Leap

So today is Leap Year Day, a day that only occurs every four years.  I've had a Leap Year Day eleven times in my life.  My grandma was born on February 29th (but got stuck celebrating on the 28th) and I think I remember going to school with a girl who was a leapling as well.

How will we spend this extra day of life we've been given?  Well, it's a Wednesday so most folks will be working.  I'm planning to do something FUN with mine!  Sleeping in is first on the agenda.  :)

I think Leap Year Day is the perfect opportunity to take a leap of faith, don't you?  Just do something crazy, something so unlike you that it makes people sit back and take notice.  I recently took a huge leap of faith when I quit my job without actually knowing for sure when I was going to start my new one.  Folks thought I had a screw loose.  Now I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you are financially able to but it just felt right to me.  As soon as I knew I was selected for the co-op, I quit, without knowing if it would take one month or six for me to be working again.  I felt that it was time for me to go.  I trusted God and He's never let me down before.  He didn't this time either.  Taking a leap of faith requires just that, a HEAP of faith!  

One of my and Larry's favorite scriptures is Mark 5:36.  Don't be afraid.  Just believe.  It's gotten us through some pretty dark hours, some pretty unsure days, and we've been blessed and rewarded for our faith.

Take a deep breath, read that scripture and leap!  Sign up for a class, ask that guy or girl out, eat cake for breakfast, ask for that raise you know you deserve, do something wild and crazy!

Seize this day!  It only comes around every four years.

I swannee, Grandma, it's your birthday!

I've talked quite a bit about my Maw here on my blog but like everybody else, I have two grandmothers.  My mama's mama.  Grandmama when we were little, shortened to Grandma as we hit our teenage years.  

Her name was Edith and she would have been 92 years old today.

My granddaddy was quite a bit older than Grandma so when he died in 1957, he left her with five little children to raise.  She raised them on her own, she never remarried.  She devoted her life to those five little children -- my mama, her sister and three brothers.

I think my earliest memory of Grandma was when I was 5, I think, I don't believe I was in school yet and me and Ricky stayed with her while Mama had surgery and was in the hospital for a while.  I remember "helping" Grandma hang her laundry out on the clothesline and I remember how goooooooood everything smelled.  Grandma used Downy fabric softener.  April Fresh Downy in the blue bottle with the little girl on the front.  I loved that smell!  Grandma let me walk through the towels and sheets just smelling them.  I think Downy's probably changed that formula because I've tried to recreate that feeling and it is impossible.  Maybe they changed the formula.  Or maybe it was Grandma and her sunny backyard.

I was in my early twenties when Grandma passed away, too young and self-centered to realize what I'd lost.  I realize it now, though.  I miss her every day.  I'd give anything to be able to talk to her again.  And maybe hang out a towel or two to dry.

Grandma used to say "I swannee" a lot.  For those of you who've never heard that, it's an old southern saying that means, "I swear" or "my goodness".  I use it in my every day conversation because it makes me feel closer to Grandma.  I do it to keep her memory with me.

So, happy birthday, Grandma!!  I love you and miss you so much!!

Happy day! Happy day!

I got my call from the base today!  I start my new job on March 12th!!  I am so excited to get started.  I had to go out there this morning and pick up my new hire package and fingerprint card, then go get my prints done.  I'd never been fingerprinted in my entire life but it was a pretty painless process.  I just relaxed my hands and let the lady who was doing it DO IT.  It turned out less smudged that way.  :)

This is what my fingers looked like after four washings.  Ha!  It's all worn off now.

I really appreciate all the support and prayers and good wishes that y'all gave me while I waited this thing out.  My mama and daddy were awesome, as usual!  Most of all, I thank my Jesus for seeing me through, for keeping me sane and for keeping my hands busy.  Larry and I got some pretty amazing news (details coming later!) last week and now this.  God is SO good to us!!

It's his birthday but I got the gift

Today is my sweet Larry's birthday!  Maw always thought it was pretty cool that she shared her birthday with him.  I did this "Ten Things" that I love about him a couple of years ago and I'm adding to that list today.  There are thousands of things that I love about my husband, from his gorgeous blue eyes to the way he can always make me smile, even when I'm mad as a hornet about something.  Here are but ten:

I love how he always gives me the center of his cream cheese danish.  'Cause that's the best part.

