starts a small trickle of memories that break the barrier of time and explode into a raging river of emotion. My chat with the Hack tonight brings her to a one year anniversary of the loss of her husband. I had lost a husband a very, very long time ago and while we weren’t comparing memories, we were sharing thoughts about how people seem to avoid you after you become alone. My thoughts went to my mom. I remember many things about my mom and sometimes I had a very difficult time dealing with her straight laced opinions and the fact that I was going to hear about it whether I wanted to or not.
God bless that woman’s soul. She gave birth to eight of us. She struggled to feed and clothe us as she followed my dad from state to state, finally giving up on him after 29 years of marriage, she filed for divorce and lived the rest of her life as a single woman trying to struggle with very little income and finish raising my three younger brothers. She never made it past the two younger ones because she died of cancer after a little over a year long battle with chemo and the disease. She was always there when the chips were really down, managing a hand, or a bag of groceries, or a plane ticket home for me from Hawaii when my husband died there and I was alone, six months pregnant with a 3 1/2 year old son. She never faltered. She worked hard all of her life and never whined or cried about her plight in life. She was gone at the age of 56. It will be 35 years in May, and sometimes still, out of nowhere, emotion sneaks up and bites me.
Moms are pretty incredible people. Losing someone you love is beyond describing.
So…I have a lot of empathy for the Hack. ‘Nuff said there.
*****
I spent over an hour on the phone with the Monkey…Jim from Colorado…he finally convinced me that I’m not being cheated in online poker. LMAO! We were both chuckling about the beats in live games too by the time we finished chewing the shit out of poker games…I think I was chuckling anyway. Then we went to Kombucha. Ever tried it? I won’t bore you with all the details but I will tell you that the best tasting ones are the Botanics 3 and 9. Jim’s interest is up. We are both talking about shedding some of those popping fresh dough wads around the middle.
I’ve been out to the desert most mornings since the 26th of December. Usually an hour to an hour and a half hike in varying terrains. Sometimes with my good neighbor Amy, sometimes alone when she opts out for the day. Yesterday I decided to pull my mountain bike out of the shed and air up the tires. I bought it for a reason. It’s just sat around now for wa-a-a-ay too long and probably forgot why it was there. It’s got an incredible shifting system on it and rides quite well with it’s little fat tires, except for the fact that your ass always has to learn how to conform to a damn bike seat again. UGH! I took it out for a little test run to see how it would handle some of the different terrain, about a 1/2 mile and I knew I’d be able to wheel off through the bad lands and survive.
This a.m. Amy opted out. By about 10 (it was overcast but not creepy) I had made up my mind to put the bike out for a ride. I only fell over once in 45 minutes of continuous peddling. I know it sounds funny. Falling over on a bike. I was heading up an incline in a low gear and really starting to put some leg into the pedal when the front tire caught the edge of a rut and slipped off into soft dirt. I simply fell over. I wasn’t going fast enough to flip, crash, or dive and I wasn’t fast enough to get my foot down to stop the fall. It was painless. I got up and took off again. Although in retrospect, I wish I had it on DVD, I’d probably still be laughing my ass off. It was quite a work out. Tomorrow is supposed to be a hiking day with Amy so soon this little popping fresh dough wad needs to waddle off to bed.
I figure to turn into Mz DigDug shortly and start my yard projects again since the weather has taken a definite turn to ‘nice’ and I will be trenching to lay drip water lines to everything in the front yard and along the back of my coach…plus I have to move the cedars on the project I started in the fall. I also was out killing mistletoe in the mesquites on the back of the property yesterday, using a limb pruner with the long handle and the rope pull. Kinda fun. I like destroying mistletoe.
Absolute Poker is my poker room right now. I just plod daily through the 50c/1.00 limit games. No stress, no pain, win a few pennies most days – even a few $$ now and then, waiting for another piece of a jackpot. WOO HOO!
Goodnight!