a car show and some yarn bombing

A couple of weekends ago we went to a fun little vintage car show at Farmers Market in Los Angeles. Well first we had breakfast there at our favorite spot, Loteria Grill.  Chilaquiles Verdes with fried eggs! nummers! 

We like to eat our breakfast leisurely and read the paper - there was a short column about an exhibit at the Craft and Folk Art Museum (just blocks from Farmers Market) - a yarn bombing exhibit. The local group had bombed the outside (don't worry, they bombed it with yarn and granny squares!) of the museum and I wanted to see it, so we drove over to see it after the car show.

Even the parking meter had been bombed ...

It was a fun and colorful day!

Joining in on the Rednesday fun at Cottage Sweet Cottage.

georgie the invincible

This is my Georgie. Georgie, the believer. Georgie, the dreamer. Georgie, the lover of love.

We adopted 12 year old George last year, along with his BFF Gracie, just a mere three weeks after losing our beloved Honey. 

Life being what it is, never a puller of punches --- two months after adopting George and Gracie, two months three weeks after losing Honey, we found out that George has inoperable cancer.  He was thought to only have three or four days to live. 

And yet, here we are, six months down the road, this very day ...

Happy as a lark!

He still has cancer of course and his now 13 year old legs are achy and wobbly but he loves to trot after his ball and scratch his long lanky body along the garage wall, dancing a little doggie jig and tossing his head as he turns at the end to begin another trip down the wall. 

He luxuriates in being loved and rubbed and hugged. I fear he must have only had a little love in his previous life, enough though that he is the sweetest of souls and enough so that he knew what he was missing and knew he had a doggie sized hole in his heart, that only a family could fill. 

This Georgie who wasn't interested in food when we got him (I coaxed him and fed him out of my hand), adores his chicken breast and rice meals that his new mommy makes him and perhaps even all his pills he takes twice a day, including a chemotherapy one, every other day.

Life is good when you believe and dare to dream and find love and a family.

Sharing A Favorite Thing on Saturdays with Claudia at Mockingbird Hill Cottage.

little bits of childhood

Little bits of childhood, lost and now found.

Oh! How I loved to play with my Barbie dolls growing up! My mom talked about giving my things to a younger cousin when I had outgrown them.  I think a little whimper came out of me, I loved them so. BFF's forever, my Barbie and me.

So I thought, even with my resistance, my mother had given them away long ago to my cousin in Missouri ... twelve years younger than I, to love.

So in 2011, when my dad passed away (my mother long before him in 1996 - and I never had the strength to go through the things in the house - my father and I lost in denial), my husband and I dug through the mountains of some fifty years of my parents belongings.

One day my husband found my Barbie wardrobe cases (three or four of them, there were!) and then a shoe box with these sad, lost little bits, that somehow hadn't made it back into their homes with the rest. Some things are Barbie, some things are Skipper and then, Skooter or Francie or someone???  All the important details have left my middle aged memory now.

They make me all smile-y again though ... 

Joining in the sweet Rednesday fun with Lillian at Cottage Sweet Cottage. 

Rednesday has a new home!

 

Joining in the fun for the very first outing of Rednesday at it's new home with Lillian, at Cottage Sweet Cottage. 

Thank you dear Sue for being such a great hostess, for so long!

A big thank you to Lillian for picking up the torch and continuing on with Rednesday!

I'm sharing a little sock puppy that my mom gave me 35-40 years ago now. WOW. WHOA. How can that many years have passed, huh?!  You can see in the second photo, behind his ear, that some naughty doggie tried to make a chew toy out of him many years ago. Thankfully I was present and able to extricate him from one very disappointed Siberian Husky in the nick of time!  WHEW.

And Georgie wanted to get in the act too this week since his cyber pal, Doyle, was on his mom's blog for Rednesday. He told me this morning, "Hey Mom! I'm kinda sorta red and I can do that stick my tongue out thing too, just like the sock puppy! I wanna show Doyle, he'll be impressed."

a 1942 wedding part two

Since you were all so very sweet and kind to me about my parents wedding cards last weekend, I thought I'd share some of their photos with you this weekend. 

Engagement photo 1941

Wedding photo 1942

Outside their first home in 1942 -
look at that cute apron!