I love this, too.  There's an episode of Gunsmoke that he reenacts, adding his own dialogue, that makes me laugh SO hard that I cannot breathe.

I love that all I have to do is HINT that I might want something and he makes it happen.  He spoils me rotten.

I love that he never met her but he loved my Maw as much as I did and he cried with me the morning she died.

I love that he thinks I'm beautiful without makeup.  Bless his heart.

I love that he inspires everyone who is fortunate enough to be around him. He makes people want to be better, do better.

I love that he can fix anything.  And that he has the patience to tell me how to fix stuff, too.

I love how he lights up every single time he sees me.

I love how WARM he is when I'm cold.

I love how I'm his Sunshine and his Rain.  He gave me the nickname "Sunshine" years ago but you can't grow a thing without a good soaking rain and he says I'm that for him, too.  He is such a romantic soul.  I love that about him.

Happy Birthday, baby.  You make my world better just by being in it.

A lady of leisure

Okay, so now I'm on Week FIVE of waiting to start my new job at the base.  Still don't know nothin'.  I was thinking just this morning as I drank my third cup of coffee with the yummy hazelnut creamer that I LOVE so much, that for the past two years (well, nearly, in April) of my life, ALL I wanted was to be picked for the co-op.  I prayed for it, studied hard and read even harder, soaking up every electronic detail I could absorb.  I talked to my Lord and I asked Him to "gimme gimme gimme", but ONLY if it was His will.  I didn't want it if He didn't want it.  He wanted it.  I got it.  And still, here I sit at home every day.  Waiting.  There's a whole new process to the co-op hiring and they're working through that.  New people, new policies, that's what's taking so long.  It's starting to become comical to me.

I'm cool, though.  I've been doing a Photo-A-Day challenge on Facebook with our Macon County Georgia Photo Walk group and if you're my friend on FB, you've seen my pictures all month.  Today's photo was "where you work".  Bwah!  Hysterical.  Um, my house, maybe??  My yard?  Words With Friends on Facebook?  Ike Godsey's store??  (I watch The Waltons every day, all day.  Don't judge.)

This is the photo I took and posted for today.

 Where I work, indeed. 

Right out of the cabinet under my kitchen sink.  

I had planned to just transfer some $$$$ from a savings account to my checking to live on until I started, you know, actually getting a paycheck again, good LORD (read that like Grandma Walton says it!), but my sweet husband had an even better idea.  He collected autographed photos for over 30 years and we have nearly 11,000 in this house so he suggested that I just try to sell some of those on eBay and see how it goes.  

Y'all.  It has gone beyond my wildest dreams!!  I have made more money in the month I've been at home than I would have made at my old job.  It has been AMAZING.  I cannot believe in this economy that people would pay hundreds of dollars for an autographed photo.  But they HAVE.  And some of them come back for more.  I've had repeat business!!  

You know this is NO accident.  This eBay thing is the Lord working it out and it makes me giggle when I think about it.  He is so awesome.  This base job IS what He wants for me.  And He's taking care of me until it happens.  

Happy Valentine's Day!

I found some vintage Valentines online and I just LOVED this one.

This is what I got from my Valentine.  A yummy box of chocolates and Breaking Dawn!  In Bella's wedding dress box with the huge fabric wedding photo poster.  Oh my!  :)

And I got a chocolate rose from my mama and daddy!

I have some friends on Facebook who say they hate Valentine's Day.  Even when I was single, I didn't hate it.  Valentine's Day is all about love and that doesn't necessarily mean romantic love.  Everybody has SOMEBODY they can love on today.  Parents, friends, pets, but if you still don't have any of those, pick a flower today and give it to a stranger.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known. 

Nothing you can see that isn't shown. 

Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. 

It's easy. 

All you need is love, all you need is love, 

All you need is love, love, love is all you need.  (The Beatles)

Happy LOVE Day!! 

Love birds

I am constantly amazed at the talents my husband has.  He can write, he can draw, he can take a bunch of little dots and turn them into stories for blind children.  Months ago, he memorized Jesus' Sermon on The Mount (Matthew 5 - 7) for a Bible study class and he can STILL recite it.  He'll be 59 the 24th of this month and he can still slam dunk a basketball and hit a baseball over the fence.  It's hard to keep up with him.  :)

He also makes the most amazingly beautiful, detailed soap sculptures.  He's made me a lighthouse and he's made a few others for family members.  He just made Ami a kitty for her birthday. They are such an actual labor of love for him, as he strains his eyes so badly making them.  But for our anniversary today, he made me this.  I've had it for a couple of weeks but couldn't open it until today, on the phone with him, so he could hear me squeal.  He loves to hear me squeal.  :)

Love birds!

