Family Surprises!

NOW marks 1 year, 3 months and 11 days since my Mom departed this world, or 469 days, or ~ 675,360 minutes.

No, it's not any easier. Figuring out how to Deal with the Reality is getting easier. Either way, I miss my Mom.

This weekend was a milestone weekend for me and my brothers and sisters. And their families as well, of course. Change affects everyone, whether we like it or not.

When change happens in a large family, it may be virtually impossible to find a consensus on all counts, for all projects, deadlines or not. Regardless, it is important to maintain a focus. For me, my main objective is to be the best Mom, wife, friend, sister and aunt I can be, and to find happiness in life in the process. It’s as simple as that.

So, this weekend we all agreed that we would finish the final project that has been lingering, which is to figure out who gets what and have those things relocated to their new homes. Yes, there is emotion involved, as well as 10 different opinions on how best to proceed. Further, with each and every item that is moved or removed, there is a tug at the emotional string for each of us. It is involuntary, even when we understand the emotions and logic around the activities. There are the comments about no one wanting to seem greedy...but we must remember that THIS is what Mom wanted!!! She SAID so, on numerous occasions. For those who were listening, we all heard the same thing.

For outsiders looking in, it may not seem like much, and it may seem ridiculous that “Patsy’s kids” are having such a hard time. Well, I can tell you, it’s just not that simple. The situation has many layers and levels. And surprises, be it in how someone reacts, or a memory that was invoked along the way, or in contemplating the future without Mom sitting in her living room.

For me, one of the hardest parts was to sort through her clothes. What do you do with someone's clothes when they no longer need them? One of my sisters and I want to cut up a few pieces to make something with them, maybe a few quilts, maybe pillow cases, maybe things we haven't thought of yet. Ordinarily I'd dump a pile of clothes on the floor to help sort them, but I couldn't bring myself to put even one of her things on the floor. I had it all on the back and seat of the sofa. It was then that I realized how much all her clothes together resembled a flower garden! A few items with stripes, random patterns, or t-shirts with their own designs, but more than 75% of her garments were flowers, the majority being roses.

She loved her roses!
Keith planted a rose memorial in her front yard earlier this year, they are beautiful! See the picture further down below.

Perhaps second hardest was to actually take things through the door, meaning that this really was a “final” act of "life as we know it at Mom’s house". After this weekend, it will be Keith and Della’s house, where they live with their own families. It already is and has been, without a doubt, but up until this weekend, the other 8 of us were involved. Now, they can move forward with flexibility and no strings from the outside. It’s a nice INDEPENDENT feeling to be able to direct a project without interference, well intended or not. It’s nice to be able to ask for help on a project and know the other person can say yes or no, but that’s where it ends. Either they will help you and you tell them what you want, or they say no and the conversation is over. There will no longer be a situation of trying to get 10 people to agree on each and every decision. FREEDOM! INDEPENDENCE! It’s a great thing!

So, some of us came together, we all had our opportunities to do the last of what each of us needed to do. It went smoothly and it went peacefully, for all who chose to participate.

There was laughing, crying, and joking, and the making of new memories. Definitely a step forward for the first time (in my opinion) in the past 15 months. Thank goodness!

Joking:
James to Elaina: “Hey, don’t you have your driver’s permit now?”
Elaina: “Yes, I do!”
James: “Oh, well then that explains why, on my way down this morning, that all those people were standing in the middle of the road instead of on the sidewalk.”
Elaina: “You think you are funny!”

How we acquire so much refrigerator art:
Tyler to me: “Aunt Vah-gin-ya, can I have some paper to draw some pictures?”
Me: “Yes, here you go.”
Tyler: “Thanks, what do you want me to draw for you?”
Me: “Oh, I like a flower garden, with all colors of flowers.”
Tyler: “Okay! What colors?”
Me: “green, purple, red, blue, yellow, orange, pink”
Tyler, 30 minutes later: “Okay, is this what you like?”
Me: “You did a fantastic job.”
Tyler: SMILING very proudly!

Realty sinking in:
One of us: “Wow, this is really hard.”
Someone else: “It’s not easy for any of us. I know it’s not easy for me.”
Another: “But it has to be done, and it’s what Mom wanted us to do. It’s going to be okay.”

And it is.

