Watercolor
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Life Is Like...A Christmas Miracle
The original title for this blogage was LIL…Having A Kitty On Your Lap. It was inspired by both Garfield’s Christmas Celebration and Pinky. Pink likes to sit on my lap when I write, I always joke that she’s looking for that mouse, but never seems to find it. She does give up rather easily and decides to nap. Whoda thought a cat would nap hey?
Back to the miracles
Since Joe’s layoff (last year) and my layoff, we have had an abundance of, what we like to call, Christmas miracles. Yes I know its June but they are still happening!
We’ve always been blessed with a generous family; they have been especially generous since the layoffs. Whether it comes in the form of money or dropping off food for us.
It was last Christmas when we first termed the phrase Christmas miracles, and rightfully so. The first one was when we received our Christmas present which was a cookie tin from one of our siblings and their spouse.
What made it a miracle? Stay tuned, I’m getting there. We brought the tin home and opened it and inside were 100 - $1.00 bills!!! Between our tears I joked that I had my heart set on cookies.
Christmas miracles are still happening six months later. When we get the mail and there aren’t any ‘nasty grams’ or bills. Several times we were blessed when a sibling and their spouse sent two separate cards each with a check for $50. One of the cards said ‘I hope this makes you smile’, smile yes, tears oh yea. Several times I’ve called the Doctor’s office to see if they have samples of my expensive medications. They said they didn’t but when I called back, just before filling the prescription, the drug rep had come so they did have the samples. Let me tell ya, some of my crazy pills are very expensive!
Garfield’s Grandma’s Christmas miracle
During the cartoon Garfy climbs on Grandma’s lap and she says “How did you know I needed a kitty in my lap?” as Christmas Eve is the night Grandma misses Grandpa the most.
Yesterday I watched his special so I could get exact quotes and saw a part that I had totally forgotten. Grandma’s Christmas miracle.
Garfield was in the barn, spying on Odie, and finds long lost love letters from when Grandma and Grandpa were courting some 50 years earlier. She tells Garfy that it is the “nicest presents I could have received”. Whoda thought that a Christmas miracle would come from a cartoon cat? Yes, I do know that Garfield is a cartoon and it didn’t actually happen but you get the picture.
The good Lord is there when we need him although He may not be as obvious as a kitty on your lap, but He’s still there for us when we need Him. Especially when we are in most need of Him.
What Christmas miracles has God blessed you with?
Monday, June 20, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Life Is Like...Addictions & Obsessions
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary addiction is described as follows:
compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful
Their definition of obsession is (in part):
a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling; broadly : compelling motivation
My sister-in-law often jokes that she has to go through a 36 step process: alcoholics, overeater’s and gamblers anonymous programs! That many steps are just plain overwhelming. Of course she really doesn’t but it makes for a good laugh.
(So ya know I’ll be using the two interchangeably)
Perhaps everyone has additions/obsessions in their lives. Some not as destructive (financially, physically and/or mentally) as heroin, nicotine or alcohol.
One can be obsessed in various ways such as working 70 hours a week and “ignoring” their family, addicted to exercise (that is definitely not me!), the list goes on and on.
Take a few minutes to think about what you could be addicted to, actually take your time, I’ll wait.
To be completely honest with you, there have been several times in my life when I was addicted to alcohol (notice that I stated have been). Now my two “best friends” as I like to call them, are caffeine (both pop and iced tea) and nicotine. Not the healthiest, but that’s where I be right now.
I’ve been struggling with this for longer than I care to admit. But a deep small voice inside of me (which is the good Lord of course) tells me I can stop both and will not even have withdrawals and reap numerous benefits. Why am I still doing it? I’ve tried to stop but always give in to my wants, not needs, wants. I still continue to ignore His voice but just choose to think the ‘voice’ is coming from my head.
He has also showed me how things would be better for me, my meds would work more efficiently, I wouldn’t be as depressed (caffeine brings my mood down) and the financial aspect as well.
When one of my nephews was very young he was not fun to be around. He was crabby and just plain bitchy, as bitchy as a 1 ½ year old can be. Any who, he was drinking Kool-Aid instead of water, just as his three older siblings did. As what was probably a last ditch effort, they stopped the sugar laden Kool-Aid and to say he did a 180 would be an understatement! He wasn’t the bitchy kid he once was, he was actually great to have around.
