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

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

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!

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.

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.

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?

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

See, I wanted to teach them that words are powerful. I reminded them of how good it made them feel when they got back school work from their teachers with “good job” stamped on it, and that we were able to make others feel that good as well with our words. And I explained that often we just sign VDay cards without even reading them, because there were just so many to do. And that even adults sometimes just go buy a card and sign it without a lot of thought, but that this year, I was going to do something different, and they could, too.

And then I told them to think about one very special person, and then write a note telling that one person what made them so special in their lives. I am not going to lie and say they all enjoyed it, but they all did it. And one little guy even looked at me as I came over to help him and said “Do you MIND??” Wonder what that’s all about!

Back in December, I got a wee visit from code enforcement. Now, I have a fair idea who called them, because the lady seemed to know, or at least think she knew, some pretty intimate details of my life. Stuff that only someone close to me or stalking me would know. Her letter was waiting for me when I got home from work on Saturday. Good thing I had taken all those antacids, huh? I need to clean up the yard and I need to do a few repairs to the house that were already on my agenda, so there were really no surprises.

Except that I had thought That One would be bringing a trailer to haul off most of the trash, as we had previously discussed, and he recommended burning it instead. GULP. I had never done a trash burn before, or a burn of any kind for that manner, but he assured me that I could do it, and so I said I would. And I did. If you are my friend on facebook, you may remember this set of status updates:

# Big party at my house today, complete with bonfire. Ya’ll come on. Bring marshmallows and weinies. 9:38 AM Jan 24th

# Arson is more difficult than you’d think. 11:05 AM Jan 24th

# Thank you grapevine wreath from 10 Christmases ago! We now have flames! 12:12 AM Jan 24th

# Remembering the last time I sat around a fire at night. It was at Boy Scout camp, and it was most pleasant. 5:46 PM Jan 24th from txt

I tell you, I was scared to try it, but I did and I am glad. There is just one word for learning to do stuff like this and it is “empowerment”. I dread the stretching, but I love knowing I can do new things.