Take a walk with me thru my first day at 58.

Look close and you will see the new black kitten and the matriarch of the cat side of our gang, Mushi, having a stare down at 7 am, my birthday morn, amid the Jade.

Finally, Frieda #2, settles for a snooze while I spend some time in the Lords Word. Is it my imagination, or is there light illuminating off my Bible?

Later in the morning, it's 'Story Time' at the Library. But first, Grandson has to read about Farm Machinery.

Ms. Carolyn has some fun things in 'Story Hour' at our local library. Our normal class of 4-5 preschoolers has grown during the summer session! Takes alot to keep such a crowd of young uns, with an attention span of an ant, involved. Thank you soooo much for your fun time and awesome patience, Ms. Carolyn!

We took our snack time after 'Story Time' at one of Ogallala's city parks. Well ... I guess I snacked and grandchildren played ... and found lost cell phones. :)

Fast forward, thru nap time and working in the garden, to a Harley ride around Lake Mac (more than 50 miles) to feast on barbecue at the new Texas Roadhouse Barbecue joint just East off Martin Bay.

We took off down the highway from my husbands place (south side of Lake Mac) and rode towards Lewellen first, to scope out the rising flood inflows on the North Platte River. The sandhills have doned my favorite color ... Green!

Yes, I know this picture is a mite blurry. But if ya look to the bottom of the pic, you'll catch HOW I take many of my pictures off the back of my husbands Harley. :)

Notice the ripple indicating a fast in flow? Not normally that fast of a current for this North Platte River flow. Guess I shoulda given ya some before pictures to compare, huh? Also, wish I would have made Ron stop the bike and took pictures of how close the water was from, or to, the bottom of the Lewellen bridge.

Oh the peace of it all!! Doesn't look like flooding, does it? Seems to me like we are making a much to do about something that seems so part of the ebb and flow of life. If one builds next to a river, one has just invited the river to visit them from time to time. Regardless, if I had water in my basement, or my homestead was under water, it would be a MUCH TO DO! As it is, my flooded basements have been of another kind ... but that isn't our present journey, is it?

After a meal of pulled pork on a smothered baked potato and 2 glasses of gifted Chardonnay by my husbands work comrades and warm birthday wishes by most all the staff and patrons in the resturant ... ok, maybe the warmth was more due to those two glasses of wine ... we headed home in the sunset of the dawning of my 58th year.

I made my husband pull over on the highway to take the first shot of what we Ogallala natives call the 'slab' ... the very 'slab' that my son had to paint, years ago, and first to lay claim to the 'Leave Only Your Footprints' blue and white logo. This is the first time in several years the water in the lake has been high enough to surround the 'slab'.

The earlier years, in my youth, the 'slab' (without it's blue/white decor) was a favorite place to soak the sun and jump off of into water that was deep enough not to injure. At 58 now, I feel too old to be able to climb up on that 'slab', let alone jump off like I did in those younger years.

Yep, had to have a picture posted here in my blog since this 'slab' is part of my 58 year history!

Note: the second picture was taken from the back of the moving Harley, as were all the pictures that follow.

I'd like to thank all of you who sent me birthday greetings via card, or a homemade card (my lil Ryenn made for me ♥), those Facebook greetings, cell phone notes, all the wonderful calls, or just a thot, even. I've thanked my husband for the wonderfully relaxing putt around Lake Mac and some good food. Thank you, Fuzz, for taking all the kids so I could go on that Harley putt with Ron! Thank you, John and Billie, for my gift card! My daughter's gift of the most beautiful roses overwhelmed me! Thank you all!!

I am soooo blessed and feel soooo loved. Thank you. And Thank You, my Lord!!

58!! Whoda thot I'd make it!!! I'm looking forward to a big bash on my 60th!!! I'm talking big time barbecue, a poker run and maybe a band in the ole' man's man cave? 60 is young. Right? Well, two years to plan. Anyway, ... 58!! Wow ♥

What Is It Like To Be 58?

What is it like to be 58? Ask me when 59 rolls in next year. :)

I consider it a miracle to have journeyed this far. Hm .. seems my Lord has plans for me here yet, or maybe ... I'm granted this time to enjoy the gift of grandchildren, or maybe I need to stop questioning and live in the miracle. ♥

The Day After The End

The biggest surprise about not going in the Rapture yesterday? Everyone I thought had a guaranteed ticket on the Rapture bus are all still here. Should I be worried?

And The World As We Know It Is About To End?

Billboards in California are blasting that tomorrow at 6 pm the world will end! What?! What happened to December 21, 2012 being the official end to the world? I am sooooooo confused!

Well, I don't know what to believe. I read in God's Word that no one will know the hour or the day when the world will end ... or rather when Christ will come to take those He claims. I believe in a God of awesome wonder that has plucked me from the darkest place and given me hope that I can be more than I ever dreamed I could be by myself. Alone I am nothing. God is my only hope. But even though I cling to God ... I fear the unknown.

So what!
What if tomorrow is our last day?
What will you, or I, be doing?
Think!!
What if tomorrow was the last day of your life as you know it?
What will you do?
What will I do?
What is after ... what is beyond the end?

