Looking Back at 2005

So what happened at the Helms' this year?  Nothing too, too spectacular.  Let's see:

Thomas spent his first full year working for the company he began working for in 2004.  He is so happy there.  He and Red are the only two full-time welders for both their quarries in this area.  He and Red had gone to high school together and had worked together at another company as well.  They get along, and really, Thomas gets along with most of the guys there that he comes in contact with.  The pay is decent, but more importantly than that, he doesn't come home every day stressed, like he used to.  They got a very good year-end bonus last week!  The big bosses really like him, and that makes a big difference, too. 

Thomas got a new (for him) four-wheel drive this year, that has really come in handy.  He got four deer this year and I-don't-know-how-many pounds of fish that he and the kids caught throughout the year.  I think he has had a pretty good year, all in all.  He is such a good man.  At work there are one or two girls who either are currently in a bad relationship or single from a messy divorce who sometimes, in the middle of talking about men in general or their husbands in particular, will turn to me and say, "but you got a good one."  And I did!  He's not perfect, but neither am I.  After almost 19 years of marriage we are best friends and still lovers who have weathered bad times and shared great times.  We know each other inside out and still find out new and interesting things about each other.

Andrew turned 16 this year.  He doesn't have his license yet.  I want him to keep his permit for awhile and get some experience.  In other "Andrew news"......hmmm........not much, really.  He's kind of gotten through the worst of the teenager-attitude-thing.  He is a pretty good kid, though.  No girlfriend yet.  There have been a couple he's been interested in to some extent, but no real "dating", and there have been a few that have shown interest in him that he hasn't been interested in.  He's shown more signs of maturity this year and has done better keeping his chores done at home.  He also had his first summer job.  The grades could be better. (!!)  Sophomore is a yucky year, though.  But I'm used to all As from him and so far this year shall we say, um, hasn't been all As.  But, hey, a new year starts tomorrow, so hopefully he'll get his mind back on the books a little more.

Andrew really is a good kid.  I couldn't ask for a better son.  He's funny, witty, smart and very loving.  I expect great things from him someday.  One thing he really got into this year that pleases me is his writing.  He used to have no interest in it, but now he does, and he's really quite good.

Eler Beth turned 9 this year.  She's always busy, so it's safe to say she had a busy year.  She started having anxiety attacks and problems with obsessive compulsions this year, so she is getting help for that and has been doing much better.  She's a fourth-grader, so one more year after this and she'll be a big middle-schooler!  Her grades have been GREAT!

She continues to fish, collect fossils and rocks and minerals and keeps her fingers in whatever "pies" are happening around here!  She's my darling!  I tell you what, there is something so special about this child!  Sometimes I look at her or think of her and my heart just swells to bursting-point.  She started a "newspaper" for her and her friends this week while she's been out of school.  I did that when I was about her age, too.  She's smart, talented, creative and fiesty!  And I couldn't be more proud that she's mine!

And me?  Well, I started this journal in March.  I have really enjoyed sharing in the online lives of some new j-land friends.  I never would've believed that I could get so much enjoyment out of these journals but I have.  It's amazing how often something will happen or I'll see or hear about something that makes me think of someone in j-land.  I turned 39 this year -- the last of my thirty-somethings!  I got a new (for me) car this year, a new computer, a new refrigerator, and a renovated bathroom!  Yay!  Thomas and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary in June.  Our dog, Fancy, had four pups (kept two and gave away two).  Our other dog, Heidi, had eight pups (kept two and gave away six).  My cat, Freedom, is five years old now, and is still the Queen!  There was one new great-nephew born on my side of the family, and there is one on the way, and there was one new great-nephew born on Thomas' side of the family just this past week.

I love my job and where I work, but I found out in June that our department is being pretty much done away with.  (See here.: http://journals.aol.com/helmswondermom/DustyPages/entries/1262)  But I've gotten over it.  I could go to another department, but I think I'll just stay 'til the end, take my severance and find something I like closer to home.   And even with that news, I've still had a good year at work.  I've enjoyed doing the newsletter for our department and handling the orientations for the temps, and being involved in other little projects.  I expect to have a good incentive again from this year (we get them in February).

So, all in all, it has been a decent year.  I have a lot of goals for 2006.  More later.

Biscuit braggin'

I've been baking bisuits.  Really, really good made-from-scratch biscuits.

My biscuits have finally, finally become as close to my mother's as I can get them! 

My mom makes the best biscuits.  She learned from watching her mother and I learned from watching her.  I had occasion to make some recently for a potluck breakfast at work, and since it had been awhile since I'd made homemade biscuits I had to make a couple pans two days before just to make sure I could still do it!  They were great!!  Light and flaky on the inside, nicely browned on top and crispy around the edges.  Melt-in-your-mouth good!  And when I say made-from-scratch, that's what I mean.  No mixes, not even a recipe.  Just made from practice and from knowledge ingrained in me from standing at my mother's side helping to knead, pat out and cut the dough (and always allowed to cut and shape one special one "just for me".).  Now I can't wait to make some for my Mom (who always said she liked my biscuits, anyway), and my sisters.  Will they be able to tell if they're mine or Mom's?  I'm very proud of these biscuits.  I've tried for years to get just the right texture and taste!  It's always great when you reach a goal, isn't it?

