The Forgotten Draft of 2009

I put a Blogger app ( where I write in my blog) on my phone, so i can get to my blog faster. Looking through my DRAFTS that I had not published, I came across the one below. Wyatt was born in June 2008, so from what I see here, this was written around Valentine's Day 2009, when Wyatt was only 8 months old, and only 3 years after losing Danny. I just never published it. 

THE DRAFT:

Here is a picture of Wyatt getting a french-fry! Not a tooth in his head, but like his grandpa Danny, he gums it! lol

A little later, he picked the cash receipt up off the table…So, I asked him to “hand it to grandma”…and was SO surprised when he politely turned around and handed me the receipt! He actually understood!

He is sitting up good in a high chair now . He is 25 inches tall ….and weighs over 17 pounds….and though you can’t tell it by the pictures, he has sky blue eyes.

Can you tell that I love him?

My daughter and her fiancée gave me a bouquet of pink baby roses mixed with other flowers on Valentine’s day…and Wyatt even ‘signed’ the card that had ‘To Grandma’ on the front of it, that he gave me!

After working 11 hours on Valentines' Day, my son surprised me by having a box of Whitman's Chocolates sitting on the kitchen table for me when I got home! He had gotten Kelvin to take him to the drugstore up town to buy them, bless his

These are the kind that Danny always bought me in our latter years of marriage.

It was then that I broke down and cried….

I was thinking that Danny would be so proud of our children.

After putting it off for as long as I could…for my feet are like lead when it comes to going there…I finally got up the nerve to go up to Danny’s gravesite to put flowers on it.

I always look down at his name and softly whisper ; “ I love you Danny Noggle.” and then when I get no answer…

I end up by yelling out; “I love you Danny Noggle” It’s as if I could just yell loud enough… he would hear me and answer…

Like he use to.

I know it’s crazy…I know it…but I do it anyway…Even though each time I go, I tell myself that I won’t.

So…I finally went to his grave…and put a dozen red roses in the vase there on his marker.

Now, Danny hated to cut grass where rose bushes grew…because he always managed to get cut by the thorns and would come home just a fussing.

I hope he doesn’t mind me putting those roses there…

Knowing how he felt about roses, it is the first time that I have ever put roses on his grave.

But to me…

A rose means l-o-v-e and God knows I love him…and always will.

It gets so hard; being here on this earth without him. It is not a day goes by, that I don’t think of him…not a night that I don’t tell him ‘goodnight’ and ‘I love you Boo’ and then eventually fall asleep…only to dream of him.

I think he has claimed his own little brain cell in my mind, because he is a permanent fixture there…

It’s okay though…

He was already a permanent fixture in my heart….

And had been for nearly all my life.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

DIDDLY SQUAT

It has been nearly 6 years since my last post. Guess it's true that the older you get, the faster time flies.  

I can still remember being a little country girl out on Horseshoe Bend. It would seem like forever before Santa Clause would come back around!

Now, the days fly by like leaves in the wind. It seems like I'm just paying the last of the monthly bills when the next month's statements start arriving in the mail. 

Things I've noticed that keep rising in price while I've been growing older.( not necessarily in order)

 1. POSTAGE STAMPS

 2. EGGS

 3. CABLE TV

 4. GROCERIES

 5. GAS 

 6. ELECTRICITY 

 7. INSURANCE

 8. TAXES

 9. RENT

10. MEDICINE

A few things I've lost while growing older..

 1. MY HUSBAND

 2. MY PARENTS AND FIVE SIBLINGS

 3. MY ABILITY TO KEEP MY MOUTH CLOSED

 4. MY PATIENCE WITH STUPIDITY 

 5. 'SOME' OF MY ANGER

 6. ME THINKING I KNEW IT ALL... 

WHEN I DIDN'T KNOW DIDDLY SQUAT.

What is diddly squat?

 IT'S NOTHING. 

I KNOW NOW,  THAT IN MY YOUTH,

I KNEW NOTHING.

They say hindsight is 20/20.

IT'S TRUE.

I can look back now and realize how much I DID NOT know, but THOUGHT I did. 

