Mirror mirror on the wall...

I look in the mirror and ponder the face that is looking back at me. It seems to have gotten older, alot this year... wrinkles have deepen, and my skin is loosing its elasticity. The gray hair on my head has been covered with dye, and it helps me from feeling older, just a little slower. Age marks have started showing up on my skin, and the ugly black hairs around my mouth and chin are pesky, and wont go away.

My smile is still there, just have to push a few more wrinkles out of the way. My eyes seem bright as ever, just needing glasses to see more clearly...however they seem a little tired lately.

I sit here feeling sorry for myself, when I look out the window and see my neighbors white and black cat, with three legs, just enjoying himself. He is usually playing in our garden in the morning times. He loves being there. Missing one of his front legs slows him down a little, but it doesn't stop him at all...He is quite a cat...

Not a funny Halloween trick...

Its a scary thing to know you have just received your last paycheck... And the financial bottom of the stock market has just fallen out, where your retirement funds are... and your in your 60's but not 65 yet...

October... this is not a trick or treet for Halloween...

Our Small Garden...

This week I have been canning from our garden. It is small, but has been producing alot for its size. Today I have caned 24 pints, and 10 half-pints of Red raspberry jam. I would have done more, except my husband while trying to help me, burnt jam in the bottom of my pan, by accidentally turning the wrong stove burner on, and I have not been able to get it out yet.
I have chopped 14 and half cups of onions to be frozen, and 12 cups of green peppers to be frozen. This week we canned 27 quarts of tomatoes, and 7 quarts of peaches.

Its nice to have a garden that will give us enough to can from. I have canned pickled beats, and snap green beans. Not to mention that I ate to my hearts content on green peas.... I think we will have enough green snap beans that we can dry and give us seed for next years garden.

We even had the most sweetest cantaloupe I have ever tasted, and lots of them... The problem is, I only ate a quarter of cantaloupe and my sugar level jumped from 120 to 300 !!!... Lynn promised to find one that would not be soooo sweet for next year. I am diabetic and have to watch my calories.

Our Garden produced plenty of corn, which graced our dinner plates for a couple of weeks or so, and was soo good...

Nice to have a garden, even if you grow one in a pot...Its food you have grown, and the flavor is so rich and yummy...

After Conference, Lynn brought in a watermelon from the garden. It was a round green one. The insides was the color of orange and pink...It had been growing with the cantaloupe...but it was still nice and sweet!....

The Doe...

Doe is a nickname given to my youngest daughter by her nieces, Her name is Jodie, they started calling her Jo, and ended up with Doe, which stuck.

Several years ago when Jodie was about 16-17, I was waiting to drive her to school.
For some reason I grabbed a pen and wrote a list of what I saw about her, for she was a very colorful person, and full of surprises.

As I was sorting through papers today I ran across this list, it brought back memories. Try it sometime, and put the list away, or write it in your Journal. Its fun to remember how things were.

The Doe, a school day

. Yellow, blue ring
. sucking on a candy pacifier
. 3 earrings, one a loop
. a clear blue pager
. black knee high boots
. white long skirt with slit up to butt in back.
. black shirt, square neckline
. yellow vest
. black purse with sholderstrap
. blue bangs, and ponytail
. glitter eyeshadow
. beautiful smile
. blue bead neckless
. Chinese symbol charm neckless

Left Hand
. blue toothbrush
. white bead bracelet
. 2 rings, ctr and 1914 dime ring

Right Hand
. watch, clear plastic
. beaded bracelet blue and white
. 2 sparkle thin rubber bracelets.

This was only a minor day.
Jodie became very stylish, both in clothing and hair.
She was great with makeup, and always had an idea how to fix things.
She is warm, and people want to look like her. She loves to serve others.
She is always creative, and can not sit still....and still does....

If you happen to be driving down the street and a Paramedic Rig flys past you, with its lights flashing and siren going, and you think you might have recognised a face.... It could be Jodie on the job...

Frustrating...

Have you ever been in a position where a decision had to be made, and it rested upon your shoulders??? you try to make the correct one.....and find out afterwards it was wrong...

Well it has happened to me a few times. But this one really gets my goat....
Its not that it was really important to anybody elts.

I have been trying to acquire some things for my husband and I, that we would use for a year. I have been keeping a list of things we normally use and trying to figure out what amount we would use for a year.

One of the items I have been working on is Landry soap. A few months ago I had tried a different brand that was new. I seemed to like it. Being it was a powder I knew it would have a good shelf life. After a couple of months I could not find it in the stores any more, but to my surprise I ran across it in a "dollar" store, at a lower cost than I had been paying for it. I happily started buying the boxes until I had enough.

I noticed this last week that our clothing was starting to look a little faded. Your right it was the soap I was using. And now I have a year supply of fading soap for my cloths....

It wouldn't be so bad, but I have spent time to collect the boxes, money (in short supply), planning about the amount needed. Not to mention the cost of clothing, etc, to have everything fade out... AND...what do I do with a year supply of fading soap, that does not live up to my standards..........AND.. then doing it all over again, or half way at least.

I feel so Frustrated, and wonder how many more mistakes I will make before I reach my goals, or if I ever will....

Train, train, train, train...

Yesterday I saw a train, traveling down the track,
made up of 12 engines, and no cars....

Playhouse...

I was watching a commercial on the BYU channel, where a dad was spending his time building a playhouse for his children. It brought back memories from my childhood. A neighbor 3 houses away from me had a beautiful wooden playhouse. It was one room, and had one electric lightblub. I was in aw, and dreamed of what mine would look like if I ever had one.

We lived on Main St, in the south end of Orem, in a new building area. I remember we had dirt streets for a long time, and the only house that had a cement driveway was next to ours, the whole neighborhood of kids roller skated,(skates that clamped on shoes), or rode their trikes, or bikes on that driveway.

Out in back where houses had not been built yet, was flat land, of high weeds. We would often stomp out rooms for play houses there. One could sit down on the ground and not be seen. Tall round top weeds made nice umbrellas to play with.

Some of the area was flat enough that the neighborhood kids would play baseball.
I was never very good at this, I think because I was so young, Kindergarten and first grade. But they kept asking me to play, and giving me a chance to bat. I don't remember ever hitting the ball.
Or we would play King of the Hill, on top of high mounds of dirt that the builders had plowed out for building houses.

In the summer we often slept outside on the lawn. I love it. A sleeping bag was a wonderful and new thing, I was quite impressed when I received my first one.

Our land area, had been farm land. We had nine fully grown peach trees. And two apricot trees that grew up in my sandbox. As I use to play with the apricot pits, when mom was canning in the fall time. Our land was watered by irrigation. So ditches were common then. As children we would create all kinds of boats to float on the water. And sometimes we would end up wading in the water. That came to a end when mothers were told that the Polio bug could be found in dirty water. I don't know if that is true or not, Polio was very scary then, I had school friends that came down with it. Families were frighten because there was no cure, and it was new, and no info on it. Children were dieing or being paralyzed from it.