Pat took a picture of our feet in the water of the Gulf when we were down there last month.  Then, she made me a cleverly crafted picture frame to remind me of the fun we had.  She is a crafter.  I'm not.  About the only thing I can do is say, "That's so cute!"  Which I did.  I'll put it by my bed.

Jeanette came to see me today.  I love it when she comes.  Becky Bacon is coming Thursday and staying a few days.  This is going to be a great week.  We'll all go eat somewhere.

I never knew anything about estate sales until Becky (daughter) got into it.  (Check her out at "Swan Estate Sales", she also posts on Facebook.  Swan was my maiden name.)  Anyway, I've worked a few of them--if they have a lot of sewing stuff and fabric.  They usually last two or three days, unless it is exceptionally large and then they may go four days.  First day is reasonably priced, second day could be 25% off.  Third day it might be 50% off.  It depends.  You never know how a sale will go.  The weather is a big factor.  Since she started doing this, I've been going to other estate sales.  It is really interesting.  Even at full price, you will get a bargain.  I don't want to put anyone out of business, but I'll never pay full price at a retail store again after learning about these sales.  The prices are too good.

Becky Bacon is coming Thursday and she and Jeanette and Ann and I are going garage hopping, and also to an estate sale.  It will be fun.  I think Becky (friend) is going to stay through Sunday.  I think I have died and gone to heaven.  Having my friends here and doing fun stuff is the ultimate joy.  Becky (friend) is having another eye surgery.  This seems to be endless for her.  They have stopped the glaucoma, which is a miracle, but scar tissue keeps growing back.  Bad for her, but lovely for me since she has to come to Ok. City and stay with me.  Janie's Bed and Breakfast, Lunch and Supper.

I have two Beckys I write about.  Daughter, and Becky Bacon.  (And Rebecca Perkins.)  My Becky doesn't like for me to call her Becky, she prefers Rebecca.  I named her Rebecca, but never called her that--it's hard to change what I call her.  Habit.  Our habits hold us.  Good and bad.  Even at my age I have formed new habits.  If you do something over and over, you will keep on doing it that way.  Unless you force yourself to do it a different way.  I'm forcing myself to do multiple things different since I've moved.  Loading the dishwasher on the right instead of the left.  Etc.  Light switch locations.  Force yourself to form a new Good habit at least once a month.  You're not too old to do it.

It's cold.  I don't like it.  The only thing good is that in two and a half more months, the daffodils will start to bloom.  I've even seen them pop up through a late snow.

Saturday, my class went to see a stage play of "It's a Wonderful Life" in Guthrie Oklahoma.  Guthrie was the state capital of Oklahoma until 1910 when the state seal was stolen and moved to Okla. City.  History says it was done at night.  Sneaky.  My dad was born in 1910.  It was the wild west.

The buildings there are rather majestic for Oklahoma.  And most of them on main street have basements.  Nobody in Oklahoma builds with a basement.  Underground water is a problem.  But they did it in Guthrie.  And on the corner down from the theater is the original State Capital building. A letter has fallen off--it says "The _tate Capital."  The entire street is now antique stores.

Over lunch, one of the members of my class said, "I have something to tell all of you..." and began to cry.  She lives with her daughter, and they are moving.  We are such a tight knit group that losing her is painful.  But she is losing us as well.  It is really hard to move at our age.  You have to start finding friends all over again, and it is difficult.  We promised her that we will get a church van, and come see her.  She doesn't drive.  She is going to El Reno, not too far west of us.  It will be a day trip, and this group of girls love to "go."  We'll make a day of it.

Someone suggested that we could be in El Reno in time for church.  We could do our lesson on the bus.  And then go eat.  We all love to eat.  We are going to have a pot luck next Sunday for our friend that is leaving, right after class. Connection groups are a quick way to find friends when you move.

The only real friends I have in Edmond are in my class. There aren't may ways to meet people and make any lasting relationships when you move.  The older you get the harder it is.  It reminds you to be aware how many of the seniors that you know are alone, and don't have people to help them.  It is amazing how much a visit from someone means to them.  Especially in the winter when they are pretty much house bound.  Day after day, many of them sit at home with nothing much to do.

I thank God that I have my health, family and friends.  It is what counts in your life.

I read to Pat every day when she was little, and I would hold her in my lap and sing to her by the hour.  I tried to be a good mother.  But as she grew older,  we were like oil and water.  Becky, 18 months younger, was easy to raise.  Pat was not.  We just seemed to get on each other's nerves.

