Timing -- everything

Memorials, Big and Small

This is the Thursday BEFORE Memorial Day. So many folks are starting to get ready for a weekend escape. Some, if able are starting theirs’ today.

School year is (almost) over and the thoughts of everyone seem focused on SUMMER VACATION.

Wait, that’s not what Memorial Day, is for, it’s become that, but the original meaning is lost to so many. Some might remember a time when this was not so. And for many, and for too many this with be a first – Memorial Day has FULL meaning, the price of freedom, because it ain’t free folks. Not by a long shot. It's paid with the blood of those that died.

Does not matter the where or the when, this is one of OUR AMERICAN Holidays, unique to the United States, we remember all our War dead, from the American Revolution through to those on the Army helicopter that was just shot down in Iraq.

Many families’ trees have too many limbs cut off, too many that died young (and not so young), men, and quite a few women too.

According to what I learned as a Brownie Girl Scout, that it started after the Civil War, when the graves of those that died were decorated with flowers and flags. I marched in a community parade, with all the other Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, and the Junior High School Band, and a large group of veterans, most from World War II. We went to the community’s memorial, flag ceremony, speakers, a couple songs and a wreath placing.

Then it was time to go home to change clothes and enjoy a picnic meal. As often as it was hot and sunny, it could also be cold and rainy. Ah, the wonderful weather of the Great Lakes region!

We were a lucky family, of those that went in World War II, Korea, Viet Nam, and all the time in between – we had no combat related deaths. Service related, yes, and there were injuries, and limbs lost. But for the most part, all came home.

Then I enlisted, and Memorial Day was more than a Federal Holiday. First one in uniform, I was still in technical training, but our instructors held a small remembrance ceremony for their friends and coworkers that were killed in Southeast Asia.

My second, I was at a Memorial Day Service with a friend, one of her co-workers died (in front of us) from an accidental electrocution. I was 30 feet away, I cannot forget it, and the helplessness I felt not being able to do anything but pray for that person.

I never went a year without someone I knew dying in the line of duty, or from military service connected illness/injuries. And this was the Cold War, and the so-called “Peace-time” military.

Training accidents, and incidents, aircraft mishaps and sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were similar to anyone else’s luck. A traffic accident with a fatality is the same, whether in Cleveland Ohio, or Tachikawa Japan.

I have scrapbook pages started, that remember the many friends I have lost, newspaper clippings and funeral service programs. Some with my last photograph of them, before “it” happened.

I am the widow, surviving spouse of a military member, an AF Cop, son of a Reno Cop. At his final service, there were cops (civilian and some military from his old Air National Guard Unit), and from Beale AFB, an honor guard, and a few friends (military) from happier days.

No Memorial Day since the day I entered Active Duty was so hard to get through, (he was recognized as among whom that year’s service was being held for).

I haven’t yet scrapped that, its’ still, 12 years later, too raw a nerve.

So unlike many, when I see the televised observances, I cry, I “know” the emotion that the survivors are feeling. I go and help decorate the grave sites with a small “Stars and Stripes,” placed one boot length from the headstone, and follow the placement with a salute.

There are many that survived their war, and are now suffering from their injuries, often aggravated by aging. My dog and I visit these veterans and it hurts when one of their number is gone. I have yet to remember them in pages. A family member died earlier this year, a close friend, at the beginning of this month, this year’s Memorial Day will be a time to remember them.

If you have a family member that served in the Armed Forces, take time NOW to talk with them, to learn from them. If your family has lost a member, talk to those that knew that person. And then, make a page, a layout or even a book about their service.

If you have no one, share your time at a Memorial Day observance; think about those that paid the price for our freedoms.

Everything In It’s Place

Anyone that knows me well, like Nancy (Scrappyknees) knows that I am at time very Anal about things. And in my previous life (before retirement I was a Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force) I knew just how to “square away” items, and clean for “white glove” inspections. Did a few of them myself, and I have high standards, and higher ones for myself!

We are MOVING! It is official and yes, orders are in hand, can anyone shout FIGMO for us? (“Fudge-it,” got my orders!)

This means we are selling our first house. This means Sandy (that's me) is getting really anal about keeping an IMMACULATE house. “Wipe the sink, don’t leave water spots.” “Take ALL your stuff upstairs, and PUT IT AWAY, not leave it on the floor.” And other less endearing orders to the household.

And I am freaking out between the things we must do to SELL a house, (Staging anyone? Open House?) to panic over getting a mortgage approved before we can even LOOK at another house at the other end. It’s is a VERY HOT sellers market in the Baltimore-D.C. area, multiple offers and prospective buyers waiving inspections, paying much more than the advertised asking price and other things. We just got a fact sheet from a Real Estate Agent there about “How to Win the Bidding Game.”

Am I scrapping? No, I’m afraid that if I pull anything out there will be a call that someone wants to see our house and please clear out. I have boxes and covered totes ready for the flurry of “clean and go.” And I’m considering keeping “Princess” stuff in the car so she can join me in these mini exiles.

