Art Class was today!

This is my painting of the bridge.... I am still working on it...I hope to finish next week! We will see.......
Jo Ann finished her still life today!!!
Dave finished two...!!!
These paintings my classmates have completed and are ready to hang on some lucky wall!! This is the other painting Dave finished today.....

I'll cross that ditch when I get to it....

Hinds County Gazette February 14 2008

You all I have had an epiphany…. I know you have seen perfectly sane, intelligent people do things that you know, they know better then to try… but they still go against all common sense and do stupid things anyway….and they are as bewilder as anybody when it is over…wondering, “what was I thinking!”
Well, I am fixing to tell you….It may take a while.
Mirrors…I try to avoid them as much as possible. This full length mirror, here in my office lets me know I am too fat…., and morning after morning, as I am brushing my hair, the mirror over the sink shouts “Gloria, you are old” …..quite annoying. But I do not stay annoyed because, soon as I get away from those truth telling mirrors, I get on with my life and I don’t know I am old and fat….
That is,…after I get the kinks worked out of my knees …I am a little old and slow until I get the knees to cooperate….then I can get on with my day just like when I was 50.
Well… that is until it is time to go down a flight of stairs, I can’t go down stairs two at a time any more… I need a rail to hang on to now… but when I get to the bottom, I can get on with life just like when I was 40.
Well… That is…Until it is time to come back up the stairs …. And the knees give me cause to pause…I do not climb steps two at a time any more ether…I climb them very deliberately these days...one cranky knee at a time….But when I get to the top I am good to go just like I was 30.
That is…. Until I need to back out of a parking place at the store…and I try to turn my head to see what’s coming and my neck won’t let my head go over my shoulder like it once did…now I have to turn my whole body s too to get my head to turn…but soon as I am safely out of the parking place and back on the road, and get the windows rolled down and the wind blowing through my hair…..I am 20 again.
This is… until I try to cross my legs and they won’t do it with out assistance from me, I have to grab my leg and man handle it in to the crossed position…..Then they don’t want to stay crossed because, I have a big wad of fat behind knees and my top leg keeps slipping….but when I give up and just cross my ankles like when I was 10 sitting on front pew at church, I am Just fine.
Saturday Sheryl, Jacqueline and I were out walking around Edwards…We came to this crossing, there was a rather wide gap in the terrain, and it was rocky and uneven. They had concerns that crossing that ditch might not be such a good idea for me…. I insisted we go that way…
I am getting to the epiphany….I’m almost there….Ok then… I shall try and make a long story some what shorter.. I attempted to jump the ditch…. I fell and they had to pull me up…. just like when I was a year old and learning to walk…
I have been thinking about my fall… And how did they know it was going to end in calamity and I didn’t?
Because, Jacqueline and Sheryl could see my grey hair and wrinkles…they could see my plump, unbalanced body….I had forgotten… because soon after I walk away from the mirror…I forget I am old…because I do not feel old….As far as my brain was concerned, I was 16 and could jump that ditch with ease.
So when you see folks attempt something you know they can’t do….Bless their hearts, it could be, that, they like me…Just do not know they can’t.
Call if you need me

Bridge over Railroad Tracks....Edwards Mississippi

The Bridge is suppose to be complete by the end of the February.

My Art Class

My teacher B J Crawford

fellow students.... Betty

Jo Ann

and Dave

"Mares Eat Oats, and Goats Eat Coats..Little Lambs Eat Ivy"

My Daddy whistled that tune about the mares and oats and goats and coats when I was a little girl....

Hinds County Gazette Febuary 7 2008

Christiansen's Comments

I have always been a great admirer of Goats... even though I have never known any goats personally… the only goats had any acquaintance with at all, were on the pages of children’s books…Remember Three Billy Goat Gruff and their dealings with the Troll that lived under the bridge? In other stories the goats were cheerfully pulling very lucky children around in carts, taking them on magnificent adventures.
After we moved to Edwards, and we began to clean up this yard, clearing it of unwanted vegetation…the vines were particularly vicious …it came to me out of the blue “Get a goat! Goats will eat anything!”…that was their reputation in the children’s books… In many pictures they were eating clothes right off the clothesline or had tin cans hanging out of their mouths.
John answer was an emphatic “No” to my goat scheme….Not for any reason that I felt was a good reason…but every time I brought it up. He said “no” in that tone that I knew….no matter what, I would not be getting a goat and it would be a waste of my time to whine, beg or throw a fit.
Fast forward….to the very recent past…. 3 year old, Haley Cannada, Jacqueline and Russell’s granddaughter, Scott and Lesley’s daughter took a notion she wanted a goat…So she ask her grandpa Russell for one.
I asked Russell, “Are you really going to get Haley a goat?”
He said “Of course”
Can you believe it! It was that easy for Haley to get a goat!? So I said to Russell, I want a goat….He said “OK”…Can you believe it! We each get our very own goat! We do not have to share a goat!
We haven’t gotten our goats yet…Russell is looking for the small goats…I suppose he thinks Haley is too little to handle a big goat and I am too old to handle a big goat.
I am so excited…I have been telling everybody…when I told my friend and Haley’s great Aunt Peggy, about our good fortune involving the goats…Peggy thought she might want a goat too, but she didn’t know if Keith would let her have one…I told her if she wanted a goat…”Go ask Russell, he doesn’t say, no”
I been thinking about what to name my goat, daughter Angela thought Etta would be nice…but then this morning when she called she thought, “Flower” would be even better…”So when she eats everything in your back yard you will still have a Flower.” It took her all night to think up that “Funny”…
I gotta go…see about a fence to keep Flower in, that is, when I am not walking her around Edwards….I went to the goat show at the fairgrounds last week and this man had a collar and leash on his goat, leading him around like a dog….So you be watching for us…I will let you pet her.
And I got to check and see if the Hardware store in Bolton has goat food…They manufacture food for goats….that sort of surprises me…. I guess goats don’t eat tin cans anymore and clothes lines are becoming a very rare sight indeed.
Call if you need

In the end...it is still all about cats....

