dreaming and scheming -- again

So -- I'm back at it. Trying to figure out a way to fill my time and maybe my wallet, while I wait for the anonymous rich uncle to gift me enough money to sell my books which will all become runaway best sellers. I'm not to sure which will (not) happen first.
I think they are tied.

What I've been thinking is that if there was a venue -- a venue that didn't cost too much -- I could pay a monthly rental fee. Should be able to get a discounted rate, too, if I could do it that way.
Or I could partner with someone(s) also at odds with their current lifestyle and in need of flowing cash every now and then. Even so, we could do the monthly rental thing with its potential discount.

I (or we) could also sell used books online. I've looked at a couple of free make-your-own-websites. Weebly is the one that looks most interesting to me. But -- and this is a big but -- how do you make lists of books visually appealing?
One could take pictures, of course, but how long does it take for the eyes to tire of looking at pictures of books? Not long, for me, .and I am a book lover! There needs to be a something extra.

Then there's shipping. While I wouldn't mind counting shipping as a cost-of-doing-business, I'm not sure that's prudent. Either many small orders or one crazy huge heavy order could break the bank.
Business over.

Since I don't have a business, that's not really a concern -- yet.
Since there's no viable venue, there's no overwhelming concern about splitting the rent, either.

Besides the books, I'd like to offer used clothing as well. Not quite thrift shop quality, but too good to throw away. For now, I usually give them away, often to a local charity that jams them in with all their other donations. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I'd so like to see my granddaughter's outgrown clothes go to a good home. Silly of me, perhaps, but that's how I feel about some of the  garments and toys.

There are household items and knickknacks, too, although I have few of those.

I'd really like to sell handcrafted items, but my hands aren't too  crafty, and there's no money to buy things for resale.

Not yet, anyway.

Oh, but I can see it so well, in my mind. A front table and a side  table, boxes and or shelves of books, some type of clothes rack. The tables have white plastic tablecloths taped to them. A pedestal fan flutters the edges. Padded folding chairs for my fat behind to fall off of. Children looking at toys, people talking together.
Yeah, right. A talker-to-strangers I am not.
But I can be. I've never had too much of a problem speaking to customers as a server of sorts. (I may have problems after they have walked theirs stupid selves away, but I can be polite enough while face-to-face.)

Well, those are my maybe-babys for today. They aren't getting me anywhere -- not today. 

But, it's possible, someday in the future, if I keep dreaming and thinking, that these plots and plans will come to fruition.

It's even possible that the fruit will be good.

Sui-sides: My side

When I decide to die, it's not your fault. You are in no way responsible for my decision. It's MY decision.

When I choose to die, it won't be about you. I acknowledge that there will be a feeling that I didn't love you enough to live, and there will be a lot of wondering how could I do that to you. I say again, I can't say  often enough -- it's not about you.

I didn't love you enough?

First off, it is my great, great, overwhelming love for each and every one of you that has kept me going this long. Because I have loved you, I got up from my bed and cooked, and advised,  and even drove all over the countryside  because YOU NEEDED ME.
It is my love for you that keeps me trying.

My love for you has kept me going beyond all reason, beyond all sanity.

Sometimes, in the bad times, I resent that. I don't want held. I want free. Free to live my life  -- or NOT!

How could I do what, exactly, to you? End my life? Lay myself down to  a sleep where I won't have to go to the bathroom, or answer  the telephone, or do any of the many, many things that rob me of my rest, that steal peace from me?
How is that doing something to you? What makes you the star of my death?

I'm tired.
I'm sick.
I'm sick and tired.

I am also in pain. Mental, physical, emotional. Doesn't matter. I hurt.
I hurt, and you can't make that better, although  I know you want to.
I hurt, and healing is too hard. Another chore, another job, another effort.

It's not that you aren't worth  the effort -- you ARE.
It's just too hard, and it hurts too badly.

Finally.
I can't.
I just can't.

Not even you can make it worthwhile.

Give me rest.
Let me rest.

Tin Can Mountain

Lately, as I try to clean my cabinets and get rid of "stuff", I've been thinking about hoarding and the struggles we have with it, and why.
Some things that are saved are saved
 for sentimental reasons, or because they WILL be reused, eventually. Like the little outfit my daughters wore that my granddaughter wore out.Only a used play outfit, but the continuity meant a lot to me. I have the first gift my husband ever bought me -- a red pullover sweater. I have a very fancy (to me) dress that a friend bought for me when I lost enough weight to be able to wear it. I have another, similar dress that a different friend gave me when I had gained weight enough to be able to wear her cast-offs as she lost weight.
Neither dress will fit me now, and the older one is unlikely to EVER fit again.

That's one kind of saving.