Tomorrow is the kids' last day of school until the new year.  It will be nice not having to get them up for school for two weeks.

We are still working a lot of overtime.  Our counts are still high and we still have a lot of new people. (I'm doing an orientation with 9 new ones tomorrow, as a matter of fact.)  I guess I'll enjoy the overtime money while it lasts!  We can always use it.

A friend of ours recently had back surgery and isn't able to get up and around much yet.  So I cooked several things over the weekend and took them to her.  They've been eating mostly sandwiches and opening cans.  (She's a single mom with two young sons.)  She isn't supposed to stand or sit.  She can walk or lie down.  The surgery was very low on her back, just above her tailbone.  At some point in her life (probably during a marriage with a guy who liked to throw her around) she had actually broken her backbone down there, and only a few months ago found out about it.  She's fortunate that she caught it when she did.  Anyway, I left them a few homecooked meals in their freezer.  (Including biscuits!!  Hah!)  I'm about cooked-out though.  Tired from the overtime and this cold weather.  I'm ready for a break!

My Mother and Her Family

My mother turned 82 years old last week!  She is in great health, too.  She recently had her yearly physical and the doctor and nurse made so much of her great cholesterol numbers that she said she's going to make copies and send one to me!  She's a spry old bird, that lady is!

Her father farmed most of his life and her mothers' family did, too.  Her mother's father really thought that my Papaw Roberts wasn't good enough for their little girl, but she married him anyway, and they were just right for each other.  They had eight kids. (9 actually; one died at a few days old.)  The oldest was Leland, who died in 1990.  The next was the baby who died, whose name was Morris Monroe, but who was forever referred to by the other children as "Baby Brother", even though he would have been older than all of them, but one; all of us grandchildren refer to him as "Baby Brother" also whenever we mention him or visit his little grave.  Next was Elnora, my mother's only sister, who died in 1996.  Then came my mother, Eler Frances (she was named after both her grandmothers; my middle name is Frances after her; my daughter is Eler Beth after her and Thomas' mother.).  Then there were six more boys, Calvin, who died in 1968, Sam and Carl, still living, Delmer who died a few years ago, and John, also still living.

As I said, my grandfather Roberts was a farmer.  He raised corn and hogs.  My mother was born in 1923, so she was still growing up during the Great Depression.  Times were hard, but their family quite often had more than a lot of the families around them.  My grandfather had one of the first cars in the neighborhood and he had the first radio.  On warm Saturday evenings friends and family would stop by and sit out on the porch and the radio would be turned up as loud as it would go, and they would listen to whatever programs were their favorites at the time.  My father told about how he was too bashful to join everyone on the porch, but he was fascinated with the radio and loved the music, so he would walk "the circle" (the road they lived on made a big wide curve and doubled back on itself, like the eye of a needle, and both families lived on that circle), because he'd be able to hear the music almost the whole way around.  (Of course this was when they were both still very young, before they started courting!)

My mom and her siblings went to a little one-room schoolhouse that was still standing until a few years ago.  They walked to school, of course, down a long, steep hillside.  Even when things were really bad, economically, even at the end of winter when the supply of canned summer food was maybe getting low, Mom's family still always had enough to eat.  My grandmother was a good cook and sent her kids to school with sufficient lunches.  But there was a family in the neighborhood that had next to nothing.  The two boys of the family often came to school with nothing but cold corn bread for lunch for days and weeks, especially toward the end of winter.  They had plenty of it, but that's often all they had.  So Mom told how her brothers, Calvin and Sam, around the same ages as those boys, would take a little extra with them and ask the boys if they'd mind trading some of their corn bread.  So they'd have, say, ham and biscuits with cake or cookies.  They'd have plenty of everything, so they'd trade some of each thing they had for some cornbread; and they'd make sure they sat there with those boys and ate every bite of that corn bread, too.

I never knew my mom's mother.  She died two years before I was born.  But I know a lot about her.  She was very ladylike, but tough as well.  My older sisters tell about how her sons always treated her like she was something fragile.  When she got older and had a lot of trouble with arthritis they wouldn't let her lift a finger to do anything that they could do for her.  My mother has all her personal things she left behind, and when I was little I loved going through the old camel-backed trunk going through her old letters and things.  She was very funny and witty.  She wrote poetry and stories and she saved everything!  I remember a candy wrapper that she'd saved and written on it the date, who she was with (probably her sister or cousin) and where they'd gone and why.  Her letters to my grandfather before they married always gave me a peek into her humor and intelligence.  My mother is very like her.

