved here 23 years ago, the first thing we had to do was tear out the bathroom floor and replace the toilet.
The first thing I knew, there was a man with plumbing tools, standing in my hallway asking "Do you need some help? "
That was just the kind of man he was.
We had never had a neighbor like him before.
 He'd walk over when we were in the yard and tell us what we needed to do for our pear and plum trees. Often, we'd come home to find that he's pruned them or fertilized the yard.
And he was this way with not only us, but the rest of the neighborhood, too.
 I don't know how many children he and his wife fostered. I don't know how many children he took on vacations with his own kids. 
I don't know how many lives he touched.
 I'll never know all the acts of kindness this man performed.
I'm not sure you could count them all. but just know,
He was and will forever be........

The Mayor of Lynn Street.
In Memory of Willie J. Godbee who passed  September 14, 2007.

Wow ! I've never had so many comments before. I'm flattered!  Maybe I should write more poetry.

The poem is actually about buying my daughter her first bra. She is my oldest and only daughter. I just wasn't ready for her to grow up. She's 27 now and has 3 children of her own. Surely it hasn't been THAT long!

Thanks for all the comments. They are all positive and maybe it'll inspire me to write more.

I found a Mother and Daughter Carnival over at  http://singforhim94.blogspot.com  and here is my entry. I wrote this poem a few years ago after a shopping trip for new school clothes when my oldest was starting 6th grade. If you've raised daughters, you'll identify.

That Day

Out of the dressing room they came

walking side by side.

Mother,drying her teary eyes,

Daughter, smiling wide.

If these lines make sense to you

Then you've raised a daughter,  too.

 ********************************

My son surprised me with tickets to see a singer/songwriter/musician that I had stumbled upon by checking out an odd DVD from our library.
"The Devil and Daniel Johnston"

Now if you knew me, you wouldn't think that this would be my kind of music, but I really like lots of different kinds. I guess if I had to pick a genre, it would be old timey gospel. But there is not just one genre of music that I prefer over any other.  There are a few that I don't prefer such as opera, or maybe rap. But all in all, I like most genre's.

What I'm getting at is, Daniel Johnston's music is not typical. I guess it would be outsider music.
My husband's comment was "Well, he never took singing lesson's." I guess not. But it is his songwriting, that catches me. He writes in a child-like way that is at once captivating and haunting.

I probably would have never bought tickets to see him myself, so this was a great gift. A well-thought gift. One that say's to me that my oldest son does hear me. And that was the best gift of all.

If you would like to know more about Daniel Johnston, click here, http://www.hihowareyou.com/web/bio.htm
or

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=76565186

August 6 -  Its  "Wiggle Your Toes Day" !!!

 As you can tell, I have been playing with my blog, trying new templates and such.

I am finding it hard to navigate. I finally figured out how to upload a new avatar. Whew. I'm tired!

Is this  hard for everyone or is it just me? Guess I'm not that kind of Geek !

Anyway, thanks to my son, who has no patience teaching me things, I figured it out.

I wanted a new look but decided I like the old one. Haven't figured out how to upload a template from somewhere else yet. I'll save that for another day. 

Facts from my Almanac:
August is National Catfish Month, National Golf Month, National Inventor Month, and National Water Quality Month.
It's also Home Business Month, Foot Health Month and American Artist Appreciation Month

(so, go out in this heat and play a round of golf while appreciating the design of the course.Then,
go home and invent a way to eat catfish without having to pick out those bones while you drink Quality water and prop your feet up.)

The first week in August is National Clown Month.

 It's always clown month at our house . I have a houseful of stand up comedians. A few sit-down ones too.!

Our vacation is over, Boo Hoo!  I sure could use another week !
We attended our family's annual reunion in Maggie Valley, N.C.
The weather was perfect. I wish I could have bottled it and brought it home.
The hosting family did a great job and we enjoyed ourselves immensly. We ate too much !

We spent the rest of the week, sight seeing and enjoying the hot tub that came with our cabin.

We rode out to a preserved settlement called Cataloochie Valley. There we walked around the old buildings and
read about the settlers that had lived there. The old Methodist church was just too beautiful.
We saw elk and deer but no bears.

We went over to Pigeon Forge and went to the Comedy Barn. It was a good show and the kids loved it.
We were going to Dollywood, but then we decided to ride over to Cherokee, instead.
The Oconaluftee Indian Village was very interesting and the Museum of the Cherokee was also.

All too soon it was time to pack and head home. Home to laundry and grass that needed cutting.
My dad's neighbor, the one he complains about, cut his grass while we were gone. That was so nice.
 How does a week go by so fast?

 Sometimes the grass is NOT greener. I will try this blog again and see what happens.

Just call me wishy -washy !

TC, I was reading your blog when I remembered for the 3rd day in a row, I had forgotten to take my medicine. The one I'm suppose to take at the same time everyday ! Thanks for jogging my memory. I had remembered it about 11:30 am but I don't take it until 2 pm. In reality, I don't think I have taken it at 2pm since day 2.

The only reason I am on blood pressure medicine is because everytime I go to the doctor, my BP is up. I tried to tell him that it is because I am at his office, waiting 2 hours past my appointment time, only to be called back and hurried thru like cattle in a cattle shute !

