Me, too, with the childbirth, Frannie Em.  I watched a film showing women sipping orange juice as they walked back to their rooms after 20 hours of labor prior to delivery.  This was not my experience and, apparently, changing your mind in the labor room is not an option.

Also, I’ve climbed Mt. Washington in New Hampshire twice.  I’m a slow learner, and I don’t care what my husband says, there is no path.  He sarcastically asked me if I would like a sidewalk.  No, I answered, I want a paved walk up the middle and handrails would be a nice touch.  I’m not Mother Earth, but you still shouldn’t try to fool me.

Peace and grace

lol, i know about that natural childbirth stuff. even with meds, you still have to push and you still feel pain. exspecially in the last hour.  i had said i was going natural with my first baby (he will be 31 next month) and when the first itty bitty pain hit, i called for the pain meds, i was a total wimp. so when my second (and last) baby girl was born a year and a half later, i said up front PAIN MEDS. well, i guess fate was set to make me pay for not going totally natural with my first. i didn’t get to the hospital right away b/c we lived 25miles away. the dr said wait til you cannot sleep thru the pain b/c i kept having false labor (my daughter couldn’t make up her mind and she still can’t today. lol). so by the time i finally got down there to have her, it was too late for the meds. boy was i mad. but i got through it b/c she had finally made up her mind. lol! (i almost died after, but it was worth it). that was one of my most strenous things ever (taking 4 pints of blood after was pretty hard too).

i went thru that too at 14yrs old. i lost my grammy and my auntie (later i found out she was my real mother). then by the time i was 18, i had lost my uncle and my step-mother (my real auntie). you can imagine it was very very hard. i knew they were going to die before it happened and of course nobody believed me. i don’t think i smiled for ages. at least it’s true, time heals all!

Well, Darcus, I wasn’t lighthearted when I moved recently (for the 8th time). Tucson was wavering undecidedly between 108 and 109 degrees, and the whole house and studios had to be moved out in two days. I’m too old for this. I know I’ll be moving at least one more time, but it won’t be until I’m very rich or old (preferably both)  and someone else has to pack it for me!

Chris Glass I can very well sympathize with you. I bought a lovely, over one-hundred year old farm house, years ago, which we are still restoring. In another hundred or so years, probably our present work will be done and someone else will buy it and still be able to say it is a “lovely, over one-hundred year old house”. When we first moved in, I decided that it was absolutely sacrilegious to see that anyone would have painted the beautiful staircase; and such a terrible color. I decided that I was going to restore that beautiful staircase to its original natural wood beauty. I did a great job of it. It only took me about four months, working sometimes four or five hours at a time (sporadically, not every day), and about four hundred dollars worth of paint and varnish remover, plus special tools and steel wool and sandpaper. It was a thing of beauty when I finished. Certainly worth the effort to again see how an obviously master carpenter constructed it and who would rejoice to see it restored back to the beauty and elegance of it’s original structure. It wasn’t long however, that the slick luster of the wood was causing sometimes serious mishaps, because slipping became an almost chronic and dangerously painful event experienced by every member of the family. So it was mutually decided that something had to be done. The solution: the beautiful wooden staircase is now completely covered with plush, gun-metal grey, carpet. However, the banister is still natural wood and mixed with the terribly expensive carpeting job, the effect is quite acceptable.

It must have tugged at your heart to have to move away from the beautiful home you labored at so long to restore to your liking. Thankfully some of us enjoy and take great pride in the results of our labors even if sometimes the intention doesn’t work out according to our original plan.