Today I started Bible School.  My job was to be a hall monitor and take care of problem children.  Luckily, there weren’t any problems today!  Tate went with the third  grade, but Brady was too old for the school,  and they used him as a guide with the second graders to get them where they were supposed to go. 

I asked Brady how that went, and he smiled at me.  “They make a lot of noise,”  he said.  I asked him if he wanted to go back tomorrow and he said, “Yes.”  I might say, he is a trouper.

I haven’t worked in Bible School in two years.  I am not the girl I used to be.  But I can sit in a chair and moniter!!  At least I have a chair.

This afternoon, Brady is going to teach me to play Chess.  He said you can’t do if you don’t have a few brains.  We’ll see how I do with that.  Maybe I’ll have some luck.

When I was growing up, people had big porches.  From one side of the house to the other.  Sometimes they had what were called “Wrap arounds.”  My grandmother had a wraparound.  One end went into the living room.  The other end of the wrap went into the kitchen.  People sat on their porches in swings and visited with each other...or those who were passing by.  

TV ruined all of that.  Houses were no longer built with big side to side porches.  No more swings.  No more visiting with the neighborhood.  We became more isolated from each other.  Something was lost that we have never gotten back.

Nobody talks much any more with their neighbors.  Some of us don’t even know who our neighbors are.  In the late forties, you knew everybody.  Everybody knew you.  Kids acted better because if they didn’t, their mom knew it immediately.  I wish we could recapture some of that time.  I’ve lived through over eighty years of social interaction, and what we have now is social in-action.  It seems like a phone or a computor is “man’s best friend.”  Or some game.  I know...you can’t go back.  But sometimes I really wish we could.  I miss Pryor, Oklahoma back in the forties and fifties when everyone knew me and I knew everybody.  It was a blessed time.  

We used to write letters. From 1956 to 1969 (When Ken came home from Viet Nam) I wrote every week to my Mom, and to Ken.  For the last few months I have been reading those letters, and throwing away the “Blah-blah” ones and putting the ones with information in a folder for Pat or Becky.  They can throw them away if they want to.

Today, I am going through 1960.  I have at least separated all of them into the date stamp on the envelopes.  1960 was the year Ken came home from Japan and Okinawa--flying F4-Ds.  A plane that was actually a rocket. It killed a bunch of pilots.  They called it the Sky-Ray--and called the water outside El Tora “Sky-Ray Bay” because so many of the planes ended up in the water off the end of the runway.  It could climb to altitude faster than anything the Navy and Marines had ever had, but when something went wrong, the plane ended up in the water.  Luckily most of the pilots knew their chances and were ready to hit the eject button.  I went out to the squadron one day, and one of the pilots came through the door soaking wet carrying his helmet.  I asked him where he had been?  He said, “In the bay.”

Anyway, I’m trying to keep the letters that have something interesting in them, but almost all of them do so it’s hard to throw them away.  But you can’t keep everything.

On Fridays, I go to lunch with my cousin Ann--Ann East.  Her mom, my mother’s sister was a fifth grade teacher in Pryor.  Ruby East.  Having her here in Edmond is one reason I moved here.  We grew up together and having someone who remembers the things you remember is a comfort!!  Carolyn Brown and I were friends in the ninth grade...she was a year behind me.  So I have two people who “remember.”

Ann and I go eat breakfast, garage sale.  It’s something to look forward to.

I’ve been on a Cheetos binge.  I bet they aren’t good for me, but they have a lot of calories, and I’ve been trying to gain weight for a year.  I’m stuck at skinny and nothing seems to stick to me.  Everyone is trying to lose weight but me.  And back when I was thirty pounds heavier, it was hard to lose weight.  Now, I can’t put it on.  Anyway, the upside is that I can eat all the Cheetos that I want.  I don’t like the taste of sugar, so sweets aren’t tempting.  Everyone says that’s a blessing.  Maybe it is if you are on a diet--which I am not.  So Cheetos are going to make some money off me for a whilt.

I am adding something to my diet.  Flax.  It is supposed to be a wonder “seed.”  When I make chicken salad, I add a couple of tablespoons of flax seed to the mix, along with the cranberries and pecans.  I’m making an effort to eat healthy--which I have never done.  

Carolyn keeps me in pecans.  She has a pecan tree in her back  yard that is a “super-producer.”  When she gets to the point that her freezer is running out of space for more stuff, she sends me pecans.  And she also adds me to her   “Reader’s Digest subscription.  And I add her to my  “Time” subscription.  But both of us are fed up with Time.  “Time” has started listing  people who are famous for “something or other” in the last half of the mag and neither of us care about that. Boring!!!  So I am going to have to find another mag to send her.  I took “Smithsonian” last year, but I’m not going to do that again either.  Maybe we are just growing tired of the “same old stuff.”  If you live to be into your 80’s like both of us have done, you want to read books and mags that are uplifting.  Like Bugs Bunny.  Or Wonder Woman.  Reader’s Digest still makes the list.

It is pouring down rain--without a tornado warning.  It is just a quiet splash-splash on the roof and sidewalks.  So peaceful.

The week before I married Ken, I decided to make a “Squaw” dress.  Do you remember those?  I used a nut beige cotton with gold ric-rac and gold and white trim.  I sold it a few years ago when I had a booth for ten times what I had in it.  Becky said, “Mama I wish you wouldn’t sell it!  (But you can’t keep every thing.)

Today, Becky sent an exact copy of it in the form of a doll dress.  It was uncanny.  Same fabric.  Same trim.  Same ric-rac. She found it in an estate sale.  Only thing I can figure is that I must have seen the dress in a book and copied it, and someone else did the same thing.  But the doll dress was done by two people.  One who knew what they were doing, and another who didn’t.  Maybe a grandmother and grandaughter making a doll dress.  It is a puzzlement!!