All My Life Is Making The Turns

My life is taking a turn,
A new age I embark as I near 60.
These wrinkles did warn me,
That youth had gone and left me.
We all know things don't last,
Not youth,
Nor our twenties, thirties and on.
Such is the road we all travel on,
Change is the only thing to rely on.
From the babe in Mother's arms,
To the babe of my motorcycle man,
To the babe of our Lord and Saviour Man,
Where life began and is given back again.
Trading in my young, plumb, healthy flesh,
For some wrinkles and the full mind.
Yes, full! So full, I forget all the time,
Especially when a mirror I find,
And see a stranger looking back at me.
Hard to believe I'm two from 60!
Only the Lord could have brought me,
Through my life and all the wrong turns.
Here's hoping this last turn,
Will be mostly right in my final walk,
And full of friends that share the walk,
And the wrinkles,
And the hard times amid the giggles.
Life is like that,
A full life is just that,
Paths that twist and adjourn,
Change, a constant in all the turns.

Spring Blizzard 2011

I was awakened this morning by music. My husband's alarm is the TV coming alive at 5 am with music from Sirrus. He usually gets up and goes to the living room and turns the music down to softer tones that won't wake me. Not this morning.

This morning the music alerted me to the fact my husband was not home. He had called me yesterday, shortly after he was due home from work, to tell me he wouldn't be home for an undetermined amount of time as a nearby town was out of lights. I went to sleep last night listening to the howling wind and wondering how long my husband would be called out. I would find out later in the morning that he tried to come home around midnight but got stuck in 8 foot drift at beginning of drive. After digging himself out, he returned to catnap at his office before getting called out again. Some jobs suck when the weather is poopy.

The early morning light was just dawning. And by 6 am the dawning day reveals a heavy, wet, covering of snow and a wind so strong that it can still move that wet snow into billowing drifts, some near 8 foot high.

Mom's car, that I had left parked outside the garage in the beautiful spring weather just days before, was drifted in. This left no doubt that I was snowed in and, no doubt, my husband was snowed out. I reconfirmed this when I looked out to the highway that runs by our home and couldn't see the highway through the blowing snow.

I couldn't see the highway but I could see the headlights of a semi and the warning blinkers AND the fact the truck was not moving. Stalled? Stuck? Later it would be joined by five pick-ups, a white SUV, three more semi's and a snow plow. A traffic jam just outside my big picture window, on a rural highway, with blinding, blowing snow making it difficult to see if they were all stuck or just stalled.

It is now nearly seven hours later and snow is melting everywhere. The highway has been cleared of it's traffic jam and there are even a few cars trying to travel it now. Why don't they just take a snow day instead of fighting the wind, possible white outs, and risk getting stuck in remaining drifts?

What started yesterday, after I got home from a cleaning job and picking up grandson, as a beautiful, large flaked, snow quickly turned in to a blowing, blinding snow/rain blizzard that won out over spring during the night. Now ... sun is shining, blindingly so, and snow is melting faster than it can blow away. Spring is strutting her stuff again and I applaud her effort!

Yesterday, I listened to thunder amid the blizzard and today I listen to the heavy clumps of snow/ice slide off the roof and PLOP with a loud thud. I should go take some pictures and put em up. ... or just wrap my blanket more securely around me, and savor my hot chocolate with the day off that this spring blizzard has offered me.

No picture? Guess you know what I did instead, huh?

Please Take The Gloom Away!

I'm ready for spring. Days of sunshine and evenings of thunderstorms. I look forward to all the brown being consumed in various shades of green and the splashes of color as the earliest spring buds bloom. Spring usually hales a brighter outlook and I can pack away the blues. But not this spring ...

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and following Tsunami that hit Japan was heartbreaking to watch unfold and difficult to witness. The resulting nuclear impact is still being felt and will haunt the world for years to come. A mix of awe for the honorable way the Japanese people have tried to cope with such devastation and anger for the foolish faith in nuclear power and it's 'I told you so' danger. I can't imagine what horrors and strife the people of Japan are experiencing right now. It appears the rest of us may share some of the burden in the wake of this ongoing disaster. Only time will tell.

It seems the world news is full of crisis. So much angst.

Our government is in political chaos over our overwhelming budget woes and those of us who don't really get any say, have predictable fears that all the financial burden will fall square on the middle class, poor, elderly and less fortunate. What's the answer? I'm a peon ... a nothing, except for my ability to work so that my wage can be raped. No answers from me ... only pain.

So how does one find some sunshine when clouds abound?
With no plane to rise above the clouds,
And gas to search out the sun,
Is not worth the trade for food to feed my sons.

Turned on all the lights I could find,
But shadows are deeper than clouds,
And the light is nothing like the sun,
And not worth the trade for the health of my sons.

Even when the sun breaks out,
Here I sit in self made clouds,
Afraid of all made known in the sun,
And not worth the sacrifice felt by my son.

No one wants to believe in sunshine.
All faith is much like a cloud.
Here today but gone with the sun,
And then no reason to remember the Real Son.