And after work, I drive home. D’uh.

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Remember all those pictures of the blue sparkly yarn? That yarn became this hat:

Don’t it make his brown eyes blue? Oh wait, they were blue already!

Grrrr. I took two this day, with the cam on my cellphone. Both were of That One getting his suit altered for the ball, and both have been eaten by my phone. Darn Technology.

But anyway, black suit, worn by That One, being pinned by tailor, looking mighty fine. But I really, really wanted that picture!

I love me a clearance sale, don’t you? On this day, I scored this jewelry box for fifteen bucks. I was able to take my hand-made stuff out of the baggie I was storing it in, and I’ll have room for my good stuff when I get it off layaway. Yay me!

And ya’ll, I am wearing that jewelry. I look at that box every morning and say “time to decorate myself” and then I do. It just feels so good!

On this day, I washed dishes. Now, that’s something I do with some frequency, but I took a picture of it so I could tell you a story.

Well, two stories, the first of which is fairly boring. My dishwasher is broken AGAIN, and so we are doing dishes by hand. All the kids hate dishes, but none of them mind cooking, and they dislike the other kitchen chores less than they hate dishes. So, I don’t cook anymore, but I do all the dishes. I divided the eight kids into four teams, and one team cooks each night, and the other three take care of the miscellaneous kitchen tasks. The thing is, I don’t mind doing the dishes. I just mind doing the dishes and the cooking and the sweeping and the clearing and the….. yeah, you get the idea. I find standing there at the sink with my hands doing a job that my mind doesn’t need to be involved in to be a great time for reflection, and a good way to wind down from the day, so the system works for all of us. It was a moment of sheer genius, I tell ya!

Ok, onto the other story. You will note that my right hand appears in that picture, and that on my ring finger is something that looks suspiciously like a wedding band. That’s because it is a wedding band. The engagement ring is there, too. These are Grandmother’s rings, and some two years after she died, I told my mother I was ready for them. I had to tell her about eight times before she believed me, and even then I think it was because That One was standing behind me and confirmed it.

Now, this is not the first time I have owned these rings. I had asked her for them many years ago, while she was still healthy and active, and she agreed immediately that I could have them when she was no longer needing them. And then, after she went into the nursing home, but was still leaving to visit us now and again, she gave them to me, because they no longer fit her. My uncle asked for them back so he could have them resized for her, and I handed them over without hesitation, and she wore them for a couple more years. After she died, though, the rings came off and Mama kept them for me.

I calculated a couple weeks ago, that Grandmother wore these rings while she washed dishes for about 55 years. And now I wear them, and I wash dishes in them, and so the legacy of love continues. I think roughly the same thoughts whenever I work on my flowerbeds or sew or make fried chicken. I want to be the kind of woman she was. Oh yes, I do.

She had a way of smiling at you when you walked into a room that made you think she’d just been waiting for you to show up to make her day complete. A big huge smile, and she continued to do that until very near the end of her life, even after she no longer recognized people for who they were. (Thankfully, that stage was intermittent, and didn’t last very long for her, but she often thought I was my mother near the end. I could tell by the things she said.) Lately, I’ve been told by my bffs and my kids that when I am not smiling, I look angry, no matter what my actual mood is, so I’m practicing smiling a lot more, letting the people I love now it with my face, and not just my words and deeds.

Yes, I miss her still. No one has ever loved me like my grandparents did. I think……of all the memories I have lost, it is not being able to remember more of them that troubles me most. I want to be able to remember being loved like that. It hardly seems fair to be able to remember the absolutely shitty things in my life (and excuse my language, but there is no other word for it) and to not be able to remember that.

It occurs to me that doing the math to keep up with my titles is going to be a little more difficult here shortly. Lord help me. I think I can, I think I can. January 27th was my sister’s birthday. Not that I saw her, just noting it for the record. We don’t see each other very often. She’s busy and so am I, but in recent years we have come to enjoy one another instead of merely tolerate each other, and I like that. She’s a fun gal, my sis.

The 27th was letter day for me. I mailed one that took quite a bit of intestinal fortitude: it was an edit of this post. I wrote another of the same caliber that I mailed the next day, and it contained most of the story here, plus some other things. A week later, I am still glad I did both of those things.

Interestingly, I have already had a conversation this morning in which I referenced my purpose this year to be a lifegiver with my words. I didn’t think that I would be breathing life into my own self with that, but I’m finding that by sharing with others things that will comfort them, I am doing good things for me, too. Kinda like using commercial fitness equipment leaves you sore for a bit and then you are amazed at those new flat abs.

See!! I told you I took a picture for this day. And you didn’t believe me. But it’s true, I did. And I found it on my desktop! I have no idea why it was there instead of the normal picture places, but whatever.

On this day, I opened my washing machine and cleaned the filter all by myself. I’m such a big girl! Pretty soon, I’ll be qualified to call and get my own affordable life insurance quotes and everything. For today though, I think I will concentrate on prepping the week’s blog entries, scaling Mount Laundrymore, burning Mount Rubble and getting my finances in order. That oughta tide me over until next summer, dontcha think?

Here is a photo I took on Tuesday. Any guesses as to why I might have been, say, downtown, and, umm, say, in an office building on Tuesday?

Leave your guesses in the comments, and use Simply Linked to let us know where your own self portrait is!