Hinds County Gazette.... January 31
It has been so wet…. I should be up cleaning this house, I have cat and dog paw prints all over the kitchen floor and up and down the hall.
Up until last May, I only just barely tolerated cats…because the cats in my life, had been indoor cats and quite destructive…clawing furniture, climbing curtains. And I guess they were calling themselves getting comfortable, when they would push stuff off mantles…send it to the floor in loud crashes…. and that litter box we won’t even go there.
Daughter Angela was always bringing home stray cats….She even bought one…out of a pet store…it was sick! She was afraid was going to die, if it didn’t get care soon.

So anyway, Two or three years ago, In an effort to rid my shop of mice….I did get another cat, but my dogs scared the liver out of it…. it ran away and did not come back…However I occasionally spot it, through the fence, down at the bottom of the hill, prowling around H&M.
So anyway, I decided to try again…Bob and Betty Kemps cat had a litter of three kittens….They gave me first dibs, I picked the gray and white striped cat. Later Angela and Garrett came they wanted to see the kitten I had chose, so we went down to Bob and Betty’s. “Are you just going to take one? It will be lonesome” Angela asked. I went to muttering, reminding her about me being on “The Budget” and how “it costs money to have cats neutered.”

Have I told you about “The Budget”, yet? It would take a whole column to tell you all about it…but here is what it boils down to. After John died, daughter Angela, the accountant, swooped in and put me on “The Budget” She went to cautioning me, about my spending and how I wanted remember, I needed to have money not only for my day to day expenses, but year end expenses, taxes, insurance, car tags and the like….and incidentals such as tires, oil changes etc.

To make a long story short she put together “The Budget”. And I must say, for not ever being on a budget before, I believe I have done well…it has not been an unpleasant experience at all…In fact it has been quite enjoyable….and enlightening…Just becoming aware of how much money I was spending, and on what….was an eye opener.
So anyway back to the cats…Angela said, if I would take another cat she would pay to have it neutered.

Several weeks later, when we went to pick up my two cats, Angela looked at the kitten that was left behind, “Are you just going to leave that kitten all by its self?”
I again reminded her of my situation involving “The Budget”. I told her I had not seen cat neutering anywhere on it.… One cat neutering was all I could squeeze out of “The Budget”.

Angela decided to pay for the third cats neutering too.
Now then back to my wonderful cats…my intention was, they were to be outdoor cats, to keep unwanted critters out the shop. Also they could… when not in pursuit of mice and moles, serve as yard art… I just, love seeing cats lounging, draped over benches and chasing butterflies…hours of entertainment.

But slowly they have become indoor- out door cats….let me tell you, that’s the only kind to have…they do not need litter boxes and apparently they get all of their scratching and clawing, running and jumping done while they are outside…because when they come in they are content to be ornamental, they curl up on a bed…typically it is on the antique crocheted bedspread in the back bedroom.
But I have come to believe that why my cats are so easy, is this, I have the whole litter, when they were taken from their mommy, they had far less adjusting to do…They had each other.
Call if you need me
Sorry this was so long …I get carried away when talking about my cats.

Do you want to see a Southern Lady have the vapors....

HCG January 24 2008

As you know I was not southern born, we came to Mississippi in 1979 and to Edwards in 1987. So you would think, nearly 30 years later, I could no longer be bewildered by the South’s little idiosyncrasies, those charming traits that sets us apart from the rest of the world. But, very recently, I was quite flabbergasted, by the reaction; I brought on, among some of the genteel southern ladies I know.
You all, I had not seen a reaction like it in a very long time. Not since John’s heart attack years ago, when I announced to my walking buddies “While John is in surgery, (a triple bypass)…I am going home and mow the grass”… I thought they all might have collective strokes…. Bless their hearts; they were horrified to say the least….. They literally stopped breathing.
The day of John’s surgery the waiting room was packed with friends… I suspect it had less to do with keeping me company, then making sure I stayed.
What brought on this latest horror-struck reaction was ambrosia. I had ambrosia for the very first time this past Christmas. I loved it! So I decided to make and carry it to my daughter’s in-laws for Christmas dinner.
I had ask several ladies how they made their ambrosia…there was lots of variations… some used fresh coconut, but others used frozen and a few used canned, …some put in grapes and one added bananas at the very last minute, but all the recipes included segments of fresh oranges, maraschino cherries, and coconut.
Early Christmas Eve morning I commenced to make ambrosia, I cut the oranges, added the sugar, cherries and fresh coconut. The juices began to ooze out of the fruit, those juices are delicious and I had noticed the evening I first enjoyed ambrosia, as it was being served, much of the juice escaped over the sides of the spoon and stayed in the bowl. So I added an envelope of gelatin, to tighten it up…..It turned out beautifully. Or so I thought…. later that day two friends dropped in…I proudly showed off my Ambrosia….I was taken back, they appeared distressed at the sight of it, “That’s not ambrosia!”
When they were able to calm down a bit and regain their usual well-mannered behavior, they did tell me, it was “pretty”…and it tasted “alright”…. then serenely, but firmly emphasized again “But it is not ambrosia”
Another very important life lesson has been learned, along with “Don’t tug on Superman’s cape, Or Spit into the wind" .... Now I am adding "Do Not fool with The Southern ladies receipe for Ambrosia…"

Oh, you can make it and add the gelatin, and they would eat it, and quite possibly enjoy it…but unless you want to see a proper lady of the south, in near melt down condition, do not call it “Ambrosia”.
Love to all