And you'd think that I'd remember to take the medicine that keeps my bowels  un-irritable.After all, irritable bowels is NO fun at all.

Ok, now that I have taken it, I can get back to reading Fish In My Hair.

My granddaughter, who is 2, was walking around the house singing the "Barney Song", when I realized she was saying, "I love you, you love me, we all love our Emily." That's her sisters name.

Ahhh, idn't that cute.

I have a reluctant reader. I should say, a "do-anything to get out of it" , non-reader. A book has to be really fascinating for him to even do more than peruse the cover!
Well, I caught him reading ! The book?
Almanac of the Gross, Disgusting and Totally Repulsive. A Compendium of Fulsome Facts by Eric Elfman.
I got this book from www.paperbackswap.com several weeks ago and just left it on the back of the toilet.
If I had asked him to even look at it, he would have found something else he HAD to do.
This book is full of gross stuff, so if you're squeamish, you might wanna pass.
Here are the chapter titles:
1.Gross Guts
2. Nauseating Nature
3. The Gagging Gourmet
4. Offensive Entertainment
5. Hideous History
So far, he has told me about several different kinds of worms you could get. The coolest one is Ascarides. They live in your lungs and crawl up your windpipe to your throat and then you swallow them! Isn't that exciting!
On the way to church he was reading to me about Rigor Mortise.
Did you know that years ago,in the Torres Strait Islands, it was considered respectful to cut off a dying persons head and place it on an ant bed until the flesh was eaten off. Then they painted the skull red and they were displayed in fancy baskets.
Hey, I'm counting this as science AND social studies!

 I took my son to the eye doctor for an exam . We sat and filled out the redundant ,required paperwork. There was a section for you to list your allergies in one column and another in the next column to list the medicines you take . Under allergies, I listed "seasonal", as he does tend to get stuffy in the spring and fall.
The nurse looked at the paper and asked, "How often does he take the Seasonal ?" I looked at her , laughed and said, "No, he has seasonal allergies. Then she came back with ," I can't be expected to keep up with all those medicines they have out there now !" 

 Oh, Bright People ! How they amuse me.

My daughter was  working for a title company and she got a fax that she couldn't make head or tales of, so she called the office it came from. It concerned a car and she couldn't read the make and model. She asked the lady on the phone to explain what kind of car it was and the lady said, " It's a vehicle."
My daughter replied that she understood that and then asked again, "What kind of car is it ?"

The ladys answer ? "It's a vehicle !"

A man from New Jersey came into a convience store as I was talking to the clerk. I've known the clerk for years. The Yankee asked for directions on how to get to Tybee Beach. ( It is pronounced  "tie-bee".) The clerk corrected the Yankee visitors pronounciation, ("tibby"), and proceeded to give him directions. The man had the nerve to interrupt the boy and growl that HE was from New Jersey and he KNEW how to pronounce "Tibby" Beach. Once again the boy politely told the man how to say it correctly . The man grew rather preturbed and walked out saying, "I'll get directions from the movie store next door!". We hope the fool got where he was going! Actually we hope he got lost in ghetto town first!

Its not that  I don't like Yankees. In fact , I have several Yankee friends, But please, if you are visiting anywhere in the south and someone corrects your pronounciation, they're just trying to be helpful. Be gracious and try it our way.

Yeah, Bright People amuse me.

Reflections on turning 50

What's the big deal? So you're 50.
The big deal is, I am 50. That's half a century!
The question that keeps popping up in my mind is ,Just what have you accomplished in 50 years?
The devil keeps wanting me to doubt myself and undo whatever self esteem I have built up over the years.
It took me years to build self confidence and he knows that if he keeps me doubting myself, that he can get me back. Well, Satan! Get thee  behind me! I refuse to go that route again!
What have I accomplished?
I have three beautiful children.
I have remained faithful and true for 31 years to the man that loves me for ME!
I have three beautiful grandchildren.
I am a Mother, Teacher, Mentor, Wife. Caregiver, Cheerleader, Designated Driver,Housekeeper,Repair Person,Accountant,Personal Shopper, Poll Worker, Secretary for a Civic Club, Voter, Involved Citizen ,and most (and best) of all, a Child of God!
I started me a file on "Things I have Done". It is amazes me when I read it. I decided I'd better write these things down while I still remember them.

I went back and read the last blog. Man, I was having a bad day!

Anyway, the fried baloney part made me think of a neighbor we had growing up. Jean Nease. She had 5 kids and 4 were boys. I don't know how she survived the oldest two. They were daring!! But I'll leave that story for another time. She used to make fried baloney sandwiches and sometimes they would put BBQ sauce on them. Yuk! Her boys loved'em.

I grew up in the 60's and most mom's were SAHM's. Most of our parents worked at one of the 2 plants in town.

It was  the kind of neighborhood where we played everywhere. You didn't do anything too awful at someone elses house, because you'd get in trouble there AND when you got home! Our mother's knew how to use the phone!

Mrs. Nease would make sandwiches for whatever kids happened to be playing in her yard at lunch time. She'd make me a PB&J. I thought I was special. She made us all  feel that we were special.

I would love for her to offer me a BBQ fried baloney sandwich  again,but sadly, she passed away about 3 years ago. She had a long battle with breast cancer.

I wonder if the angels are enjoying BBQ fried baloney sandwiches in heaven?