It seems Spring is starting to arrive on my Lake here in New Hampshire. Yesterday, after a 45+ mile per hour wind storm overnight, I noticed the very beginnings of the ice breaking up. Hurrah! Soon the water will be back, as will our Ducks, Geese, and Loons!
If you look in the center bottom of the picture you can see the very first open water on our Lake.
Our day had been a fairly quiet one, but as I finished the dinner dishes, I saw fire in the sky! What a sunset!
I raced outside, with coat and cell phone and started to snap a few pictures. My neighbor yelled to me to come to use her porch above my house to get a few pictures.
So I ran up (old lady style I am sure), and got these wonderful pictures. Enjoy!
Half way up the hill.
From their porch.
The fire in the sky. One of the best sunsets this Spring!
I’m sitting here watching Notre Dame Cathedral burn. I am saddened beyond words. No one seems to know why, just that it is happening. So very sad.
I never got to see Notre Dame on the ground, but when I flew into Paris I saw it from the sky and that was amazingly beautiful!
Then I started reading my Facebook Wall and I saw entry after entry with people lamenting this loss. A few said, “Could 2019 stop sucking so much!”, and I thought, yeah, 2019 has been a tough year and quite honestly I don’t see it getting any easier either.
I’ve had years like this before and the one thing I have learned is that you have to work at looking to find the good and making the best out of the worst that life throws your way.
I guess part of it is having faith that things will pass, things will get better. I know they will. It will be different, but life will go on and a new normal will fall into place.
So dear ones, don’t despair. Life will be full of happiness again, even if it is a little bit different.
Since I had worked pretty hard on Saturday, I decided I wanted to relax a bit on Sunday. Somehow, it did not turn out that way.
I seemed to be consumed with shelf clearing and organizing, but sometimes I feel like I am losing the battle.
Jack had seen a show about a woman who comes in and whips your home into shape. Her website is called Horderly.com and he said I should look it over.
I did, and I would love to be able to purge the entire house, but I live with Mr. Hoarder! So this would be quite difficult.
However, 2018 saw me finally finish clearing my office out and fixing it all up, so why not start with another room. I think the formal living room that we never use may be the next place on my list.
I think Spring is here, finally. We have had two pretty nice days and I am hopeful that this is it, but you never know.
One year we had a massive blizzard on May 9-10 we got 13 inches of snow! So, yeah, one never rules out snow until well after that! At least I don’t.
Jack got up early on Sunday so he could watch the Masters Golf. It was a wonderful round of golf to watch and we both were pleased to see Tiger Woods win after so much adversity in his life. Both emotionally and physically.
Saturday was a very busy day. I accomplished great things in a very short period of time.
We finally finished and got our taxes filed. All I will say is, don’t ask!
I bathed two dackels, got them dry, cleaned their ears and washed all their bedding.
I made three pretty decent meals for us, even if the quiche wasn’t quite as well formed as I would like. After all, I made it a crustless quiche. It did taste good.
Our weather was beautiful! It was up into the mid-’70s and the sun felt so good on my face and arms.
And then at the very end of the day, the sunset was spectacular. All in all, a good day!
The week is over. I’m still amazed that we are almost in the middle of April! OMG! How did this happen?
While I contemplate an answer to this question, let me write out this week’s Friday Five!
The week started out with our anniversary, doctors appointments and continuing work on our Income Taxes. Oh, how I hate April 15th, which is coming up very fast!
We had snow!
3. And Icicles, just like I place on my Christmas tree, only those are plastic and not really like these were. These were real!
4. I got my hair cut!
5. And lastly, I spent a lot of time setting up and programming the Tablet. And I love it!
It’s been nearly 34 years since my daughter, Katie passed. I wish I could explain the depth of pain you feel when you see the last picture of your child.
The last picture I knew of was taken by me of Katie and her sister on a lovely Spring day that year. They both looked so beautiful and I brought them outside and shot nearly an entire roll of film.
A few weeks after those pictures were taken, Katie passed away. I remember holding the pictures in my hands, thinking that this was it.
And so it was for 34 years.
Recently, Katie’s best friend from those long ago days passed away. Her father posted two pictures of his daughter’s birthday party. There, before my eyes, were two pictures that included Katie! Two new pictures of my sweet daughter!
I have cropped the pictures to protect the privacy of the other family, who just lost their daughter. She was a wonderful girl, who grew up to be very special. Sadly she passed just before her 40th birthday
I saw Katie’s face. Her beautiful smile. My heart filled, and so did my eyes, which overflowed and tears fell down my face.
So, as you read yesterday, it was our anniversary. It was a pleasant day with a car ride down to Manchester and back.
We stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant we enjoy and had fajitas. Very nice.
But the farther north we drove toward home, the more the snow fell! At first, it was nothing, but then it started to come down pretty heavily.
Oh, come on! It was April 9th! And snow? What’s that all about? But snow it did! In fact, it snowed enough so that later in the afternoon we heard the snow plows go by below our house.
And then it snowed some more!
It finally stopped around dinner time and of course, the dogs all wanted to go out and play in it. Anneliese especially loves to play in the snow. Go figure.
Today, Jack and I celebrate 31 years of marriage. It doesn’t seem possible that it has been that long. In the grand scheme of things, 31 years is like forever in a Hollywood marriage. And at my age (60) it certainly is a large chunk of time.
In our thirty-one years of marriage, we have had 4 White German Shepherds, Rex, Max, Fritz, and Lili. Four Wire-haired Dackels, Shubi, Greta, Arnie and Anneliese, and lived in four homes. One was a farm in Lyndeborough, NH, a nice ranch home in Punta Gorda, FL, in a motor coach here in Meredith, NH for 9 long months, while we built our current home, and lastly this beautiful house, that Jack and I designed.