By the time Pat graduated from high school, the pattern was set.   I loved her,  she loved me.  But I can't say that either of us liked the other very much. Occasionally there were good periods--which didn't last.  She was extremely capable, smart and creative.  She worked her way through college without our help.  She was always able to stand on her own two feet.  But, once she was gone, we rarely heard from her.  Then one day, at the end of her senior year in college, she called me and said, "Would you come get me, I want to move home."  Of course I went and got her.  Immediately.  It was the first time she had ever asked me to do something for her.

She married, had two daughters which I adored, and slowly we began to interact in a better way.  I started to appreciate the stubbornness she had inherited from me.  I began to better understand who she was.  She began to appreciate who I was, and how hard I had tried to be a good mother.

I said yesterday, that the relationship I have with her now, was unexpected.  It is.  She opens doors for me and holds my elbow when I get in or out of the car.  She grips my arm when we walk so that I don't stumble.  She drives in from the country and takes me to all my appointments.  In every way, she cares for whatever I need.  She repeatedly tells me that if and when the time comes that if I need care, she doesn't want me to move out of my home.  "I want you to live where things are familiar, and are surrounded by your pretty things.  I'll help you."

Unexpected.  Also undeserved.  We were mismatched.  God must have had a plan that I didn't, that I don't, understand.  Because of all the people in my life, I never expected Pat to be my companion when I grew old.  But she is.  I must have done something right.  Perhaps she learned something from me after all.  You love the people that God gives you.  You take care of those you love.  And when you learn better, you do better.  Pat and I are friends.  A totally unexpected phenomenon.  I have two perfect daughters.  One was easy.  One was hard.  Both are wonderful people, and I thank God for them both.  I don't deserve them.

Today, I am going to write about something very personal.  Maybe, if you have a child who is difficult, it will help you.  I have an unexpected, and wonderful relationship with my daughter Pat, my oldest child.  Unexpected, because for many years, we were at odds.

When she was born, I was nineteen.  I was in a strange place--California--over a thousand miles from anybody I knew.  Friends or family.  Ken was the air officer for the 7th Marines and working from sunup to sundown teaching ground Marines how to call an airstrike--how to get someone in the air to deliver what you wanted from them--at the exact spot you wanted it--on the ground.  The day Pat was born, someone else drove me to the hospital.  Ken was thousands of feet in the air--somewhere.

The birth was not normal.  The military doctor who delivered her had never delivered a baby before.  He made a terrible mistake--I remember hearing a door open, and someone yelling, "Clamp that you fool."  (I paid for his mistake for many months.)  I went into shock, and it was seven days before I had recovered enough so that they could release me to go home.  I had only held a baby once in my life--when I was five, and my brother was born.  I had no idea what to do with a baby--and no one to help me learn.  I was traumatized physically, emotionally, and frightened.  And the baby was in pain. A colicky, crying, miserable lump of humanity.  She, and I, got off to a terribly rocky start.

I didn't know what to do with her.  I would sit on the side of the bed and jiggle her by the hour.  Which didn't help.  At all.  I was allergic to her saliva, which caused huge blisters--the pain was excruciating--which I endured for weeks before I gave up on what God equipped a normal mother do.   I obviously wasn't normal.

Finally, after three months, things began to even out.  Three months.  An eternity.  I was at my wits end by then.  I survived.  She survived.  We began to adjust to each other.  But by the time she was two, it was apparent that my mothering skills (which were zero) frustrated her, and frustrated me as well.  From then on we were at war.  It was a struggle of the wills.  And it was a matched battle.  She was every bit as stubborn as I was.  I had no experience in the art of how to discipline a child, so I spanked her.  That was how I was raised.  That's how everyone was raised back then.  Spanking Pat was like throwing gasoline on a fire.....continued tomorrow.....

My son Scott sends this blog to friends.  And when they comment on what I'v written, he sends me a note telling me that I owe him a TL.  I've told you about TLs before.  When my mom set dinner on the table in the evening, Dad would bless it and then we would trade TLs.  Mom invented this game, this thing, this idea--and named it "Tell Last--TL."

One of us would say, "I have a TL for you."  The other person would know that you had heard something nice about them, so they would rack their brain for something nice someone had said about you.  They also knew that they would get their compliment "Last."  So it was--in effect--a bribe.  Tell me something nice you heard about me and I'll tell you what I heard about you.

What it did was make us aware of being good listeners, especially when people said something good about another person.  Maybe the motive wasn't pure, but the result made us understand how important it was to pass compliments along.  We learned the joy of hearing something nice someone had said about us.

Praise is a powerful aphrodisiac.  It makes you want more.  And when you hear something good that you have done or said, you want to repeat what you did.  Criticism accomplishes nothing.  Praise is what we want.  When you tell me you enjoy what I write, I keep writing.  Scott calls me with a TL.