When we give up our addiction we will probably go through withdrawals, physically and/or mentally. But we have to remember there will be pain before pleasure.
Doctor Art (again)
His definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. True, but there are a few more definitions for the word insanity, believe me I know all too well. That’s not what Merriam-Webster says but I hope we get the hint.
I’m realizing that my obsessions are controlling me instead of the other way around but yet I’m still doing them. When I finally decide that enough is enough I know that He will hold me in the palm of His hand (He’ll have to hold me really tight, let me tell ya).
Because of this He has showed me that I have control issues. So much so that I won’t even totally hand it to Him and give up my complete and total control to Him so He will let it happen.
Will I finally get His hint and listen to His still small voice? Yep, someday, and hopefully sooner than later.
I know what I’m doing is insane (Doctor Art’s description) but until complete and total control is released to Him I’ll be stuck here. Ya, I know I know enough of the insanity already!
But I hold onto this: I’m not where I wanna be but at least I’m not where I used to be!
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Life Is Like...A Dog
In loving memory of Dozer
In Marquette there is a Christian bookstore. I love to go there if for nothing else but to look. My usual purchases are the business card size inspirational cards that I like to use as bookmarks. I saw one that said something like – Dear God; Help me be the person my dog thinks I am.
You maybe thinking what the hell does that mean (or you may substitute hell for heck, but you get the hint). Or maybe you know exactly what it means, my version maybe a little different than yours but here’s my slant on it, albeit the long way around.
Shortly after Joe and I got married we got a black lab puppy. He was adorable and Joe named him Opus after one of his favorite comics Bloom County. We were never blessed with children (except for the four legged kind) and Opus was like our child. I believe that many people in our situation feel the same way but there are also those with children that feel like that also.
We were devastated when we had to put him to sleep 13 years later even though it was best for him it was still a very difficult decision to make.
Joe and I had him cremated and paid the extra for him to have a separate cremation, as opposed to having a mass cremation. We still have his ashes some 8 years later in our computer room proudly displayed with his collar wrapped around the vase with our favorite picture of him with his Boda. Joe’s Aunt Jane also painted a beautiful painting of that picture and that is still proudly displayed as well. Don’t freak out, it took many years but we are as over his death, as well as we can be but, we still haven’t had the heart to put him anywhere else.
We now have another dog, Mavis, and she can’t wait until we move Opus’ ashes to a less prominent place. Mav is like our child but when we adopted her she was already about 2 years old. The bond is not as close as Opus’ but it is still a very strong one.
When watching tv or a movie I cry more if an animal dies as opposed to a person. Yep, I’m a real animal lover. The first time I noticed that was when I was watching a western (why I don’t know) with my Dad and they had to put a horse down because it was injured. I cried like a baby! Joe always reminds me that it is just a stunt animal and if we see something dead on the road he says that it’s just taking a nap on the blacktop because it’s warmer on the blacktop. Somehow I think that might not be the case but I’ll take his word for it.
Stay with me I’m getting there
Dogs are much different that cats, if you have a cat I don’t need to tell you that. Dogs are always happy to see you when you come home whether you are gone for 5 minutes or a week.
They may do something wrong and you scold them but it doesn’t take them long to forget it (by our experience anyway – although Opus and Mavis were not the brightest bulbs in the box).
God is like a dog (no disrespect intended). It doesn’t matter how long since you have talked to him He is always glad to hear from you!
I probably shouldn’t admit to this but I haven’t been to church, on a regular basis, since I got married – and don’t ask how long that’s been. Let’s just say it’s been awhile. Over the past few years I have become more ‘spiritual’ as I call it, ok I still haven’t been to church but I’m getting somewhat better (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
God welcomed me back with open arms and all those years ignoring Him were, I believe, forgiven.
FINALLY ALREADY!
Short story long, if it’s been a while since you had a personal relationship with the good Lord, see for yourself – the whole dog thing – that He will be as happy to hear from you just as your dog is.
God I hope the analogy will not wind me up in hell!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Life Is Like...Death
Friday, March 11th, 2011
There are two things you can always count on, death and taxes. So like it or not, death is a part of life.