“Courage Is Being Scared To Death, But saddling Up Anyway.” ― John Wayne

We were just two young teens walking home late one Fall night from the local highschool football game. We weren't in a well lit section of town and had at least four more blocks to walk before we would be at our homes. Suddenly a car load of screaming boys flew past us honking the horn. To make matters worse, whoever was driving that car was squealing tires and turning it around down at the end of the street and was now speeding back to where we stood. 
We thought for sure it was a car load of hoodlums.
With the car quickly approachimg us, Danny said, "RUN! Call the law! I will stay here and fight them if I have to."
Now, this was in the 1960's, when cell phones hadn't even been thought of yet. So, you couldnt just stand there and call 911 for the police like you can now. With no houses around, you had to go find a phone booth and the closest one was blocks away. I knew I wouldn't be able to get him help quick enough, so I shook my head and stubbornly stood there. 
With him begging me to leave him there the whole time.
Thankfully, once the car got close enough to us, we saw that one of the boys in that car was a school friend, who only wanted to offer us a ride home! Whew! We were so relieved!
This happened so many years ago that I may have forgotten some of the smaller insignificnat details, but let me tell you this ...I will never forget that night.
The love for that brave young teenage boy still lives on deep within my heart and not a night goes by, that he doesn't come back to visit me in my dreams.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

SOME CROOK STOLE MY DAD-BLAMED ELECTRIC METER

This morning, I got up, flipped on the bedroom light, next the living room light, then the kitchen light. I was intending on getting me a cup of coffee before I had to go to work, until I remembered I had some bills I needed to write checks out for. So, I was sitting at my old desk, writing out those checks when the dang lights went out!  First thing that hit my mind was that tropical storm NATE had sure gotten here quick. I look outside and although it was cloudy, there was no storm. I begin to walk up and down the street asking neighbors if they had electricity….

All of them did.

So, I came back into the house and called Georgia Power and reported an outage. In a few minutes, I get a text from them saying that my electricity would be restored at 9am. In the meantime, since I am the only one on the street without power, I get worried that a power line may be down on the side of my house where my electric meter is located. So, I stepped outside and go around the front of the house corner to check. The line is still up where it should be…

 BUT…my meter is GONE!

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, who would steal an electric meter and who would do it in broad daylight when all the lights in the house were on…meaning that somebody was already up and awake and would surely notice whent he lights went out???

I stand there in front of where the meter is suppose to be and start dialing Ga Power back. This time I get through to a live person. I explain to her that I had previously called to report an outage and this time I was calling to report a missing meter! The conversation went something like this:
Me: “Mam, I just called and reported an outage.”
Her:  After checking my idenity, “Yes mam, it has been noted and your power will be back on at 9am.”
Me: “ Well, I just went outside to check for downed wires and found out that my electric meter is actually missing. Did yall pull it out?”
Her: “ Mam, your meter is there.”
Me: “ No mam it isn’t.”
Her: “ Well, I show that it is running”
Me: “ Mam, it is not here, so if it is running, it is running somewhere else”
Her: “ Are you sure you are looking in the right place?’
Me: “ Have yall moved the meter recently?”
Her: “ No, it has never been moved”
Me: “ Then, yes mam, I AM looking in the right place and nothing is here, except the exposed wiring.”
Her: “Okay. I will note that your meter is missing.”
Me: “ Please do. Thank you.”

After I hung up, I go back inside and get my battery operated lantern that I bought after Hurricane Irma hit us about 2 weeks or so ago. I go to the bathroom, set my lantern down and jump in the shower.  I have to go to work and I need a shower.

It wasn’t until I got out that it dawned on me that I didn’t have any electricity to blow dry my hair!

I got dressed and went outside just as the man in the Ga Power truck was pulling up in front of my house.  He gets out and starts looking up at the top of the pole in front of my house. I take him and show him that my meter is missing. He said, “yes, it’s gone.” Then I ask him if they pulled it for some reason. He tells me they didn’t pull it and besides they would never leave the wires exposed like that. He goes to the truck and gets a meter and puts it right where mine use to be … until some dad-blamed crook stole it.

KENZIE THE BEAUTICIAN

 

This past Sunday morning, I had just gotten off the phone with my daughter Amanda and was on my way to the bathroom to take my shower and get dressed to go to Church, when the phone rang.

I don’t know why exactly, but I had a bad feeling even before I ever picked it up.

It was Amanda and she was crying so hard I could not make out what she was saying. It scared me to death! Amanda doesn’t cry much or often, at least not around me, and the last time I got a phone call like this a dog had killed their pet cat. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I understood this much; ”Mama, all them are GONE!”  “WHAT??” I yelled into the reciever….”What do you mean Amanda???” 
“Mama….Kenzie has cut all her curls off…she has cut her own hair and all of her curls are GONE!!

The last was said very loudly and ended with a great big sob.

Maybe it was relief that it wasn’t a life thretening situation, or maybe it just brought back sweet memories of another little girl (AMANDA) that cut her hair, but oh my gosh…..I LAUGHED. Oh, I tried to cover it up quickly…especially when Amanda cried, “MAMA, ARE YOU LAUGHING?? KELVIN, MY MAMA IS LAUGHING!! 