I knew my mom's father; I was 18 when he died at the age of92.  He was a funny, smart man.  He had bright, merry blue eyes and loved to laugh.  He and my grandmother must have been perfect for each other.  My mother is very like him as well.

    My mother on the left, along with her sister Elnora (Aunt Noni).  They were about 18 and 20 in this picture.

Tags: Lonzo Roberts, Eler Roberts Dowell, Elnora Roberts Dowell, Iva Myrtle Roberts

A Confession

Last night I ate a pint of Spumoni ice cream!  Yum!  (Rum, whipped cream, pistachios, fruit, chocolate and so much more!)

I don't usually like ice cream.  Sometimes when I am dishing out bowls of ice cream or building cones for the kids or Thomas I may eat a spoonfull.  Once in a blue moon I'll have a cone -- it can't be soft serve (I hate eating soft serve), and I usually just barely have the ice cream above the top of the cone.  Yes, I know.  I'm strange.  I've just never been an ice cream eater.

I do like sherbet and frozen yogurt.  And I love cones!  Especially waffle cones!  But it is very rare that I just have a craving for regular ice cream.

Spumoni is the exception!  I love that stuff!  Last night I didn't eat any dinner.  I took Eler Beth out to spend her allowance and we bought a pint of Spumoni.  (She likes it, too.)  When we got home she ate a few spoonsful and I ate the rest!  It was delicious!!!

There!  I've confessed!  I feel so much better now!

Sad Bunnies

Have you ever had an idea for a journal entry that seemed at the time to be interesting or funny or unusual, and then after you wrote it, you wondered why in the world you thought it would be a good idea?  Well, this is that kind of entry.  So I am apologizing ahead of time for what you are about to read.  At the time, it seemed kind of funny (in a sad kind of way).  Poor little rabbits.

Yesterday I was reading ALPHAWOMAN's entry,  BAD BUNNIES , and it made me remember something that happened several years ago.  It was Spring, and I was going somewhere with my sister, Lois, in her car.  We were on an old country road and had just rounded a sharp curve.  Ahead of us in the middle of the road were two rabbits, feeling very frisky!  Have you ever seen rabbits hopping about in the Springtime, doing their little mating dances?  It's very cute; because rabbits just are cute.  During these little dancing rituals they jump very high.  Very, very high!  As we rounded the curve, we had only a split second to take in the sight of the two rabbits performing gigantic leaps before one of them leaped straight up into the air in front of the car, and hit the very center of the windshield, making a crack that was more than a foot long!

Lois and I both shrieked, and she pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped.  The crack in the windshield went almost all the way through the glass.  We both stared at it for a minute, then she said, "You'll have to go with me to my insurance agent.  He's never going to believe this!"

You know what?  He never even batted an eye.  He said that was not the first time that had happened!

Poor little rabbit.  Poor little rabbits I should say.  We both felt so bad about it, although there was no way we could have avoided it.  I think my sister even cried over it.

Wow, what a depressing entry!  I don't write anything in here for a week, and this is what I come up with?  When I first remembered it I thought of it as an interesting anecdote.  I mean, really, how many people have had their windshield cracked by a little rabbit?  (Apparently more than we'd thought.)

Oh, I just remembered another rabbit story.  When my nephew Brad was about 14 he was visiting our house for a few days (my parents' house) and had brought his bike with him.  One day he left for a bike ride and had been gone for only about 10 minutes when he unexpectedly returned, walking calmly into the house with a stricken expression on his face.

"I think I just killed a rabbit."

"With your bike?" We asked.

He had.  It ran out in front of him and he'd run over it before he could stop.

Okay, enough of this.  I'll try to do better next time!

Brrr..........

Been busy this week!  I was expecting to be offered some overtime, but we had just about as much as we wanted this week!  That's okay.  We haven't had any for awhile, so I worked my butt off.   If I'd realized I'd be putting in so many hours, though, I would have prepped some meals over the weekend.   Thomas has had a bad cold all week (but worked, anyway!) and hasn't felt much like cooking, and I've been late, so the poor kids have had to either fend for themselves or take what we've felt like whipping up at night.

This weekend I'm going to plan out some menus and put some meals in the freezer, because I've already committed to working overtime next week as well. 

I can handle the disclaimer that AOL has attached to our journals.  Makes me feel much better about the ads.

It has been getting very cold here!  Got down in the twenties last night.  And it's only 37 degrees right now.  We had some sleet earlier in the afternoon and yesterday there were a few flurries, but nothing sticking.  I have a feeling that snow is coming though.  It's gray and cold and the sky just looks like snow, you know?  Thomas went hunting, of course (first day of muzzleloader season), even though he has a cold.   (We have to keep our priorities straight, after all. )  I was feeling a little achy yesterday at work, so on my lunch break I bought a half gallon of orange juice at Kroger and drank it all during the afternoon.  I feel pretty good today.  I'm getting ready to have a cup of tea and curl up with a good book.  (After I catch up on some journals!)

I'll probably be back a little later!