Here are some pics from the weekend:
Upon arriving to Down County, we went in search of Grandma. She wasn’t home from her dinner date yet, so we looked around at the haunted hayride decorations. Looks like everyone will be having lots of fun scaring people next weekend!





We decided to wait by sitting in the dark on the swinging bench. Before us was a full and orange harvest moon, very nice indeed, and just coming over the treeline across the street. Unfortunately, our camera isn’t that great, so this is as clear as it gets. Color is close, though.




Grandma and Sheryl arrived shortly after that, and we had a short but fun visit. It's been over a year since our last visit.


For our entire trip from NM to VA and now to MD, the one thing he’s been waiting so patiently for is to get to play with his cousins. He was so excited to be there, and they all played hard, like boys like to do. Bikes, football throwing, horseshoes, hide and go seek, scooter, running, coloring, drawing, tv and movies, video games, eating, repeat!




















Ahhh, time for the outside haircut. Yes, Patrick actually asked to have his hair cut. Good thing he has such a nice sister!


At one point, I found myself shifting small items from one box into another. Jinxie decided that HE needed to plant his bottom in the same box at the same time. And, so he did. And so I kept adding my items to the box, which took me about 20 minutes as I was doing something else in the process. He finally decided he had gotten covered enough and finally got out. He is one of those bag kitties, or coat kitties, or box kitties, or just climb on whatever is around to catch and eat the moths kitties. He's a lot of fun!

And here we have Permit Girl. Watch out on the sidewalks, so I hear! Oh, gosh, her mother looks terrified! I did witness them both return to the house in one piece, thank goodness!

Only 12 more days!

"Where candy corn comes from" is my all-time favorite Halloween cartoon (see earlier post). Second to that is our Moon Girl below! Hee Hee!

How it is

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
--Anais Nin

This has never been truer than now.

One of my all-time favorite quotes, because it speaks the truth like nothing else I've ever known.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

...and then I felt the urge to check something on Anais Nin, who is an amazing author, and found another of her quotes that is equally amazing and true:

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."

so the answer is, if you love something or someone, you need to do things to take care of that love

Productive weekend!

The little guy is going thru transitions and some days are better than others. Between moving two times, starting kindergarten and then having to start another one, and make new friends, he has a hard time feeling settled. At least we got his room setup first, so he has his own space. And the living room is setup, as well as the dining room table, so we are able to make him comfortable, even if we are living around boxes everywhere else for another couple of weeks.

So he fluctuated between good times and difficult behavior all weekend, as an extension of the past few weeks. Not gonna lie, it's hard sometimes, and sometimes you just want to scream or cry. But, we keep our focus on what we need to do, and redirect.

Here are a few of the fun highlights from the weekend. Mike also took Chris to the Air and Space Museum, which he enjoyed and wants to go back and see again. He really liked the planet simulations. It's fun to discover what is appealing to children, it really does help keep us young!

Leaves are starting to fall on the back yard and deck. First, he tried to sweep them up with the broom.

Then, Mike took out the leaf blower, and showed him how to use it. It's a light-weight model, so he really had fun with this "job"!

Moving along to the yard, witness his first experience with a bonafide leaf pile. Okay, it looks a little small, but that didn't stop him for being excited about being able to jump into a leaf pile for the first time ever!

Later, his new friend Quintin from next door came over to play. They found the box of lincoln logs and built a whole town.

They had a museum, restaurant, bank, jail, train depot, roads, farms, and more.

Mike smoked a quarter section of pork and turkey leg quarters on his new grill all day, and it came out fantastic!
While he was doing that, I cut up two small pie pumpkins and put them in the crock pot to make pumpkin pulp for pies and pumpkin butter. We did a medium pumpkin yesterday, and these little ones today:

Cut them up, and took out all the seeds.

Cubed the pumpkin so it cooks a little faster on the low setting. Washed and then dried the seeds out so we can roast them in the oven tomorrow. Loaded the crockpot to the top and let it do its thing for a few hours.







The pumpkin gets really soft when it's done, usually about 3 or 4 hours later. Be sure to stir on occasion so it cooks evenly and doesn't burn on the sides of the crockpot.

Using a trusty old food mill, a staple for any kitchen that processes foods, the skin never had to be peeled off the pumpkin, it gets separated by the foodmill.

Amazing how much pulp is produced from two small pumpkins.

