Ray the electrian

When I was in school in Topeka the girls had sewing in the 5th grade and cooking in the 6th. The boys had woodworking. My husband Ray took woodworking and made a lovely magazine rack and I found a lamp he made. I am afraid to plug it in to see if it works as it would probably turn off my lights and everything else/ He tried to fix the backdoor once and it still does not work. His idea of do it yourself was to pick up the phone companies yellow pages and dial the number of the repair shop all by yourself. Now I am not sure about all my children but know that both Scott and Cindy could fix the lamp and know Sally would probably have her husband fix it and am not sure about Steve and Sue.

Funerals

I guess when you are 88 you think of past ones I have attended. For instance before we had our five little children I used to go with Ray on out of town stuff. They had an artist do two murals in the Topeka statehouse by the name of John Curry. While he was painting the one by the House of Rep he got mad at the legislators and he was painting a farm with animals and he made all the pigs tails straight. When he died I attended his funeral and he was buried in a small eastern Kansas town near Valley Falls, Kansas. We saw his picture of the farm when we were in Russia on a loan for a traveling exhibit. We saw his paintings in Milwaukee. They have many of his paintings at Kansas State University. Ray knew him but I only attended his funeral, which was a little late to get acquainted.

My 88th birthday

I have just celebrated my 88th birthday and it has been great. I have had wonderful birthdays over the years thanks to my family. They are great at sending me cards and giving me gifts and I love birthday cake and ice cream. This year was nice as usual. Some of my gifts included new Movie discs, cake, a board to hang in my dining room that says "what happens at Grandma's stays at Grandmas." I received gift cards, new socks, packs of candy with my initials. I do like M and Ms. I had two great cakes and they left the leftovers so I will lose weight later when I am older. I am old enough to not worry if I remember everything but at night I lay in bed and have happy thoughts over all who attended and some who could not fit it into their busy lives to attend. My descendants are all prettier and more handsome then me of which I am grateful. Maybe it is because my own mother lived to be almost 100 and I can still do crossword puzzles and do everything but spell correctly on the computer. Happy Birthday to me.

Doorknobs

I was looking had my doorknobs and was surprised at how many I had in use. They are very useful. They give us privacy. I have rubber bands on one. I have Hawaiian leis on one from a party of a granddaughter. I have necklaces that look Hawaiian. On one of is an old bow tie of my husband Ray. I counted and I think there are 24. One has two which means there is four as, if you have a doorknob, there is another on the other side so I guess there is really 48. I did not realize there is no door on my computer room until I counted. Looking at door knobs I looked at the hallways and they have great pictures of our family. There is one picture of one of my grandsons being christened at church right before he threw up on the minister. There are pictures of the brides and graduates and famous people we got to meet so I guess it is okay to entertain yourself.

CHAIRS

As I look around our house and realize along with me aging so are my furniture. I have two great soafa that look a little sad as Buster uses them for a bed and his toenails have left there mark. I have a chair that matches and he likes that too. One chair is just a chair but could do with a little mending or gluing. I have one that was a gift from Scott's neighbor that Buster also likes. We use to have one that slept two people when we had guests before we added onto the house. It was great when our children were ill as they could lay there and watch TV. Cindy thought it would be great to ride her trike aroound when she had the mumps. Our dining room chairs seem to get along although they do not match. Two are from the church rummage sale and have a table and two more chairs in the basement. We have a set of folding chairs that Ray's aunt gave us. One has brown paint where our grandson Taylor stood on it to help paint the house, one is from a former table set and two just wandered in on their own and must have belonged from a former table set.
I have desk chairs one survived the Tornado in the Topeka and the Star gave it to Ray. It is nice to look at chairs and have kind thoughts of them.