We had four children, between us. Three are living, and they have grown up to be really good people. We also have two of the most beautiful, and wonderful grandchildren on the face of the earth!
Marriage is never easy, even if you are married to your best friend. There are days you want to murder each other, but lucky for us, those days were few and far between.
Forgiveness is so important when you live with someone this long. People do stupid things, and if you can’t forgive them, then you are with the wrong person. I am the Queen of stupid things and I am married to the King of stupid things. So it’s a good thing we forgive and forget.
You will also find during a long term marriage (or relationship) that there will be those days when your significant other just makes you crazy. Whether it’s how they are chewing their food, or even sipping their soup, you will sit there and wonder how you never noticed this before!
But then, there are those times when a little look, the warmth of a hug, or a gentle squeeze of your hand, will make you feel loved and safe. During my illness two years ago, when I felt like I was dying, I was so scared, and Jack just kept the home fires burning, cooked my meals, did the laundry, and did not allow me to believe that I was leaving this earth.
Likewise, not even six months later when he got the infection in his foot that led to the amputation of his toe, I made sure I was at the hospital each day. I brought him goodies to eat, stayed to speak with each doctor, and informed Jack that he wasn’t leaving me yet.
No, marriage isn’t easy, but the pros far outweigh the cons, and life would be so empty, so lonely, without my Jack.
Even after all these years, Jack is still the first person I want to speak with in the morning, and the last person I want to speak to at night.
I made up a short montage of our life together using one of our favorite songs. I hope you enjoy it!
What a crazy day Friday was. If you showed up here yesterday, you probably landed on a page announcing I was down. Here is what caused me to absolutely crash.
I was up very early, as seems to be the case lately. Since I was up so early, I decided to call GoDaddy and finish the migration to their new servers.
You see two weeks ago they called and offered me a free year of hosting if I moved the blog to their new servers. Okay, I thought, they promised a smooth migration and all their help.
Well, when I called I was asked to hold on for a few minutes. Okay, I thought, once they come on, Dackel Princess will be up and running and I’ll be all set.
I wish I could say that was the case, but I waited for two and a half hours! I didn’t want to hang up because then I would have to start the waiting process all over again.
Finally, I got a nice young man, who, after 40 minutes didn’t get Dackel Princess up and running. But I was promised that he would send it to Hosting and they would finish it up.
Well, by noon, that hadn’t happened either. So I called back and again waited. The person I spoke with didn’t know what was wrong and transferred me to their Geek Department. Apparently, this young lady wasn’t Geeky enough, because she couldn’t get it to load!
So she passed me off to Evan, who knew code, and went through the config files until he found the one broken link, and once he did his magic, Dackel Princess was up and running!
That was at 4:30 this afternoon!
Meanwhile, Jack needed my Geeky Computer help with our Income Taxes, and I have been setting up and programming my new Galaxy Tablet.
I do really like the Galaxy Tab S4. It’s slightly larger than some, and I increased the memory with an SD Card and got a nice case with a keyboard. And the best part was when it was all in the case and set up it weighed just 2 pounds!
Just call me happy! Happy Dackel Princess is up, Jack’s Tax woes are under control, and the Tablet is all that I wanted!
When I woke up on Wednesday it was snowing! I groaned. Nothing was sticking, so I knew my day with Savannah would be safe.
I showered and dressed and tossed my breakfast into my WW bag. I started to write a note to Jack, but he woke up and I told him everything in person.
I left the house at 7:45 AM and headed to Weirs Beach where my WW Class is held.
Down another pound this week at Class That makes a total of nine pounds this month! I feel quite good about this. I have made adjustments in my eating plan and I think it is working for me.
After Class, I headed down to my daughter’s House. The kids had a half a day of classes there, so I drove down to spend the afternoon with Savannah.
I stopped at the local Shaws Supermarket to get a salad and found a prepackaged meal of baby back ribs for Jack and me for dinner. I decided to get that, as I knew I would be late getting back and that Jack would want a good meal for dinner. (I was right!)
I drove to Mandy’s after that, put my stuff in the fridge and then went out and sat on the wall near the driveway, to wait for Savi.
Oh my goodness! The sun was shining! The sky was blue and cloudless! As I sat I could feel the warmth of that sunshine on my head and face and I felt that Spring was finally here!
Then the School Bus turned down our street and stopped in front of where I had been sitting. I could see Savannah pop up after the bus was still, make her way forward, and wave goodbye to her friends and the driver after she reached my side. Then she threw her arms around me! (Melt)
10. We had lunch, we read books, Savannah learned how to tell time, and started the process of learning to lace shoes. We made Snapchat videos and took pictures, and then we did what all girls do. We went window shopping on Amazon.
11. We played with her two American Girl Dolls, that I’d given her the last two Christmas’s. Then we looked at Dolls, at Doll Clothes, At Dresses for her, at Toys and all sorts of things. What fun that was!
12. Then about 4:15 I allowed her to put on the TV. She was watching a little TV before her folks arrived home when it happened. She lost the remote! We searched high and low, but could not find it! I retraced her last steps. Bathroom, dining room to get a chair, and snack closet. Yep, there it was, inside the snack closet!
13. Mommy and Daddy and Quinn arrived home and I got hugs from them all, and then off I went to drive home. The ride was a little hairy due to the 45 mile an hour winds, that seemed to pick up my Toyota Highlander and toss it around. But I made it, and the pups and Jack were happy to see me.
