TOO LATE FOR ME!

Today's news states that sleeping on your back is best for your spine and neck. It also is the best way to ward off wrinkles and maintain perky breasts.



Well, ain't perky and have lots of wrinkles. Obviously, I do not sleep on my back. I am a side sleeper but wake up on my stomach.

The article goes on to say--which we already knew--that back sleepers snore. Side sleepers snore less, and stomach sleepers do not snore.

It is said that stomach sleepers cause the greatest harm to their necks and joints because nothing is aligned. I think about all the nights I put my babies on their stomachs to sleep and now it is said not to do that. Poor R, B, R!

MST is a back sleeper. I can tell when he comes home from work how much noise he is going to make when he sleeps. And he tells me to wake him and tell him to move. The funny thing about that is that when I do tell him, he states he wasn't asleep.

Now the thing is to look about and see who is wrinkled and not perky. I will KNOW how they sleep! Marjorie Main who starred in Ma and Pa Kettle movies, was for certain a stomach sleeper, she was NOT perky and she was wrinkled.

And that, dear ones, is the news from Fargotown.

I wish you well.

e

THE RETURN OF THE WATERFOWL

There is something so refreshing and so great a promise that spring and summer in some form will arrive in the north country. This past weekend was like that. Although our hopes were to see a heron rookery, which we did not, we certainly saw waterfowl and shorebirds.

Something has happened. Just a few short years ago, there were only a few swans and wood ducks. Imagine our surprise to see wood duck pairs in more place than one. We even talked to a man who sits in his dining room window and watches several swimming near the resort. He reminded us how very skittish they are. They are gone before you can raise the lens of your camera.

The mergansers are back and the female with her red feathered head, (some feather's even sticking out) are so fun to watch. She looks like she runs the show and moves about while her mate seems to have no clue. SEEMS. She was having a bad hair day. Until this weekend, I thought the red head was the male!

We saw our first loon at Park Rapids as we crossed the bridge over Fish Hook River. What a site. I get excited and could only point. The killdeer run through the brown grass, still hard to see because of their coloring. The Northern Shoveler with its big big swam with its head down, almost as if its bill was too heavy. He was, of course, straining food from the lake.

But my favorite sight of all was two Mallard drakes with a female. And just who was going to be the man who got her. They swam in circles with the female aside as if to say good grief. Tom said there is an art to getting a picture of Mallard's in the swamp. Mostly it was inching along on the road looking for a place to poke the lens through and find something to aim at and wait for the ducks to circle.

Swamps, of course, are full of dead trees, over hanging mini branches, dried foliage next to the road, and there is no X that says, FOR A PICTURE, STAND HERE. Well, if you get out of the vehicle, they will disappear, so you stay in the vehicle, find something to aim at deep enough in and hope all the clutter is only on the edges.

By the time we go to the lake again, all the stuff that looks dead but isn't will have greened up making the Mallard's world a little safer from a yellow truck with two old folks holding their breathe as they watch one little part of mother nature's world. Refreshing. Stand still moments.

But then, maybe the white tail deer standing next to a tree near the road will be easier to see. As it was, he blended so well that it took me awhile to even see him. He did not move, twitch his ears, or blink. He just stood there. Well, with a group of friends, as when he did scamper off, we saw five flags instead of just one.

e

ADHD

Why is it that about 5% of children across America have ADHD anyway? And just how long has this been available as yet another handle?

Someone I know recently said she had it. She is, oh, maybe in her mid to late forties. She was educated to be a teacher. I knew her when she was a little girl and I never saw her running about doing weird things, actually at each visit, she seemed very normal.

We didn't have special classes for ADHD people when I was growing up. Everyone was lumped together. If you didn't pass the grade, you were held back. If you where too smart for the class, too bad, there wasn't anyplace to put you then, either.

My question is: Is there a stigma? Do other children point and tease? Do you look different? How? Look, not act.

And so I go back to the mid forties lady and I wonder if some of the diagnoses she carries are plunked on her by the medical staff because they didn't know what else to do. Her list of drugs is scary.

Sometimes I wonder if doctor's just write scripts because they don't have a clue. I do know there isn't time to listen. Sometimes folks can't walk in and blurt out what the problem is and others blurt--maybe the louder the blurt and more pills. It is a case of the squeaky wheel being oiled first? Can people research an illness and know just what to say?

Does western medicine have to learn to listen FIRST? Do we need another group of professionals that do the listening? Oh, they are already out there. Oops.

If a person can only do a half a listen to directions then isn't it possible they can learn by watching instead of giving them the DX of ADHD? Think about it.

TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO.........

Where has the time gone? It seems like just a few Easter's ago the kids were trying to decide who held the bunny.