Disasters

We are all reliving the September disasters and we only worry about what those foreign countries do to us and not what we do like the Atomic Bomb we put to Japan. I expect cities that have tornadoes like Joplin and Greensburg just lie with bad memories. I remember how shook up we were in college when Pearl Harbor happened and my personal disasters were two very sick daughters, a polio scare when I was growing up, the 1951 flood as the people now are having with too much water in their yards. The dust storms that the Midwest had when I was in about the sixth grade and we wore wet handkerchiefs over our faces so we could breath, and Oklahoma had Okies that tried to go to California to start over as most of their farms had already gotten there. When they had the polio scare our son Steve took part in their tests so the whole family got shots for free after it was approved. I am glad God lets us talk to him when bad things happen.

The Sky, The Moon , The Stars

I have always enjoyed admiring the sky and last night there was a full moon and it was gorgeous. I miss seeing the stars but have too many trees out one of the two windows from my bed. When I have been in the patio room, I have seen geese on their way to get either warmer or cooler depending on the season. I have seen the moon from Africa, Argentina, Topeka and love the book "Goodnight Moon" that the younger set get to read before they go to bed. Once in Topeka I saw a shower of stars. I love to play "Twinkle, twinkle little star" on my harmonica. I am better at "Mary had a little lamb."

A White Rock

My bird bath sits outside my patio door and I sit there and watch a chipmunk, butterflies and today a hummingbird. It is on the ground and a white rock sits in the middle for smaller birds. The white rock came from Washburn College. They built a new building on the campus and Ray was on one of their boards and they gave board members pieces of rock like the building was built out of. The little birds can reach the water easier from the rock than the sides so it is used a great deal.

Elephants

My husband loved circuses and when they came to Kansas City he got to ride the elephants from their train to the place they were kept during the circus. This morning I was watching the news and they showed the circus having a parade downtown. I wonder if they had a trash truck following it for elephants are not house broken. We never missed a circus and they even let Ray dress up as a clown bum and be in the circus. I know my granddaughter Hayden and I were startled by this clown bum who kept staring at us and it turned out to be Ray. We belonged to Circus Fans of America and went to Monte Carlo twice to attend the International Circus Meeting.

My dad's birthday

I don't remember how long ago my dad was born but it was in the 18th century. His uncle convinced him to go to school and he met my mother at Washburn and loved football and was captain in 1913. He loved his football and when I was born the house on Polk Street got too small so he worked with a builder and moved west. We lived within four blocks of Washburn and he was sure the team would get good again and he did not want to pay for parking. When my brother Allan was in Washburn he was the waterboy, He carried a bucket of water with a dipper ever so often out to the players. If the team was out of town we listened on the radio to hear the announcer say "There goes the water boy." When I was in college the women's group put on a show at half time and I was the center so my dad heard the name Burkhardt on the loud speaker. It would best be remembered that before I was born that they beat KU. That was 1913. He also got married that year.

Doors

The house in Topeka I grew up in had nice wide doors that did not matter to me growing up but now I am in a wheelchair I have narrow doors and my wheelchair is wide because I am. They are all skinned up and make my house look unloved. I wonder if they sell something you can put on doorways to protect them or will that just make the doors more narrow. One hinge has a screw missing and I thought it would be nice to replace it with a new screw but that would just make it more narrow so will learn to love them because they can't help it that I do not have good pushers and don't do well myself. I will go back to trying to see the end of shows without dropping off to sleep five minutes before the end. That is more important then beautiful doorways.

My Christmas Flower

My daughter Sally really knows how to pick flowers. She gave me a poinsetta for Christmas and now Labor Day is coming up and it is still healthy azd very pretty. It does not have red blooms but the leaves are wonderful. I had another one but it gave up early and looked sad like my Easter Lily always looks sad. It is quite a lovely green plant and my grandaughter Stacy keeps me from over watering. It sits on marbles and looks out the window on to the patio at all my marigolds. My zinnas are not as happy as they like more water than the 15 minutes my automatic watering does each morning. I wonder if it will still be great for Christmas this year..