My mom's aunt had a home on Lake Washington
in Seattle and my parents were married at her home.
These last two photos were taken there. I don't know
if they were taken before the wedding date or after?
From left to right:  

my dad, my mom, my dad's youngest brother,

who strangely makes me think of crooner Rudy Vallee
in these photos.  

There were many wedding announcements and 

invitations in my mothers scrapbook from her friends
... young women in love, eager to get married in 1942
before their fiances went off to fight in WWII.

My mother would later tell me how very many young men 

she knew lost their lives in WWII, the War to end all Wars.

Thinking of all those who have served and sacrificed so much,
with gratitude and remembrance this holiday weekend.

Joining in the fun with Claudia at Mockingbird Hill Cottage
for A Favorite Thing Saturday.

a 1942 wedding

I have been wanting to join in on A Favorite Thing Saturday but haven't been able to think of anything to post about until now ... my niece was married last weekend and that reminded me of some fun things I found from when my parents got married in February 1942.

I found my mom's wedding scrapbook at my parents house after my father passed away in 2011 - I was going to post a picture of the cover of it but for some reason Blogger won't let me upload any more photos?!  I also have a darling picture of my parents, shortly after they got married, outside of their first home together that I wanted to share today.  WAH!  Anyway, at least I got to upload some of her cards before Blogger pooped out on me ...

Joining in the fun with Claudia at
Mockingbird Hill Cottage on
A Favorite Thing Saturday

mister and missus

The Bride and Groom
with his handsome family.

The First Dance as Man and Wife,
my niece comes from a long line of gigglers.

thinking about

Today I'm thinking about these two, sets of two ...

My brother, gone from us nearly 17 1/2 years now
and his daughter, getting married tomorrow.

Somehow, life goes on, the years pass, time heals,
the heart finds joy.

Tomorrow she will walk down the aisle to 

these arms that will hold her and cherish her ...

"I have found the one my heart loves"
~Song of Solomon

sizzling temps and brush fires

(photo source)

Southern California can be a lovely place to live ... except for fire season ... which can pretty much be year round these days, with our ever increasing temperatures and drought conditions.

One of the three ongoing fires here, the Camarillo Springs Fire, is right where my husbands dearest childhood friend, 86 year old mother lives.  YIKES!  We assume she's been evacuated - thankfully one of her sons lives close by. 

(My cousin and aunt [in my last post] live in very close proximity to the northwestern and eastern edge of the fire.) 

I need to be working on what I'm going to wear to my nieces wedding (in one week!) and figure out their wedding present (or rather the wrapping of it and which I am awaiting a shipment of crafty stuff so I can proceed - I know, down to the very wire, as always!) but I find myself pulled to the TV for the latest.

The temperatures are supposed to drop tomorrow and the humidity rise ... think a good thought. 

time is a-galloping

 

L to R - my cousin (her husband was AWOL on "business", party pooper!), 

my husband (who had to set the timer & run to get in the picture),

Me - Queen of the Turkey Neck 

and how the heck did my hair get so poofy and RED?!",
my cousin in his hot rod shirt, he's all about cars and car clubs

(they drove down in his fancy vrooom vrooom Porsche), 

my 89 year old Auntie (who was the life of the party as always!),
and my cousins darling wife, such a sweetheart - she doesn't
know what she's gotten herself into bwahahhahahha!

HELLO!

Anyone still out there???

I ask because I've lost three followers in the past few months - which I certainly understand as I may well be the most boring person out there in Bloglandia! 

I know we're all different and like different things.  Wishing you good cheer wherever you land.

For those of you committed or more likely the case, misguided enough (hahhahhaha) to hang on for this intermittent ride, please know you are dear to me. Oh! You just don't know how much I wish I could find the time I used to spend enjoying and commenting on your lovely blogs. 

But someone, some dastardly low down meanie of a time keeper, has spun the hands on the clock and I can no longer find those stolen moments (er, hours!) that I used to.

Thinking of you and and wishing you a happy week!

the blue bird's story

(I've scanned these two pages three times and get a blurry scan each time WAH!)

