Gina

My hair is still red.  I tried recoloring it...but no....still red.

Good morning!

It's another beautiful day.  I can see a momma deer, cleaning her baby, through my window.

Brink is sitting at my feet, my husband is on his laptop on the couch near me.  Peanut is on the front porch with his nails clicking the porch floor like a tap dancer.

I have my chocolate coffee, with all it's added spices, and I've had about two hours of sleep.

Bruce and I have church this evening. It's going to be a lazy day until then.

I was watching a movie on Netflix last night called "Jane got a gun".  It's a movie about a woman in the old west who has to defend her home.  There's more to it than that, obviously, but it turned out to be a really good movie.  It showed a time when things were not so easy.  People then had to be stronger.  They endured so much more than we do today.  And yet...these days we feel like we have it pretty bad. 

When Bruce and I were driving to the store yesterday, I started talking about how eye opening it would be to have the kids, who graduate high school, go to a homestead and learn the work it takes to grow simple food.  To learn the sacrifice it takes to kill a chicken and make "chicken strips" (that they throw away when they're full).  How few "chicken strips" you get from one animals life.  How long it takes to grow a pineapple.  How much work goes into a simple hand made meal when everything is not pre made for you.  How hard it was to wash clothes, make the daily bread, live without electricity and running water, or use an outhouse. 

I had an ear of corn in the back frig that we didn't remember.  Just for fun, I dried it and then pushed the seeds off to see how it's done.  Then, I held that corn cob in my hand and cringed.  (you  know where I'm going with this)  My husband started making jokes about "IF" anyone ever borrowed someone's corn cob and then having to clean it by using a toothpick to pick out the holes.  YUCK!!!!

I know no one would ever use a corn cob more than once, back then....I hope, but you can see how that just seems so crazy to us now.  (Men, and boys, have the strangest ideas for a laugh)

Sometimes I wonder if we've gone soft in a lot of ways.  Although our air is not as clean, our water and food are not as clean and we've picked up some pretty bad habits....  Things are easier for us in other ways. 

I still really like the homestead idea.

I wonder, sometimes, when we get down to the late part of our life....how much of the past are we going to look at and see as a waist of time and breath.  I have great memories with people.  Days of sitting on Mrs McCarty's brick wall with Gina making silly tapes of us talking, until Mrs "M" fussed at us to get down before we hurt ourselves.  Playing "Lava" in the back yard on her swing set while her dog molly ran around our feet and was the "Lava monster".  I think we made Chrissy the Lava monster later on.  I have so many memories in my head that are so very precious.  They pop up in conversations all the time.  My husband has heard most of them.  I can hear our Merlin games while we played them in the dark during a sleep over.  Taking turns scratching each others backs while we count to 100.  (that memory came up just this weekend)  I always cheated and kept counting past 100.  Gina would finally ask me what number I was on and I would say 89...90...91...

I had a green bike that had to be peddled 4 times to one of her bike.

Gosh, when I think of what my life would have been like without that wonderful friend.

Well...

I should probably get started on my day of chilling out.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

Hugs

Shannon