And now the writer, the singer, and the artist are all grown up BUT I have the bunny!

I loved spring in Kansas. I liked to find the first dandelion because that was the herald of the new season.

One Easter it was so warm, we actually saw the buds on the trees become leaves.

If you are not a believer in Easter

then

at

least

be

a believer

in

spring.

Happy Easter to all

Happy Spring time to all.

e

OH VANITIES OF VANITIES

Old Trunks always is amazed at how thoughts string together and how one thing can trigger something else. Yesterday, MST brought home three boxes. A relative of his deceased wife went to assisted living in 1993 and her house was packed up by her son. At least we assume it was 1993 because that is the newspaper date in which the items were wrapped. It was time, Bill said, to get rid of the stuff. He had been in to have his glasses adjusted and he and Tom were talking about it. Tom remembered a lamp which belonged to Pat that she let Lee use. When Pat wanted it back, Lee had claimed it. That was the lamp Tom wanted. Instead he got a lovely hurricane lamp and two vanity lamps. The thought process is about vanities. As you can see, the picture on this blog is of a vanity with a lamp on either side of the drop down. This is only a photo found on line, it is not the vanity we had at our house. Mother went to the San in 1949; my grand parents came to live with us. The oak furnishings in the master bedroom were moved to my brother's room. Greg and Daddy shared the master bedroom in twin beds and my grandparent's slept in Greg's room in the Oak double bed. I actually think my parent's had twin beds before this because I remember a lamp melting a spot in the plastic head board but for the sake of the story we leave that alone. So in my brother's room was an oak bed, a chest of drawers, and the vanity. And since my grand parent's never left the room without being dressed, I am guessing grand mother sat on that bench and combed her hair and made ready for the day. Most likely there was a brush and mirror on the step down all nicely placed on a doily she may have made. I don't know what she would have kept in the drawers. Most likely those metal curlers and extra hair nets. But I do think grandma sat at the vanity more than anyone else ever did. In the early fifties, we were living in a house on Kneale Avenue. My grand parent's came to visit. Most likely the idea of the vanity came up and Mother made the decision to give it to them. Greg would have been a teenager and most likely it was thought he didn't need a vanity anymore. Greg came home just about the time they were taking it through the living room and took it back. After all, it was his furniture. He was not smiling. The interesting thing about it is, that vanity disappeared and by the time we got to the farm, it was gone and it was not at my grand parent's house. But mother still put two lamps on a dresser unit with a mirror on the new furniture. I remember the lamps well, they were shaped like a little pitcher with a bowl and had a shade with ruffles out of lace. What I remember most about them was the parakeet liked to sit on the shade and if you ever had a parakeet, you know they crap everywhere. Greg and I were not allowed to crap on the shades, just encase you wondered. Not only did she put two lamps on her dresser but mine as well. At the farm, in town when we moved back in 1960 and lived next door to the Johnson's but also in her house on Kendall where she lived until she deceased. The lamps, by the way offered poor lighting. Just as the ones Tom brought home which as deep rose colored glass with lots of bangles to reflect the light. I have not put a bulb in them yet nor have I washed them and put the bangles on them. They look like 1940. They may be newer. Yet beyond the lamps themselves, they offer a reflection into the past of Grandparents, Greg, rounded oak furniture, hair brushes never used, mirrors with names engraved, powder in drawers, hair in drawers, bobby pins, metal curlers, and hair pins as well as little worthless lamps, and parakeet droppings. What does it signal for you? e

OH YEA, I BLOG

There is no excuse for not blogging. It isn't like the paper is wet from the flooding. It isn't like I have to drive over I--29 to get to a computer. I think it is spring and spring fever to me is simply, brain doesn't focus OR is that tries to focus on too many things at once and the body finds itself sitting on the porch soaking in much needed sunshine. Maybe. It has nothing to do with another attempt to clean the garage. A miserable state of affairs where things get shuffled more then shifted or sold or given away. Although I am proud to say we actually did have a mini moving party this weekend when three sets of dishes, a huge box of stuffed animals, and a 2005 Schwinn bike with lock left the building. I am honored to say the Christmas decorations from the office are out of the little boat and up in the attic. WHY where they in the boat? When it is 25 below zero you get them out of the house and into the garage but there is no rule that you have to take them to the attic. And so, yet today, both MST and I are recovering from rafter rash. We both know the only place you can stand up completely is at the pitch of the roof. Why in the name of heaven we kept hitting our heads is beyond me. Spring intelligence, perhaps. Knock some sense into those people! Anyway our heads are covered with little bumps, almost like when the earthworms mound up in the front yard. Maybe rafter rash is necessary to let the sunshine in and take it with a grin. Oh yea, I blog. e