Every spot on the floor MUST be wiped and every mark on the walls painted over. I am freaking out over the fact that the old blinds have lost their control rods (we still have them, but the little metal connectors long ago before we bought the house gave up the ghost). Our “fixes” are not working anymore, so… Will that keep someone from buying???

There are “burn” spots in the backyard, we have a dog, and yes she does pee and make doggie droppings, and that’s a good thing. We can pick up the poop, but the urine burns… Will that keep someone else from buying???

And the kicker – I have this nagging belief that NO ONE on the other end, the people we will be buying from, whomever they are, are not doing the same for us. They are not scrubbing every speck of dirt, vacuuming every pet hair, or even repainting, it’s a HOT market for them, it’s enough that they are selling. I hope they are at least cleaning the stove/range and refrigerator.

It has taken a toll to get the things done here, and to face “doing that again” but with a drastically reduced budget is not making me happy about this move. I have moved over 16 times during 22 years of military service, not once was it to someplace that was ever cleaner than where I last left.

And so it goes…

Help

why does this not update??

10 stupid things I did as a little kid.

a meme n (mëm): is an idea that is shared and passed from blog to blog, like a question posted in one blog and answered in many other blogs.

10 stupid things I did as a little kid.

I really don’t remember doing anything stupid as a child, I was “gifted” with maturity beyond my tender years, that snorting and sick gagging sound you hear now are various members of my family that are in total and absolute disagreement over that statement.

1. I wanted to be as beautiful, and glamorous like my mother, (blessed with “movie star” good looks) and I got into her makeup when I was about three – totally trashed my parents bedroom since I did not have the motor skills and manual dexterity to open containers, take just a “tiny bit” and then close them up and put away… One of the few times I REALLY could not wait for Daddy to come home!!!

2. Cooking with my grandma (mother’s mom) and setting the stove, and pot holders on fire when I was four.

3. Letting my Uncle’s dog, a boxer, “Cindy” loose when my brother was an infant and I was about four. I just wanted to play with her since EVERYONE was busy with the baby. Cindy when released from “confinement” was a little wild and would run and jump all over everyone. She was a BIG dog that still thought she was a lap dog. Now add a newborn baby – okay, can we all see now why this was not smart.

4. One summer night, about age 6, I was just able to “go around the block” suburban neighborhood, 24 houses on the block in two rows of 10, very quiet streets, and my house fronted a road that was just starting to become a thorough-fare. My curfew, be back in my own yard was when the street lights came on at dusk.

There were about 60 kids living on our block, two “friends” (only ‘cause our mothers were friends and we were the same ages), lived down the street, and another (real this time) friend lived across the street. I found NEW friends (same age but lived on the other side and half way down the block) and we were playing, way after dark… My parents were frantic, no one knew where I was, and last they saw of me I was walking home by myself before dusk.

When I was “finally” found my parents were way past angry to “fearful,” that was one of the few spankings I ever had, and you better believe I learned from it!

5. We had in the summer these “little bitty” toads, not much bigger than your thumb tip. My father found one. I was under a year old and sitting in my stroller outside. Strollers then sometimes had a metal tray that fitted in front of the kid. So Daddy puts this tiny toad on the tray, and instead of screaming, I am entranced watching this thing. I then proceed to smoosh it before Daddy can stop me and then look at my hand. EEEUUUUUUuuuuuuuu!

6. Tumble down stairs on purpose, it’s easy, you just start to somersault and go from the top down. Start with one or two steps and work up to more. Best done in the summer when all the adults are on the front porch outside and really can’t hear you and your siblings and cousins do this. Being the eldest, I got to “teach” everyone how to do it safely! You only do it on the carpeted stairs, not the basement stairs!

7. Climbing things, there is a balance between what is adventuresome and what is dangerous, it took a long time for me to learn the difference once I started to climb at first shrubs, then the railings of the different front porches, then the attic stairs, and shelves in closets… You get the idea. The ladder to the roof… Until one day sheer panic set in and you are “frozen” and someone has to come to your rescue.

8. Swimming at the lake with cousins and friends and swimming OUT PAST the buoys and driving platform, and the beach markers… and having your family panic since they can no longer see you waaaaaaaay out there.

9. Getting into so many accidents, that by today’s standards someone in the ER would have filed a possible child abuse report instead of joking about what you are going to damage next, or which child’s turn it is.

10. Going to, or coming home from school. There were too many distractions, playing in the marsh, ice skating (sliding) in the winter, or wadding in the fall and spring. Climbing the hills formed by the highway construction and then running down, or after the interstate was built, climbing up under the bridge on the slope of concrete to the fence near the roadside and watch the cars, or turn around and admire the view of the town, clear to the grocery store a mile away! Coming home OR going to school. I was often LATE, and showed up (usually with a couple of other “Explorers”) dirty and disheveled.