The medium pumpkin yesterday made 8 cups of pulp, the two small ones today made 9, so 17 cups of pumpkin from two crockpots of cubed pumpkin! That's a lot of pies. We store it in 4-cup quantities in freezer bags and then put into the freezer.

I've processed pumpkin every possible way over the years, I think. Steaming, boiling, baking, crockpot, peeling, you name it! For the record, peeling is hard to do! Baking worked okay, if you are careful not to burn. But, the easiest and best way is the crockpot, hands down. You like pumpkin, get it in the crockpot. Sure, Libby's pumpkin is good from the can. But, home processed pulp is by far so much better. Guaranteed! :)

If you don't have a foodmill and want to process foods like this, then get one. If you don't have one right now, you can always cut the pumpkin into strips, and then peel off the skin after it's cooked in the crockpot and then either mash the pumpkin or put into a blender. That would work, but will take a lot longer than a foodmill.

Happy harvesting!

Candy Corn

Now you know!

The Great Dismal Swamp Fire: Finally Burned Out

Never really knew what the Great Dismal Swamp was until we moved here.

Apparently, on June 9th this year, the swamp caught fire! How odd, that a swamp could catch fire. It's like something begging for a home in a children's book, or as background information in a book about dysfunctional relationships. Not healthy ones, because they would only focus on the beauty of the swamp, so the turmoil of the fires would then be irrelevant. Interestingly, and back on topic, the swamp fire even had a name: the South One Fire.

Today, the South One Fire in the Great Dismal Swam is official burned out, the many and tired firefighters helped in great part by the heavy rains that came with August and September. Read about it here.

It burned over 4,400 acres, lasted 121 days, and cost $11M to fight.

"The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is located in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. The refuge consists of over 111,000 acres of forested wetlands. Lake Drummond, at 3,100 acres and the largest natural lake in Virginia, is located in the heart of the swamp." We haven't gone there yet, but have added it to our travel list. Here's more info from their website, including credit for the photo listed below:

Now, I wouldn't normally reprint something that any of us could read about for ourselves. It just seems so strange to me that a place of water could catch fire in the first place, and then have the fire last for exactly 4 months. Defies all reason.

We are ALL intuitive

Perhaps we have not opened ourselves to the possibilities, perhaps we are not all open minded, but we are all intuitive.

Intuition "is apparent ability to acquire knowledge without a clear inference or the use of reason. It is 'the immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process.' Intuition provides us with beliefs which we cannot necessarily justify. For this reason, it has been the subject of study in psychology, as well as a topic of interest in the supernatural."

It is a "knowing" that is as organic and natural as anything else we just know. For instance, we all "know" what it looks like when it's going to rain, what we're going to feel like if we eat certain foods that we love, or how someone is going to react by what we say to them.

More than that, we often just know things that we cannot explain. Ever called someone and they said, "oh, I was thinking about you all day" or if you do something and someone else crosses your path and needed what you have to offer, but it wasn't something that was part of your normal routine? Somehow, it worked out, somehow you knew what to do, what to say, where to go. It's all intuitive.

For me, I have known that I'm intuitive for awhile now, and I'm not ashamed to say so. There was a time when I wouldn't have admitted it in public, or wanted to discuss it, because then that means the discussion becomes about you. And, of course, how can you justify saying you are intuitive. An admission like that could invite a lot of judgment or OPB (other people's baggage) into an immediate discussion. Then there is always the part of how, since I left Down County to work in DC at 17, and then moved away altogether for over 15 years, which made me no longer fit in like when we were children--enough to make me a little apprehensive about showing my true colors around much of the family. Now, it doesn't matter what other people think. Either they accept me, or they don't. But, being intuitive is not about being me, or about how any of us fit in. It's all of us! And, anyone who is OPEN will accept the differences we all have to offer. The more open our intuitive senses, the more possibilities we have at our disposal.

When I was a teenager, I just knew a fellow high school student was having a baby boy, and that it would be "born on Tuesday, it's a boy". I remember when Patty's brother Byron came to class on Wednesday and said to me, with an incredulous look on his face, "how did you know!?" We all have those moments when we are talking or thinking about something, and we just have this feeling of knowing something. No concrete evidence, no one there to try to convince you one way or the other, just an inside feeling of it is what it is. That is an intuitive feeling.