Aren't they just precious?? 

He's always tried to follow the traditional anniversary gifts for me, like the third anniversary was leather and he got me a new wallet.  Some years he's had to be creative, which is another one of his many talents.  This year, our 13th, is the lace anniversary.  So look what he did!

Of course, he couldn't get his hands on any lace so he formed a number 13 on the bottom of my love birds with his SHOELACE.  How sweet is that??  I just love him.

Lucky 13

Today is Larry's and my 13th wedding anniversary.  13 years on the 13th.  We originally had settled on Valentine's Day but that was a Sunday and the preacher we asked to do the ceremony wouldn't work on a Sunday.  I wanted a real, live, God-fearing Baptist minister to do our wedding, not some prison chaplain.  Not that they're not real and alive, they just give me a "justice of the peace" kinda feeling and that was NOT happening at my wedding!  We were married in the eyes of God with our parents as witnesses.  And thanks to my precious mother-in-law, who brought her camera, we have pictures from our wedding. 

I got my Baptist minister and we compromised and set the date for the 13th instead.  I wanted to be a June bride.  My mama was a June bride, Larry's mama was a June bride.  Ginger wanted to be a June bride.  Larry didn't want to wait.  I think he was afraid I'd change my mind, even though we'd already been together for eleven years.  Silly boy.  No way was I changing my mind.  I'd never been more sure of anything in my life.  Or since.

Like any wedding, though, ours was not without angst and drama.  Two days before the wedding, a lady in the church passed away.  Guess when her funeral was scheduled?  Yep.  Saturday.  The 13th.  Bless her heart.  The preacher scrambled to find us somebody on such short notice and he did, another God-fearing Baptist minister that I was comfortable with.  

And so we got hitched! 

My parents hosted a reception at their home and Larry's parents joined us.  Everybody was there except for my groom.  :(  Here are a few pictures I dug up from that wonderful afternoon.

The only good picture I have of my wedding cake.

Of course, this was before digital photography and Brian and Ami becoming professionals.  Lesson learned, never take a picture of a white wedding cake sitting on a white tablecloth.  :)  It was a beautiful cake.  My mama made it and underneath that yummy white frosting was her world-famous pound cake.

This little mess right here stuck to my coattail all afternoon.

It's still so hard for me to believe that she's 20 now and about to be a mama.

And here's our baby, then 4-year-old Christopher, looking on as I opened my presents.  I feel every year of these past 13 except when I look at this picture.  Chris is still supposed to look like that.

The most precious of all the pictures taken that day.  To me anyway.  My sweet Maw and my third grandma, Mildred, sitting side by side on the loveseat.  If I live to be a hundred, I wouldn't take a thing for this picture.

The number 13 is supposed to be unlucky.  We laughed when we had to change our wedding date and Larry joked that at some point we'd have a Friday the 13th anniversary.  And we have, a couple of times.  But we're not the superstitious kind.  I don't really believe in being lucky or unlucky.  I believe in being blessed and living your life.  Good things come and bad things come.  Larry and I have been SO blessed lately that it's really amazing.  God is just showering us with blessings so I have to believe that #13 may just be our best year yet!

An afternoon among the camellias

We had a wonderful, relaxing afternoon at Massee Lane Gardens today!  I was there four hours and got to walk among some of the most beautiful flowers and trees in the state!  We had a picnic lunch and just took our time and enjoyed a leisurely tour of the gardens.

We had the place nearly to ourselves and enjoyed a calm, soothing Japanese garden where we sat and talked and listened to the babbling brook that fed the oh so peaceful pond that was home to some of the biggest fish I've ever seen!  You see 'em in there?? 

 And there was a canopy of cherry blossoms overhead!

