Respite from the heat and changes in Life

Yeah, I know, she's adorable.


Yeah, I know. There has to be more to talk about than the weather.

There is. But it's nothing earth-shattering. Got up early, read the papers, made breakfast. Gary took Sarah for her walk, and now he's studying up for his meeting next Thursday (small-biz guy) and I'm finishing up a piece for the paper. Productive morning, so far.

Found some more notes for the second new novel I'm thinking of writing. Time is short, for all of us, and I'm always wishing I had more of it. Can you imagine how much time we've all wasted? Incredible; sad, too, so let's not go there.

It hit us yesterday that Brock has about five weeks left here at home. It's going to be such an exciting time for him, this new stage in his life, and we'll go back to it being just the two of us plus a dog again. I keep telling myself that change is good, and it is, most of the time. I think.

I did try to stop Facebooking for a little while, and it was nice but that's not a good idea for a writer. We're supposed to be OUT THERE, you know, so that when we do finally finish that novel or memoir or whatever, we'll actually have some people to (hopefully) sell it to.

Time to get back to work. Thanks for visiting.

Margi

Staying here, staying busy

We all used to sit out here and talk into the night. The kids would run around and play together, probably believing they'd be close as brothers and sisters forever.


You know, the weather forecasters are making such a BIG FAT HAIRY DEAL about the upcoming heatwave that they're ruining the few good days we have beforehand. It is going to be an ugly time, dangerous too, so it's good to be warned but geez.

Gary took his mom to get her hair done today then to run a couple of errands. I still don't miss going over there, not even a little bit. I don't want to see what the house and lawn look like, or dodge snakes and big spiders because of the long grass and weeds. Her basement is usually a nightmare and Larry probably still has that "bar" down there.

That one time he had a group of guys over there and they were all drinking, I couldn't get that image out of my head. I don't think any of them thought much of us cutting through the basement to get upstairs, and I wish we hadn't.

Gary said it wasn't all that cool in his mom's house, even though the a/c was on. She doesn't like it too cold, she gets chilled and it is her house after all. After visiting during the summer months and sitting in that stifling kitchen drinking coffee, I just couldn't take it any more. Add to that, the ceiling fan hadn't worked for a long time (the light part did, which only made the room hotter), and with Tom and Gary smoking around the table, it was pretty hard to take.

I know it helps to keep busy, and I'm thankful for that. I don't have time to be concerned about those I no longer see or worry about why the rest of the family dislikes me. There are more important things to do with my mind, time, and effort.

There is one thing. I think I've spent more time crying about Clint these past few months than the rest of the almost eight years combined. I wish I could tell, just by a feeling in my heart and soul whether he's OK or not but there's nothing. And I'm exhausted from trying to figure things out so I shut that door for a while. It hurt too damn much to keep banging my head against it.

Until next time,
Margi

I get in more trouble that way

Mother-in-law's house back in the day when it looked nice. My hubby, her oldest son, had a lot to do with it looking spiffy but he got weary of cleaning up after his youngest brother trashed the place.


It's come to my attention that I should be seen and not heard.

Oh, wait. That's for kids. Sorry.

But, I've explained, I think like a kid. I like cartoons, especially Looney Tunes. Ditto carnivals (rides and money-sucking games), playground equipment (slides, teeter-totters, etc.), and catching lightning bugs.

Thing is, kids also shoot off their mouths and I have a habit of doing that, whether verbally or in print, doesn't matter - I still get scolded.

Enough already. We live in America, right? And I'm expressing my own feelings, opinions and such, and I'm tired to death of being told to keep those things inside.

I notice things. I noticed when my mother-in-law began repeating herself and my heart sank. First thing I thought of was how much stress she's under, yet she puts on a brave front so as not to make her children feel bad as they "borrow" money from her. Our relationship, after nearly 39 years, has been broken. I don't see it surviving the latest dust-up, but I'm OK with that.

I noticed her house, the one her husband built and paid for with honest hard work has gone downhill. It's in disrepair, despite the false insurance claim to repair the roof. She now will get help from a government agency to do that, so we get to pay for her roof twice.

Her lawn is in a constant state of flux. It gets smaller and smaller as her youngest mows less and less and trims - well, never.

My memoir and letters I've written to many of my in-laws tells the rest of the story. For now, I'll just wait things out. See how they go. And, yeah, I'll probably tell you exactly how I feel - and yes, I'll say it out loud.

Meet Margi

(The photo at left is of a path off of the Buda, Illinois blacktop, a road I used to travel often.)


Officially, I'm a baby boomer, born in 1952 to a mom who left her husband when I was a mere three weeks old. Life could only go uphill from there, right?

You know better than that, but you should also know that life is beautiful, something to be cherished, remembered and talked about.

I've always loved to read. When I was in first and second grade, I'd carry home so many books that mom warned me I was going to go blind from reading too much. I responded by reading even more. It seemed to me that the more I read before losing my sight, the better off I'd be.

My sight is still around, mom isn't, but her influence is strongly felt by my younger sister and me. Sis turns 50 this year, and although we live an hour apart, we're much closer as friends than we ever were as kids.

As for immediate family, I have a hubby who retired this year and who is "fixing up the house", two sons and two grandsons. Extended family includes pretty much the same group as yours, fiercely loyal at times, and completely frustrating most of the time.

We've had our share of pets - dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters. At one time, we had four dogs and four cats. Now, it's just two older people and Sarah Jane, the yellow lab-mix. She's 18 months old and weighs 83 pounds. So far, she's knocked out one of hubby's teeth and she took me on a romp through the house until I had to let go of her collar so I could fall face-first in a doorway. I now have a broken pinkie finger as a souvenir.

When I sit down to write a column for you to read, I look for common ground, hoping you identify with an experience or a memory of mine. Most of us have significant others, in-laws, friends, siblings, co-workers and probably a few folks who don't like us one bit. All good fodder for a column, which brings me to the title of mine.

"Murder, She Wrote" was a long-running mystery show, that starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, mystery writer and amateur old-lady, busybody sleuth. Hubby is fond of the busybody title, and the kids used to call her something else, but I loved the whole idea. Stephen King is from Maine, and this show's locale was Cabot Cove, Maine so I was hooked. In fact, I was so enamored with both King and the show that a former supervisor wrote a piece about my writings, calling it, "Horror, she wrote." Cute.

Still, I couldn't be happier with this column's title. Cute? Maybe, maybe not, but it's me, and I hope you enjoy what I've written. It's my hope that we all connect on some level, as if we've known each for years and we get together for a cup of coffee once a week.