How many of you remember jumping rope as a young person?? I use to love it, and when I was at home, I always wanted to practice so I would get better at it. Course, it was just my Mom and me (as my brothers and dad would be working, of course Mom was busy too, but always made time for me.) who were available and as you know you needed 3 people. Well we had a cement pad at the bottom of our steps, which led to a sidewalk heading over to the milk house. Across from that was a brooder house where we raised baby chickens. (Those memories are for another day!) Anyway, we would tie one end of the rope to the stair handle and Mom would have the other end. She would swing it around and it would make a 'slapping' sound as it hit the pavement. I would carefully watch the rope and jump in...just at the right moment. The photo (from the internet) above is what I would look like. (This memory came to me last night..I thought I want to blog again, but wasn't sure how to start. That's when I thought, when is the right time to jump in?? And decided, unlike the jump rope, it was now.) The post's may be random and zig zag back and forth across time, but hope you will stick with my through this journey in my life.
On February 2nd (Groundhogs day) we had a blizzard like none we've seen before. We were warned it was coming, (that is why I took the pictures 'before'). We ended up with a record setting amount of snow of 12.5". There had 'never' been that much snow here in a 24 hour period before... We have a service who come and do our yard and remove our snow. The lower right photo shows them out there working on it. I felt so bad for them, it was not only a wet, heavy snow but it was cold and the wind was blowing.
Now, here is poor Rusty. He goes out the back door to go potty. Off and on all day I tried to keep some snow off the porch. (Then the guys came and shoveled it off--we could see the porch and the steps.) That evening, I went to let him out and due to the high winds, the snow was as high as the porch. He stepped out...looked and turned around wanting to come back in. sad... I told him, "Oh honey you have to go out and pee.." So, he leaped into the snow bank and made his way to the ground. Very soon, he was ready to come back in.. I took these pictures as he leaped up through the snow to get back into his warm home...
These beautiful flowers were brought in by our yard people. They thought so much of Tom and just felt so bad that he had passed away. This is what I see now...an empty chair. Time does heal, but the first night when they brought it back from the nursing home, I was very tired that evening and was dozing off and on. Once I woke up and could just feel Tom's presence. I know for most of you that sounds strange, but maybe for others it doesn't. I don't know, I've never been through this before so not sure what to expect.
More tomorrow as you follow me on this journey called life...