As I’m writing this, my Mom is laying in an ICU bed due to her congestive heart failure-CHF- (she is doing much better than she was when she was admitted last night). She gave my sister, Mary Dee, my husband Joe and I quite a scare. Of course she waits until late at night to call the very expensive “taxi” to take her to the hospital. God forbid she should do it at a reasonable time! We were there for quite a while before a bunch of tests were run. “Thankfully” I’m unemployed and was able to sleep in, but Mimi and Joe well, not so much. She was having heart attack like symptoms, which scared the hell out of us, but alas it was a bad CHF attack. The diagnoses was still wasn’t what one wants to hear but nothin’ you can do about it besides pray.
Friday, May 22nd, 2011
Don’t tell Dr. Art (my former therapist)
Doctor Art doesn’t believe people should believe in signs, especially crazy folks like me.
Shortly after my Father died, I went to the cemetery and as I was leaving I noticed a beautiful deer by the road. He was just standing there not more than 15 feet away from me surrounded by headstones. I stopped and we just watched at each other. It was at that moment I knew that my Dad was presenting himself to me as a deer.
Several years ago we were coming home from Houghton when a deer literally ran into our station wagon before he scampered off into the woods. Thankfully it happened near my sister Vicky and brother-in-law Bill’s house in Keweenaw Bay.
I don’t know about you, but we always seem to have a good car and a crappy car (until we win the lotto that is). As you have probably guessed by now, he hit the good car. We realized that we needed two reliable vehicles, as we were both working, and the van (crappy car) couldn’t even make a trip up to Houghton.
To me this was my Dad’s way of saying stop putting good money after bad into the van and buy a newer vehicle already! As it would happen, we found our Escape before they were the ‘in’ thing and the prices went up.
I know nothing about vehicles (as does my loving husband Joe) and I would always bring them to my Dad to check them out. He never steered me wrong – pardon the pun. My brother Joe and nephew Jesse are now our official vehicle checkers.
Yet another sign
On September 3rd 1999 I was getting ready for work and I heard a huge thud. I didn’t think it was Joe because he was in the other room so I yelled for him. Joe looked out the bedroom window and noticed a baby hawk lying on the ground. When he went
outside to check on it but it had already died.
Neither of us gave it a second thought that is until late that night. We found out that Jim (Joe’s Dad) had had a heart attack and was in the hospital. We rushed there but it was too late.
A few days later we were outside the church before the service and I saw a hawk flying over the church. Needless to say, between tears I showed Joe and yes, more tears but there was also a feeling of peace knowing that it was his way of showing us that he will always be with us even after death.
Just a note
We’ve lived in our house for more than 14 years and have never had that happen before or since – apparently that hawk was the only bird that wanted to come inside and take a look.
This is ok to tell Dr. Art
I spend too much time worrying about my Mother and I have for years. We’ve spent a lotta money and I’ve spent a lot of time lying on a couch discussing how to handle her declining health and her eventual passing.
One day I asked Dr. Art what I should do, instead of worrying about her death. He told me “to mourn her death the day she dies”. And I did repeat that to myself a million times until about a year or so ago. I’ve decided I’m not going to mourn her death, I will celebrate her life. Being a wonderful Mother to 8 children, a grandmother as well as great-grandmother to the always growing Manning clan. Celebrate the wonderful, creative, compassionate, sensitive woman she is. I can honestly say that I only remember hearing her swear once in my life – and don’t swear around her or she’ll get the Fells-Naptha out - just ask my brothers, she knows how to use it too.
Perhaps it is easier to celebrate someone’s life if they actually had lived a long life. Life is a precious gift to us. Stop and smell those proverbial roses and thank God for every day He has blessed you with.
Here’s what prompted me to start writing this LIL after 2 months
Saturday is my day to go over and clean at Ma’s. Yesterday I ended up ‘cleaning’ something you’d never dream of in a million years. Yep, a bird hit her patio window and was lying on the patio dead.
I took pictures of it “to identify” (even though she loves birds and is never far away from her bird identification book) what type of bird it is. When I showed Joe he, well, reacted exactly as I did. I bet I don’t have to tell ya it wasn’t a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Mom obviously didn’t die but I held my breath on Sunday when I called to check on her.