I knew when I met my future husband. We had been dating a couple of months, and I when I was showing a friend a picture of him, I found myself telling Debbie, "This is the man I'm going to marry." I think I was as shocked as she was, as it just came out, unplanned, and not something I was consciously thinking about at the time. Nine months after our first meeting, we were married, and that was over 17 years ago. It's all good!

There have been many occasions over time, pretty much on a daily basis if I was paying attention, when things just seem to jump out with answers. Things that present themselves as the truth, things as they are.

When the Giants, went to the NFL playoffs last year, I knew they would win their division, there was no hesitation in my feelings, and I shared that with Mike, and even made a victory cake in advance. He was pretty happy. For the superbowl, I never got a definitive feeling, it was always that it could go either way. Turns out, the final score was decided in the last 2 minutes, and it could have gone either way up until the last play, and the NY Giants won!

I knew Mike would get this job in Virginia, which came his way almost as if by magic, if he wanted to have it. While I may have been a little apprehensive about driving the family alone on a 2,300 trip from NM to VA by myself, I knew that it would be okay. This is by someone who falls asleep after driving for a couple hours. Other than the first night being a late start, it was all perfectly fine, worked out great! Just as we knew it would. In fact, people kept popping up when I needed them, all along the way. Even in NM, for example, I needed to put a heavy folded up carpet in the back of my van to deliver it to a friend. I was doing this at about 6:30 am. I had been in and out of the front yard for about 45 minutes prior to this, and didn't see a single person other than those driving out to leave for work. At the exact moment I needed help, a couple walked by and the guy asked if he could help.

There is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama will be our next president. Each time I ever have the thought of just wondering what the elections will bring, it's always the same feeling of knowing. May we find that he makes the right decisions once he is in office and for all the right reasons.

Don't you ever just "know" what to say to someone when they are happy, upset, troubled, or just need an ear. Unique problems present themselves and you get that feeling that you know just what to do, when you really had no prior experience on how to handle that particular problem or person. It just "comes to you" when you need it.

Maybe the intuitive feelings and abilities are our link to the spirit world. Maybe it comes from those on the other side who help guide us and tell us what we need to know. When Mom passed last July, my sister Juanita was in her room trying to find the items we needed for her services, or things we needed to find. Several times when she was looking around, her forearm would get, as she described it, "hot! just like if you put your arm just a few inches over a hot burner on the stovetop!" Then, she'd find the thing she was looking for in that very spot. Mom's cane kept falling out on the floor, even though it was moved several times and each time should have been secure enough not to fall. Or, maybe something else could have fallen, but nothing else ever did, only her cane.

There are other physical indicators, as well, that help you know how intuitive you really are, and it may vary per person. Personally, I have the "hand itching thing" where if I am due money, my left hand itches. If I owe money, my right hand itches. It has proven true time and time again. My sister told me about how she knows people are talking about her by how her ears itch. There is nothing wrong with her ears, but if someone is talking about her, they will itch and itch. Then stop! I started paying attention, and found it to also be true for me. It's rather strange, but true. One of my aunts said that there is a place on one of her arms that hurts whenever there is trouble, such as a death in the family. Now, when that part of her arm starts to bother her, she just knows she's getting a phone call.

If you feel you need a little assistance, you can always do the chain test. This is where you take something that has your essence branded on it, such as a necklace, a ring, or something else on the small side. Take that item and put it on a string or chain. Put your dominant elbow on a table with the chain held between the thumb and pointer finger, with the item dangling on the chain but not touching the table. Then, ask control questions, so you can see what is "yes" and "no", and experiment if you want other kinds of answers. Once you determine the direction of the swinging for your yes and no answers, you can ask it anything you want. For me, No is a swinging back and forth. Yes is a circle.

Of course, when you tell someone something that you just KNOW, because you just have the inside intuitive feeling of knowing, they may just get annoyed with you when they ask how you know, and you cannot tell them how. They are usually looking for a specific, of did you see where it was put or did someone tell you that, or did something happen to you that you never discussed before, and so on. When you can't give that kind of an answer, they may (and I have found often they do) get frustrated and will often discount your answers.

That's okay.

Because, sometimes you just know. We all do. My favorite people to be around are others who are open to how intuitive we all are. And, the truth is, the more you pay attention, the more you notice, the more open you become.

Imagine if all those around you opened themselves to the possibilities.