Here are a few pictures of the gorgeous flowers that just begged to have their beauty struck.  :)

Second verse, same as the first

I have just about accepted the fact that I'm probably not going to start my new job at the base until next month.  The latest I was told yesterday was that they were bringing all of us co-ops on at the same time and that they are still missing a few things.  I really don't understand if somebody wants a job, why they would lollygag around with paperwork and such.  I didn't.  I got mine done the first week!  My physical and drug test, too!!  So, if I get called in this month, fine.  If it's next month, that's fine, too.  If there is one thing I've learned in my journey with Larry, it's patience.  

I could not have asked for better weather to be free to get out and enjoy it.  We have had such a mild winter, with beautiful warm sunny days that get a little longer every day.  Spring will officially be here in 41 days!

I've tried to stay busy and I'm pretty sure my house has never been cleaner than it is right now.  I got out and raked the leaves in my backyard yesterday and finished up today.  I've got my yard back!  Two huge oak trees make for a LOT of leaves.  Look what I uncovered!

 My sweet little lemon balm coming back to see me!

 Lots of baby Gerbera daisies sprouting in the flower bed!

I've cleaned house, even behind the fridge and the kitchen cabinets!  I've cleaned yards and then I cleaned the house siding of dirt and stuff the past two rain storms had left behind.  I even cleaned the central air unit outside.  I'm trying to stay busy but there is just so much to clean in a small house.  Not that that's a bad thing!!  :)

I'm going to meet Ami and Brian down at Massee Lane Gardens tomorrow.  100+ acres of flowers.  I've never been before and I can't wait!  If I can manage some outside nature time, some road trips, some exploring while I wait on my job, I think I might just make it.  

I know the housewife life is NOT for me, though.  I need to be at WORK!!  Y'all pray that they speed the process up before I scrub the finish off all my furniture.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Georgia's OFFICIAL Weather Prognosticator, General Beauregard Lee, did NOT see his shadow this morning which means what we already know, we'll have an early spring.

Since today was another gorgeous sunny day with a high of 72, like Ami said this morning on Facebook, this little feller could have slept in.

Why I'm in love with the Whistle Stop Cafe

I got my fried green tomatoes!

And my barbecue sammich.

"That frying pan did more than fry chicken that night."

 I saw the train that killed Buddy.  :*(

I soaked up some Whistle Stop sunshine with my mama!

I saw the very spot where Big George barbecued that buzzard, Frank Bennett, or so I've been told.  "Dead men tell no tales."

I saw the final resting place of Buddy, Jr.'s arm.

"The Good Lord was watchin' over Stump that day."

 I saw my first real-life movie prop!

This brick looks real, don't it?  It's NOT!  It is FAKE.  As many times as I've been to Juliette and walked up and down the little road that ends at the Whistle Stop, I never noticed this!  And I don't think we would have today if Brian hadn't noticed that it looked like it was peeling.  Wait.  Brick doesn't PEEL.  What??  The entire building, the bank and "druggist", from the movie is covered in this stuff.  A real genuine fake movie prop!  It feels like rubber.  Awesome.

I made friends with a cute li'l Air Force guy.  :)

This little bear told me about a bee charmer 
that he still sees from time to time.

I saw the falls from the movie.  Another first!

And I walked down to the river. It was absolutely gorgeous!

 I saw an old bus that called out to me.  :)

And I had just the most wonderful day with my family!  I saw more of the Whistle Stop area than I've ever seen and Mama and I have been going up there for 15 years!

We also saw some cabins for rent and found out that the old grist mill holds a motorcycle museum now and that it'll be open again in the spring.  We'll be going back for that!

It was never more'n just a little knockabout place, but now that I look back on it, when that cafe closed, the heart of the town just stopped beatin'.  It's funny how a little place like this brought so many people together. - Ninny Threadgoode, Fried Green Tomatoes.

Happy Birthday, Ami!

 

Today is my sweet sister's birthday.  We celebrated her day by taking a trip up to Juliette to the famous Whistle Stop Cafe, home to Idgie and Ruth, Sipsey and Big George and Smokey Lonesome.  What a wonderful movie that is!

I found this little video on YouTube that I wanted to put here for Ami.  It's a bunch of scenes of Idgie and Ruth from the movie set to the song, "For Good" from the play, "Wicked", that we both love.

Here's a picture I took today of Ami and Mama on the porch of the Whistle Stop.  I love how it turned out!

Happy Birthday, sweet girl!!  I'm so happy I got to spend it with you today.  I wish you every happiness and joy your little heart can hold.  I love you so much!!  "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."