chatty fingers on the loose.....

and still more rain......Happy May Day!

the small town I grew up in held a May Day Celebration.  yes, the tall pole with many ribbons, young girls weaving in and out of the ribbons.......baskets were exchanged with friends & family.  what happened to this happy day?

did we all just forget about it?  hmmmm.

spent time with Sara yesterday.  there was an everything is 50% off estate sale......i drove to her home and took a container of baby sunflowers, she insists that she has NO GREENTHUMB at all, so she hopes her hubby will be able to send them shooting for the sky!

from her home we headed on to the sale.......a very grand home.  soooo many bathrooms.  a modern day mansion.......hugontious!

sara found a lot of items for her online store, she had a very productive time......

i wandered around looking at the many beautiful out of my price range antiques.  the furniture had the fine craftsmanship of days of old.  there was a child high grandfather clock.......slim w/really nice detailing.  .......i found some books by O. Henry for $1 a piece.  yayyyyy!  cd's for $1 a piece.....got 30 flower bulbs for $2.50.  a tiny pair of baby shoes dipped in something......not brass or copper, but an almost clothlike protective substance......

why was i so drawn to these little brown shoes?  well 100 years ago my Uncle Marion, my Mom's big brother became my Godfather on the day of my little baby self's baptism.  he was a pilot who sadly was killed when his small plane crashed.......i never got to know him.  one day my very stern tiny grandmother brought out a box of his treasures.  she told me to pick one item to remember my Uncle Clark by.  i was a little girl still....drawn to a pair of tiny brown leather baby shoes with even tinier dark shiny buttons.  so that is what i picked.......and then somewhere amidst one of our many moves a box of my treasures were lost and the little shoes were gone forever.  so when i saw these shoes i felt they were in some random way a reminder of my godfather.

i've often wondered why my Grandmother was so severe, so unsmiling.  My Grandfather and Grandmother moved to the Amana Colonies in Iowa from Germany.  He was very tall, slender......always a twinkle in his eye......the smell of pipe tobacco.  Reminded me of Honest Abe Lincoln.......Grandmother was very petite.  She suffered with polio, as a result one of her legs was much shorter than the other.  She had to wear shoes that had a very thick bottom to level out her legs, I never knew a time when she wasn't on crutches.  It couldn't have been easy for her, yet I never remember her complaining. 

But she was not one to cuddle or hug or read stories to her grandchildren.  I don't ever remember her showing us affection, showing anyone affection.  Sad.......she couldn't pronounce the letter "J" so her husband John was forever Yawny.  Grandpa made her a portable footstool.  A really clever thing.....you prop it open and put your legs up anywhere there's a chair.  I have it upstairs ......I used to have Grandpa's thermos, but it's disappeared too.  He carried that thermos every day of his life, he was owner/operator of a dairy farm. 

I remember eating dinner at Grandpa & Grandma's home many many times.......and it never failed, Grandma would get up & start running scalding hot water w suds in the sink and then turn to take our plates.  We weren't done with our food, but that didn't matter to Grandma.  She had a timetable in her head that no one understood......when she was done that was it.....end of meal. 

And there were lace doilies and protective rugs and runners everywhere.  More was mo' better!  The basement was a great place to escape to......they had a big old victrola with the thick records.  We kids would go down there and sing along with the old time crooners.......one was the plaintive cry of a jailbird. for the chorus he would sing, "99 years folks is almost for life......." 

his voice made me think of trains and tramps and metal bars........there was one of those old timey photo view thingies.  sorry i don't know what's it's called exactly.  but you slip a fairly thick rectangular photograph into the slot......and look at it.  it confused me mostly, cause i didn't quite get how it worked.  but since there was little to do down there, we always drug out the box of photos.....and would end up making up stories about them.

grandma kept toys on the stairs to nowhere, thinking now that the builder originally planned to build a two story home but that changed......to a ranch style home with a basement.  we weren't allowed to get the toys, she would pick and choose what we were allowed to handle........i always got the feeling that she didn't like us very much.  that she was doing her duty by us......but where was her smile?  what happened to her heart?  they had five children so i like to think that at some point of her life she felt happiness.....joy, but i wonder.

i never knew my fathers parents.......they had nine children and those nine children never talked about their folks or the old homestead much.  but one day my father drove us to his homeplace.  he pulled out a couple of old army blankets, climbed the mulberry tree and shook those sweet berries down .........so good!  he found the running board for his Dad's old car.......he got very quiet.....lost in his memories.  brought it home and gave it a place of honor in the garage over his toolbench.  but he never told us anything about them.  is that strange or is it only strange to me. 

seems like our parents would want to talk about the good old days, share stories but nope.  if it weren't for the pictures i'd wonder if they were ever kids! 

after hanging out with sara i headed on to the store to pick up some things.  i got more sunflower seeds, some groceries.....i WANTED to eat out, but i was a good girl...came back home and had a small salad, a square of casserole and some warm buttery bread.  it was really tasty......my glands have been crabbier than usual, by the time i got home i had the shivers again.......glad for bed.

then in the middle of the night i woke up in a lot of pain.  joints, muscles, nerve endings oh my........the bottoms of my feet hurt just to walk to the bathroom.......i hate when fibro pain hits the bottom of my feet.  i wish i could shoot some kind of pain reliever into the joint in my left foot.  jeezalooooo it hurts .......i wonder if i could get a shot of cortisone in that spot?  sometimes i feel like an old ball player .......so many things hurting all at once.  but eventually i got back to sleep......thank you Lord!

the kitchen is tidy, the sunflower seeds are in a gardening container......gave them a good watering with some warm water to encourage the little darlings to grow!  if it wasn't raining as much as it is i like to think i would venture out and plant some of those flower bulbs.  i got lily of the valley and lady ferns.  does this mean there are man ferns too? 

my mom used to grow lily of the valley.......makes me nostalgic......amazing that it's only the first of May.....with this unusually temperate weather it's as if we now have a short shot of winter and two springtimes...........later later, i am thinking about applying heat to my glands & neck.  maybe that will aleve some of the achiness?  seems possible.........take care of YOU!