I tried real hard to make that laugh sound like a sob…but she knew.

My granddaughter Kenzie was born with very little hair. It took months for even this little bit to come in….                                                         

                                        

When my granddaughter finally started getting some hair on her head, it was obvious that it was going to be curly hair….real curly hair! The longer it grew, the curlier it got! Everyone who met her, noticed those curls and her mama and daddy loved them.

                        

Even as she grew older, the curls were still there.

                                                                                      

And now I had Amanda on the phone crying because at three years old, “Kenzie’s curls are all gone!”

It seems that Amanda was getting ready to go to church yesterday, when she noticed Kenzie's hair looked sort of well… strange. At first glance, she thought Kenzie had one side of her hair up and had put a bow in it, but once she caught hold of her and turned her around, on closer inspection, she knew.

She knew that Kenzie had did what most children will do at one time or another during their child hood.

Kenzie had cut her own hair!!

AMANDA FOUND ALL OF THE CURLS  IN A BOWL IN  KENZIE'S BEDROOM.

( I honestly think Kenzie was saving them to put back on later!)

This picture was taken right after we took her to Athens to try to repair the damge she had done. As you can tell, one side is shorter than the other. It will eventually grow out and we will keep triming and fixing until it all looks better.

                                                                                   

Althouugh she cut her own hair, she was scared to get her hair cut by a beautician! So, sitting in the next chair over, Amanda got her own hair cut too.

                                                                                

Good Lord willing, the hair will grow back…and I already see some little curls peaking through just a day later….so Mawmaw and her baby girl and her grandbaby girl are all happy now.

                                                                      

                                AND THE SCISSORS HAVE BEEN HIDDEN.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

 

‘BACK THROUGH THE YEARS I GO WANDERING ONCE AGAIN’

                                                                          
I have always loved two old country songs that Loretta Lynn and Dolly Pardon sang…
Dolly’s song, “Coat of Many Colors” and Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” seemed to have been written just for me, because they ‘almost’ told my childhood story.
The old house that I was raised in, out on a dirt road in Greene County, Georgia, had no paint on the wood walls, nor the ceilings. We had no running water in the house, nor outside. We got our water from Mr. Paul’s Dairy. My daddy hauled it to the house in metal milk cans. The tin roof had holes in it, so we could see the stars and moon shining in on us at night through the holes in the ceiling. During the day we could see the dirt on the ground under the house through the holes in the wooden floors.
We had an old rounded pot bellied heater that tried real hard in the winter time to heat the four tiny rooms in that house. What with no insulation, it was an almost impossible job. Sometimes, or I guess I should say often times, the glowing red embers would grow dim, then dark and cold during the night. Come morning, our little bodies would be just a shivering, even though mama would have piled all the tattered blankets and old long woolen coats that she could find on top of us, trying to keep her babies warm.
It was a hard childhood in ways, but we survived and most times we even enjoyed our little country life. We had so many pets! We always had an assortment of cats with kittens, dogs with puppies, chickens with chicks and hogs with baby piglets to play with. I will tell you a secret; baby piglets are just as much fun as puppies to play with…. just don’t let the mama pig catch you doing it!
When we grew tired of playing with our pets, we would make mud pies and have ‘Best Mud Pie’ contests or see who could go the highest in the swing we had rigged up in the Mulberry tree. We drew hopscotch patterns or marbles rings in the dirt and played for hours on end. We played cowboys and Indians. Do children even play that anymore, or would it be perceived as stereotyping?
                                                          
                                        *Three of the oldest kids, at our old home before the kitchen and the shingle sidding was added on
When we grew tired of playing, we would lay in the grass and look up at the white puffy clouds floating by in the bright blue sky, using our imagination to make pictures out of them. At night, we caught ‘lightning bugs’ in mason jars and put them in our bedrooms to see the glowing green lights moving about to and fro. On some nights, especially after a corn shucking, or pea shelling day, we would just sit out on the wooden back porch quietly listening to the chairs creaking as grownups talked while rocking back and forth in the old wood rocking chairs.
I would always, and I mean always, drift off to sleep!
God blessed me with two of the most loving parents that a child could have had and I truly believe that is the number one most important things in a child’s life.
                                                           
                                                    The only baby picture of me !
Here lately, there has been much talk in the news about the poor and disadvantaged….but you know, having been raised poor and disadvantaged, it was not always a terribly bad thing for me.  When I think back, for every negative thing about being raised poor and disadvantaged, I believe I can name a positive.
I guess it’s all according on how you look at things.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.