When Ma would rebounded earlier this year from CHF and a very serious infection, I would tell people that she is one tough old bird – not to her face – okay sometimes to her face (and I’d get that look from her).
We do not know when our name is written in His book. We should enjoy everyday, every moment as if it was our last. Take the time to tell your loved ones that you love them, even if you haven’t said that in a very long time.
After all, when someone dies they truly go to a better place, better than we could ever imagine.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Life is Like...Painting
Whether you are painting a room in your house or a picture, painting can be a huge pain in the ass. The prep-work, finding the crappiest clothes you can, the actual painting, the smell, the clean up you know what I’m talkin’ bout. And that doesn’t even include choosing a color scheme!
Thankfully we haven’t had to paint our house since we moved in, our doublewide sweet doublewide came with plaster board with a design already on it.
Since the weather was so nice today and we had all the windows open, I decided to paint an oil painting titled ‘For Ma’. (She won’t get it for a year or so as it can take that long to completely dry).
If you’ve ever painted with oil you know what a pain it is. Clean up is a bitch as you have to use turpentine and it’s hard to clean up without the whole house, and you, smelling to high heaven. You also know that if you don’t clean up right after, you have something that goes beyond a mess. “Funny” but the brushes won’t work when the bristles are ‘glued’ together.
While you are in the process of painting, ya get dirty. It’s impossible to get around that one, at least for me it is.
During the winter I’ve been painting with tempera, acrylics and watercolors, all are easy clean up and none leave the house smelling like a paint store. Still, you have to prep your area and clean up afterwards.
I’ve been doing abstracts for the last two years, I hadn’t painted anything for quite a long time and never anything abstract before. I did this because I knew my painting skills were in dire need of practice and thought this would be the best way to go. Turns out that I really enjoy doing them, two people look at the same painting and see the exact same thing.
I never have a ‘picture’ of what I want to paint, I just let the brush strokes take over. Plus, if I don’t like it it’s easy enough to change it until it’s something that I like (or at least can deal with).
One day, when my paintings sell for millions, they will be known as ‘black, white and a thousand shades in between’. As you may have guessed by that, I only use white and one other color (and no, not all of them are black and white).
Not because I don’t like colorful paintings, I do as a matter of fact, but for me I love the thousand shades in between.
Rarely I’ll have a theme of something, Angels Among Us was to be a painting about my depression. Yep, the two colors are blue and white. But I still didn’t have anything specific in mind just that I wanted to paint about how I felt. Out of that painting, which happened to be my first one in an extremely long time, I see an angel in white surrounded by a ton of shades of blue, representing my mood. Yet there is an angel there which gives me hope.
Now you may look at it and think, oh I don’t know, my five year old could do better than this. And that’s cool, hell, sometimes I act like a five year old and maybe yours could do better, who knows. But I like it no, I really like it. And this is quite a miracle because I am my harshest critic, worse than you could ever imagine, just ask Joe.
When I’m painting does it always look good? No! Not by a long shot! I step back, take a break and maybe grab a different brush and keep at it until I see something that just jumps out at me saying ‘here I am’.
After I finished today’s painting, then came the dreaded clean up. Oh joy! Too bad turpentine isn’t an aphrodisiac. It just plain stunk up the house, just like life stinks sometimes.
Yep, I know a completely different type of stink but still stinks none the less. There are up times, there are down times and those somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, sometimes they get worse before they get better. The whole darkness before the dawn, faith type of thing.
I guess the ‘prep work’ in my life is praying. The painting, just like letting the brush go where it wants to, is letting God handle things. The dreaded clean up is sometimes what we have to do after we screwed up, the worse kinda clean up.
The nice thing about the “clean up”, and probably the only nice thing about it, is having our slate wiped clean. Lets face it, sometimes it really sucks but if we ask for forgiveness - poof, we are forgiven.
This doesn’t mean we can do the same stupid thing over and over and over and over (get the picture) knowing that we’ll be forgiven. Actually you could do it but it’s kinda defeating the purpose of your walk with God.
We screw up, put just like a painting, we can take another brush and change the picture to look like something we’ll be happy with.
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