Another kind is silly, and unhealthy. Like newspapers kept and reassembled and stacked by date because someone might need to know something that was in them. They weren't allowed to be used, or even reread after the first week or so, unless you were doing a school report for that date or something. The newspapers were kept in the kitchen. Not good. Bugs, and dust, and printer's ink and all that. Mice like paper, too. Not a good kind of saving.

My sister, at least one of them, saves butter bowls. Well, margarine bowls, or whipped 'topping' bowls of that nature. Ones with lids.
With strict discipline, I've avoided that trap. Mostly because I like bowls to have what they say they are in them. Hate butter bowls that are peas or gravy -- those items just don't spread well on toast.


No, my bete-noire is coffee cans. Metal, plastic -- it doesn't matter, although it is a tad easier to throw out the plastic ones. That labeling thing, again. I must have been traumatized once, trying to spread gravy on my toast! The plastic cans usually have labels as part of their design.
The paper can be peeled off the metal cans, and when that happens, there is nothing that can't be done with them. I mainly use them as canisters. Was always dissatisfied with store-bought canister sets -- you could only put a whole bag of anything (flour, sugar, corn meal) in one canister, because the others were smaller and smaller and smaller. Coffee cans are all the same size -- just like the packaging for the sugar, etc.  Other ingredients, such as nuts or chocolate chips or brown sugars, can be assigned to their own coffee can, with lid, still in their packages.

But, short of a professional bakery, or maybe a day-care facility, even I have run out of uses for the coffee cans. They can hold anything -- pots, plants, paints. They can be decorated -- that,s why they would be popular at day care -- but eventually they take up space.

So, if you know anyone who need an all purpose container, let me know.

I can give them away, just not throw them away.

Twistered

The pictures coming out of Oklahoma at this moment are horrifying.To me, they seem to be worse than Joplin and Branson, and more akin to our little Ohio town of Moscow that was so devastated not much more than a year ago.

I am looking at Moore, Oklahoma. Houses, stores, all piles of rubble. Twisted steel beams, and not much else to show structures.
A shopping mall.
The piled-up drawing the most attention, the newscasters are telling me, is the school. Or what's left of it.
Where are the children?
No one is sure, at the moment. No one even knows, for certain, if they were taking shelter there, or if they had been moved/moving to a safe area.

Oh, dear God, where are the children? Where were the children?

My heart breaks for the parents, the children, the townsfolk. They've lost their homes and their other places -- all devastating. But the loss they are rallying around is the missing children.

Moore, Oklahoma has their priorities straight. I hope they are rewarded for that.

This tornado was awful, awful, awful. The damn tornado itself looked more like a mushroom cloud, and that's what the aftermath looks like, too.

How can any town, any city, any family be prepared for something like this? The best one can do is hope shelter works, and hang on tight. If you are outside the situation, ad I am, you can care, and cry, and you can start deciding how to help, even before it's over -- and it's not over yet, there are more of them right this minute
.

I mourn for and with those on the spot, even as I am grateful that none of mine are there.
But they could be. Oh, yes, they could be.
I want to help these as I would want to help my own. It is only luck, and a few miles, that it isn't. It still could be. If not today, then tomorrow, or next week, or next decade.

We haven't figured out tornadoes yet.
Even when we do, it's going to be a long time before we can actually do anything about them.

If they head your way, please, please -- get safe. I don't want to see videos from you. Is that what you want shown at your funeral?

I want you to be safe.
I want Moore Oklahoma to find their children.

If only there were fewer if onlys

Sometimes it seems, even to me, that I accomplish less than I am capable of because I spend too much time on seeing what can't be done. If only I had more time, if only I had more money, if only the rest-of-the-world would cooperate with me and my needs. If only this, if only that.

I don't let my children get away with that, not for very long. I tell them, "You have to think of a way around that." I tell them, "There has to be a way." I say, "I know you can figure it out. But you have to be the one to do it."

We are all wrapped up in our own if-onlys. An obstacle for one person is a piece of cake for another. But just because they can do X doesn't mean they can do Y. Personality, social skills, necessity all have a part in each small success.

I like to think that when I am if-onlying, that it means I am actively engaged in thinking my way in, out of, around, and through a problem, whatever its nature. Usualy that is what's going on in my head. I bring it up in conversation, in writing, bevause it is occupying my mind ad I wrestle with the components of the If-only.

I can see, though, where it may not look like that to outsiders.
I can see where it may look like "There she goes, whining again." I can see that it can appear to be the worst kind of self-pity.