This somewhat bedraggled but much loved little book is another bit of the treasure I found at my parents house after my daddy passed away.  Published in 1948, it would have been first my brother's book and then handed down to me.  Although it is said to be the "blue bird's" story, the above pages are the only illustrations of the blue bird in the book.  I feel a bit let down, don't you LOL?!  The blue bird is so charming and I wanted more but the squirrels seem to be the real stars of the piece teehee.

Tomorrow we're driving out to one of my cousins to have a small reunion with another cousin, who I have not seen in more than 30 years!  My visiting cousin and his wife (who I've never met), drove down from Oregon and have been playing at Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and Universal Studios for a week and will meet us over at our other cousins.  FUN!  

My one remaining Auntie (the mommy of my cousin who is hosting) ... (my Uncles have all passed away too), will be there and that's the real point of the get together. She is the last of the Old Guard and the only one remaining who knows our history. With my father gone, she is the glue that holds us together.  And we have not done a good job as a family, of passing down our stories and histories.  I am hoping her failing memory will have a good day tomorrow and shine brightly with reminiscences.

clara bell the clown

a little boys treasure from long ago ...

I wonder who remembers Howdy Doody
and Clara Bell?

dagnabbit, there it is again!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!  It's still there.  Looks like someone else's content on top of mine or ???  Blogger also frequently said while I was typing my post below that there was an error and it couldn't Save my post - maybe due to overload from everyone being on the internet right now about the tragedy and unfolding events in Boston?  Anyway, you can see most of my post below. 

weary

Please note that I wrote and posted this entry yesterday and had problems with several lines of computer code appearing on top of my post.  I couldn't detect anything odd in the HTML to cause the problem but then it's been more than twenty years since I had programming classes and I never was great at it anyway hahhahhaha.  So I just deleted it.  Well, I just tried to post it again and I looked at the HTML before posting it and it was totally bonkers, completely whackadoo.  All sorts of code that I sure didn't write, as I had no idea what on earth it was. I'd sure be interested to hear if anyone else is experiencing problems with Blogger. 

Fingers crossed...attempting one last time to post my post.  Sheesh.  I kept the draft of it so it will be essentially the same to those who did catch it yesterday.

Hello!  Time sure flies!

We've been sick, our Georgie doggie has been sick - they switched one of his cancer meds and the new one made him very ill.  Scary!  (The previous one was in short supply for some reason and that's why they switched it on him - thankfully we were able to have the old prescription formulated at a compounding pharmacy for him and all is well again.  WHEW!)

So between our being sick and Georgie being sick, there went our high hopes and grand schemes for the two weeks of much needed fun over the hubby's vacation.  WAH!

And meanwhile, never a dull moment, both sides of my family seem to be nuttier than fruitcakes, at the same time!  Argh!  Let's put the fun back in dysfunctional, huh?!

I've been feeling down in the dumps and very defeated.  Hard to find topics to write about, wondering if I even want to blog anymore? (So many blogs have gone quiet these days or are winding down.) There's so much I want to do and so much I need to do in real life.

My heart breaks over the incomprehensible tragedy in Boston.  My heart and prayers go out to the families, friends, neighbors, community of those lost.

And I am appalled and disgusted by our Senate not passing the proposed gun control measures after the tragedy in Connecticut.  How could they look into the faces of the families of Newtown, CT and not know it was the right (and long overdue) thing to do?!  How could they thumb their noses at the American citizenry who resoundingly want those gun control measures enacted?

I don't know how to process all this pain and live is this world anymore? I am so very weary of living in a world run amok. So much ugliness and craziness.

I want to turn off the news and cancel the newspaper.  I wish I could run away and hide somewhere.

I know that some of us find comfort in being creative and as a vehicle to process and channel our pain. I came across this blog post yesterday regarding The Prayer Flag Project on Michele Bilyeu's blog, With Heart and Hands.

something is wrong with my blog

(edited to add:  just in case you think this post is the post I'm referring to below and you don't see any strange code - this isn't the post I'm referring to ... I removed the one that has the code on top of my post)

sheesh ... I finally write a post and there's some weird code written over part of my post, several lines of weird code.  It doesn't show up in the Preview at all but every time I "publish", there it is.  grrrrrrrr

Anybody else having this fun problem?!

ARGH!