Squig wants to please me.  Because I always praise him.  Because I tell him he is a good dog when he does what I expect him to do.  Lately, he has been going to the mail box with me without a leash.  When I started letting him go with me to get the mail, he would run down to the neighbors and get distracted and not come when I called.  So, I would go get him,  pick him up and say "Come." I would sit him down on the porch, pat his head and tell him what a good dog he was to "Come."  He slowly got the hang of it.  He loved the praise.  More than he loved to wander.

Some people whip their dogs.  Or yell at them.  Love and praise are much more effective.  It works on dogs.  It works on people.  Try giving TL's to people.  I assure you that they will glow.  Nothing is as wonderful as hearing something good someone has said about you.

Ken was the most unusual, interesting, confident person I have ever known, heard or read about.  And he transmitted those qualities to the people around him.  If you were in his inner circle, he assumed you had those qualities as well.  He granted you space to become what he already assumed you were.

Two months after I married him, he turned twenty-seven.  A very old twenty-seven.  Marine boot camp, flight school, cat shots off of carriers, thirteen months at war, getting shot at every day, getting hit seven times and surviving, had aged him.  He was a man.  A man's man.  I've often wondered why he chose a girl child to marry.  But choose he did.  And not lightly.  He knew what he wanted.  He had a plan for marriage that was for life.  And knew exactly what he was looking for.

It wasn't like he didn't have dozens of choices.  He did.  Hollywood choices.  While he was flying out of El Toro in California, John Wayne would come down to the squadron and line up the unmarried aviators to fly in his movies.  (John didn't want to use married guys--in case there was an accident.)  The government looked on it as a win-win. War movies were the thing at that time and the US needed men to join up.  Marine pilots came with free gas and free airplanes--and were capable of arriving on target in a movie film-shot at the right moment.  Ken flew in a bunch of them.  Toro Toro.  Flying Leathernecks.  I wish I had written all of that down.

He wanted me.  And he didn't have a giving up bone in his body.  He would ask me to marry him; I would say no, and the next weekend he would fly whatever he could round up back to Pryor.  And ask again.  And I would say no.  I was eighteen--what more explanation is there.  He was just an old friend of my parents.   But like I said, he granted you space to become what he already assumed you were.  And he assumed I was going to become his wife.  He assumed I would come to my senses?

Why me?  Ken had a list.  He knew what he wanted in a wife.  I was it.  I asked him once about that--how I had met all the "qualifications" on his list.  "Oh," he said, "You didn't.  You missed two points.  That was deflating.  "What!  What did I miss," I asked.  By that time he had convinced me I was perfect.  "You were too young.  And you had never lived on your own or been away from home.  Being too young won't be a problem now, but someday it will, someday you will probably be alone." He was right.  It matters now.  But for 57 years, It didn't.  We were perfect together.  I do so miss him.

When I married Ken, he had a Jag XKE--or some letter or other--convertible.  Two seats.  Baby blue.  He told me to keep it at 4000 RPM's.  Whatever that meant.  So every time I went somewhere, the police picked me up for speeding.  I absolutely couldn't seem to get the car under control.

I had learned to drive with four on the floor, so shifting wasn't a problem, but every time I put the thing in fourth gear it exploded down the road like the racing car that it was.  The Police never gave me a ticket, they just stopped me and told me to keep it down.  I was eighteen, cute, and polite, and usually broke into tears when I explained the problem. They had pity.

Finally, I got stopped by a police man who explained what the problem was. "Didja ever drive a car like this before," he asked?  I told him I was from Oklahoma, married only a few weeks and had no idea why the car kept getting away from me.  "Well, sweetheart," (everyone calls you honey, sweetheart, darlin' or sugar-pie in the South), "You have to adjust your RPM to the gear.  Don't put this thing into fourth gear and you can stay under eighty."  Ken never told me what RPM meant.  Or how the gear you were in determined the speed of the car.  And in my defense, it was an English racing car.  I had always put the cars we drove in Oklahoma into fourth when I got out on the road.  You don't put a Jag in fourth gear unless you're on a race track.  I guess Ken thought I knew!!

I'm lucky I didn't kill myself.  However, I never got it over 120.  I had enough sense to turn the key off and start over again when the speed got away from me.

Ken never told me anything important.  He was 26, I was 18.  He assumed too much.  Flip side was that he never, ever, criticized me, griped at me, or corrected me about anything I did.  "You'll figure it all out," was the extent of conversation.  As a matter of fact, I don't remember a single time in 57 years of marriage he said anything critical to me, about me, or about anyone else.

I can't believe he turned the Jag over to an 18 year old kid with no instructions.  But he did.  And he did the same thing every month with his paycheck.  He would lay it on the table and tell me to learn how to spend it because he would be gone a lot.  I made mistakes, but he came in every month and laid the check on the table.  No instructions, no directions, no criticism.  I learned.  It was hard.