The Retro Queen

Anyone else out there remember stuff like this from the 1970's & 80's?  I was cleaning out some old boxes of papers I'd collected over the years and ran across this.

God Is Like . . .

God is like Coke - He's the real thing.

God is like Pan Am - He makes the going great.

God is like General Electric - He lights your path.

God is like Hallmark Cards - He cares enough to send the very best.

God is like Tide - He gets the stains out that others leave behind.

God is like VO Hair Spray - He holds through all kinds of weather.

God is like Dial Soap - Aren't you glad you know Him?  Don't you wish everyone did?

God is like Sears - He has everything.

God is like Alka-Seltzer - Try Him, you'll like Him.

God is like Scotch tape - You can't see Him but you know He's there.

- Barnwell (S.C.) People-Sentinel

This past week my best friend's mother died. The funeral was today.  She had Alzheimer's and had been slowly disappearing both mentally and physically.  D showed such love and patience with her mother and had found very good care for her.  They were very close and this will be a difficult loss and yet at the same time it was an answer to my friend's prayer that something would take her mother before the Alzheimer's totally took every shred of who she had once been.  Although she had shrunk to a mere 60 pounds and maybe 4' 8" and had been robbed of most of her memories and abilities, she could still respond to questions and prompts and knew who her children were.  We had just taken her to lunch with us last Tuesday and upon returning to her room she told D that that would probably be the last time as it was just too tiring.  On Friday she slipped into a coma like state and died Saturday morning.  D gave me 40 pictures of her mother from throughout her life which I scanned and made into a slide show for the service today.  It not only gave them a visual reminder of her, but helped them to get past the awful or just plain weird things that this disease made her say and do, and help them remember what she had truly been like.

D and I have known each other since high school (over 40 years now) and although we were always good friends, it has been in the last ten years that we have truly become best friends.  With the children grown and gone we've had more time to get together and our husbands have become best friends as well which makes for a really nice foursome for dinner, or cards or a trip to the beach.  We've also come to value our friendship enough to make allowances or not let little things bother us like they might have when we were younger.

She sometimes feels like she's always the one asking my help (such as the slide show or transportation or .....) and that I'm never needing help in return, but I beg to differ.  She is the one who has been my emotional support these past few years.  She is the one that when the depression was so bad and I almost never left my house, she insisted I go shopping with her so I could help her find what she needed.  The one who can always make me laugh.  The one who invited me to go to TOPS with her when I complained about my weight gain after thyroid surgery.  The own who gently nudges me to go or do or enjoy.  The one I took a 4 week road trip with two summers ago and had a blast.  The one who loves me even with my imperfections.  In short - she is my friend.  I love you D.

Our son and daughter-in-law were blessed in July with a healthy baby girl. Their first child and our first grandchild. She's a petite little thing, weighing in at 5 lbs. 9 oz. and 18 1/2 inches long. She has a good set of lungs, is very alert, strong and hungry, hungry, hungry. When she wants to be fed or to have her diaper changed, she wants it now. I had mentioned to them that her daddy had been very demanding as a baby (that hasn't changed). Can we all say payback? She was very active in the womb so we shall see if that continues now that she's out here in the world at large. Hopefully she won't be too much of a handful since I'll be helping to care for her when my daughter-in-law goes back to work. I don't know how soon that will be though - she's really loving the mommy role and 3 months is going by fast. She's thinking of asking her boss if she can use some of her sick time for another couple of weeks off.

My daughter and son-in-law flew out to spend a week visiting with their new little niece and my husband is already wrapped around her little finger. We're all enjoying her very much.

Let freedom ring!  We are so blessed to live here.  There are a lot of wonderful places in the world, but none with the type of history and freedoms that this country has had.  I hope you have a fantastic and safe holiday celebrating our country's independence.

Times change and so must we.  The more things change the more they stay the same.  Which is true? Are they both true? Is it only our surroundings that change and we stay the same or do we by necessity change in order to adapt to our changing environment?  Is it only the way in which we interact with our surroundings that changes or does our inward, fundamental character change as well?

I believe that both statements are true.  We do have to change and adapt as things around us change. Sometimes those changes can be quick and necessary as in a matter of survival, or sometimes slower because we're resistant to the changes or need time to adjust and change our thinking.  We are born with a particular personality that has both positive and negative aspects to it.  Our environment (parents, siblings, teachers, friends and the world in general) interact with our personality based on their own personalities and bring out the positive or negative in ours.  They help to shape our thinking, our character and how we react to what goes on in our world.