When someone brings up the same subject, over and over again, don't assume they are asking for your help in any pjysical sense. Unless that's what they are asking for, of course.If you don't want to get any more involved, don't be afraid to ay that you don't want to go into that; you have nothing new to contribute. Those of us who wrestle with demons or ideas often don't realize how single-minded we can be. We also may not remember if we discussed this with you before, or at what stage. No honest thought-wrangler is going to hold it against you that your thought-world isn't theirs.

If only can be an exvuse. If only definitely can describe limitations.
But keep listening, because "if only" can also mean "what do you think?" and there isn
 no greater compliment than having someone actually listening to what you think.

If only there were more people like that.

Mamma, May I?

Sunday was mother's day. It was also my grandmother's birthday. Were she still alive, she'd have been celebrating 107 years.
When I was a kid, there always seemed a special magic to the day when Mamma's birthday fell on Mother's Day. I can't explain what made it so special, but I felt it.
I can say this, now, as a mother and grandmother: If any woman, ever, deserved to be born on Mother's Day, it was this woman. She epitomized Motherhood.
We'd have been lost without her, and a lot more neglected and abused than we were.  She fed us, she clothed us, she treated us, and she gave us a quiet place to go. She saw that we were awake and got to school on time. She had and kept a telephone.

I wonder, now, how she felt about the inadequacies of her daughter as a mother.Did she worry? Without a doubt. I don't know what her specific worries were, but she worked awfully hard to prevent our feeling too much of a lack.

Did she feel like she had failed as a mother? I don't know, but I think now she must have, at times. Wonderful woman that she was, I never saw it. But, dealing with my own faulty child(ren), I know she had to have had those moments, hours, and long-dark-night-of-the-soul nights over her faulty daughter.

But, whether in spite of this or because of it, she was there. Remarkably, outstandingly, always there. Even when she began losing her mind, even when she wasn't sure who she was with, she was there for us. It was startling to be informed that RuthE was going somewhere or doing something for her, when I was right in front of her, but -- BUT -- it meant I was in her heart and in her mixed-up memories.

That's love.

That's Motherhood.

Happy Mother's birthday, Mamma. We all still miss you and want you around, somewhere.

Some of us know that you are.

catching up

I've been busy this week. Like most weeks (or days, months, years)p, it's been a mixture of good and bad events, actions, and emotions
The bad concerns medicines -- prescriptions. Another time, I will post details about this battle. The writings I have done on the subject are more like rantings and I sound like a lunatic. Never mind that that's a good description -- I mean something different. But first we can't renew my husband's meds, and then it turns out I can't get mine, either. No one will say why. I don't have a problem with complying. Someone just needs to tell me exactly what I have to do to comply.

The good thing was being able to help my daughter. Supplied some of life's necessities while she is off work. I took her to the doctor. I took her to the store.I took her to the school to get Hailey enrolled in school. Hailey was mad when she wasn't allowed to stay at school.

Our new little man got to go for his first ride in Mammaw's red car. While we were in the store, I was pushing the cart and holding the baby. Tam came and rescued him from me, saying I couldn't do both. I had to laugh at her. I got him a bouncy seat that sometimes he likes and sometimes he doesn't.

Hailey came home with me from that day out, and immediately had me get out the calendar and show her when it would be library day and she could go home.
When she went home, she went all through her house and came running back to the front room crying. "My baby brudder is gone! He's gone!"Mommy and baby had gone out with a friend. It didn't bother her that Mommy was gone, but what heartbreak that baby brudder was missing!

Today I am again getting ready to go into battle, with doctor's offices ( foe me ) and government agencies ( for Rex ) and pharmacies and their assistants or techs. These people have been the most helpful to me in my quest, but they are powerless without orders.
Bolstered by Hailey hugs and baby brudders bounces, Mammaw is battle-ready again

Let us hope that this battle can be one, short of death.

Spring Sitting

This is the weekend of the springtime community yard sales, and I trotted out all my stuff -- much better stuff this time around. Dresses, unworn for years, but nice dresses. Toddler toys, that if I don't sell I can save. The new baby will be a toddler someday. Yard tools too heavy for me and ,y husband, too awkward for me.

Anyway, it's good stuff in good condition -- except for where the bird pooped on the youth-sized formal. (Make me an offer, I'll knock off some dollars for droppings)

It's funny that I have yet to sell anything, when the product is more diverse and in better shape. But selling doesn't seem to be the value in this spring's yard sale.

The value is in the sitting. Blue skies, puffy clouds, spilling sunshine. Birdsong, barking dogs, and playing children 2 yards down.

There is peace here in sitting on the porch, watching people passing.Peace in listening to nature, even dogfights or catfights (the animal kind)
Peace in looking and breathing and waiting. Time to rest, perhaps. Time to enjoy..
Time to be.

I need this time. It isn't always what you make, but what you make of it.