Although our personalty is there for life, how we operate or react is not.  We can choose to accentuate the positive and have the negative take a back seat.  We can change or improve character traits.  We can change how we look at things and how we react to things.  Is it easy?  No, or we would see more people doing it.  Is it impossible?  No, because we do see people doing it.  Basic human nature will always be with us, good and evil will always be with us, but that is not a license to give up or to say change is impossible.

Well, I'm off to see if I can play up the more positive aspects of me and downplay the negative.  Maybe, just maybe, I can turn someday into today. 

It was a wild ride home tonight, but not the worst I've been in.  I went into Portland this afternoon to take my cousin into the Doctor (it turns out she has walking pneumonia).  I then took her to the grocery store and pharmacy before finally getting her back home and then stopped by my brothers.  It was 6:30pm and dark when I headed home and the storm was hitting a little earlier then predicted.  It was already getting pretty windy and pouring rain, but my route wasn't too bad because at least all the lights were still working.  I could hear on the radio that several roads around the Portland area had lights out and trees falling.  They predict 60 mph winds through the night and the coast was already having 100 mph winds with 30 foot waves.  It's supposed to let up by morning. 

Having lived here all of my life I can say that it's pretty much normal to have this happen a couple of times each fall or winter.  Every few years we have one that's a doozy and causes a lot of damage.  November set a new record for rainfall.  The previous record was set back in 1942.  Needless to say the rivers are high and there's been some flooding.  Tillamook (along the coast) always seems to get the worst of it.  It's a low lying area and has a lot of dairies and they had quite a bit of flooding and lost some cows.

Oregon's terrain and winter weather is definitely demanding respect right now.  There are 3 experienced climbers missing on Mt. Hood and this latest storm is continuing to hamper rescue efforts.  A California family got lost on a forest road (wrong turn) while traveling through Oregon and got caught in a snow storm.  They had been missing for about 10 days before they were found and the father had tried to walk for help and died.  Two other families got stuck or lost while Christmas tree cutting and were found safe.  Last month a little boy went missing in the Crater Lake area just as the snows had started and I don't think they found him.  We don't like to hear it or think about it, but it happens every year just as the drowning's do in our lakes and rivers.

Thanksgiving weekend brought that home to our family and friends.  Our nephew bought his first house this summer and wanted to host the family get together.  His mom & dad and the rest of us brought the food and we had a good time.  He proudly showed off his home and his new fishing boat.  On Saturday my brother-in-law, nephew and two of their friends went fishing on the Willamette.  The boat capsized and they hung on to the little bit of hull showing above water.  The water was only 47 degrees and the river was running high, fast and full of debris.  My brother-in-laws best friend let go of the boat in an attempt to swim for shore and did not make it.  They still have not found his body.  The other three were rescued after about 30 minutes and my nephews core body temperature was 93 degrees.  They were all sent to the hospital and warmed up and checked out.  The friend that was lost was a great guy and very well liked.  He will be missed.

My how things change.  A few months back I knew virtually nothing about blogging and now I'm hooked.  Oh sure, I had heard of it and knew it was a web log or journal or diary written by anyone who wanted to do one and read by anyone who wanted to take the time to do so.  I just couldn't figure out why the average person would want to do that. 

I figured it was more for people who wanted to voice their opinion on issues of the day, or politics, or for writers or businesses, etc.  I found it kind of odd that people would write about their day to day lives and even odder that someone who didn't know that person would want to read it.  What I didn't realize was how interactive it can be and how much I would enjoy "getting to know" people through their written words. 

There are so many different types of blogs and the serious and informative ones are certainly important and have their place, but the ones that I have come to enjoy the most are the ones written by everyday people who have a gift for telling stories of everyday life in such a way as to make you laugh, or nod in agreement or feel emotion of some kind because it's stuff you can relate to.  I've never been much of a writer, but I have thoroughly enjoyed setting up my page and learning lots of new stuff in the process and meeting lots of great people.  The bonus is it's making me write.  Because how can you have a blog and not write?

This is Portland from the Willamette River.  The river divides Portland east and west and runs north and south.  It is the only river in the USA to begin and end in one state.  It starts in the Cascade mountains and ends at the Columbia which then flows to the Pacific Ocean.  Of the navigable rivers that run north and south it is the second largest in the world, the largest being the Nile in Egypt.