Hospital

I admire nurses.  I have spent time with a relative, sitting by her bed, and watched how much they work with patients in a day's time.  I could not do their jobs.  First of all, I have very little stomach for blood.  Second, I have little patience for waiting on people and I'm sure sometimes patients push those buzzards when they don't really need to.  Last, I am always thinking the worst rather than the best.  I have to think of all who walked out healthy rather than those who didn't.  I admire their work and thank them for what they do.

storms

I like storms.  Not dangerous ones but just the occasional thunderstorm that brings a few flashes of lightning but does not knock down trees or split telephone poles.  Because my mother was deathly afraid of storms, one might think I would be too.  Not the case.  The times she made us children sit on the feather bed or the times we had to make sure our feet weren't on the floor only caused me to wonder about her obsessive fear.  When she was widowed at a much younger age than I am, she headed to my house if she thought "a cloud was coming up".  I guess I didn't want to be like that and told myself the value of a storm outweighed the problems it caused.  I have sense enough to respect bad weather, but a good storm is actually quite beautiful.

Paint and food

There is no way I can paint without painting myself.  You see these pert little women on HGTV painting in their designer jeans and silver jewelry and I'm thinking, "No way".  Who are they kidding.  I have never painted anything without the signs of the product being on my arms or in my hair.  Sort of like eating.  I always wear home what I had for supper.  The price you pay when you're too big at the top to keep your top off the table.  

Senior Citizens

When is the last time a senior citizen got in your way?  At the grocery store when she forgot a loaf of bread and sent the bag boy to the other side of the store to get it, holding up the line?  When she chatted too long with a clerk, telling about her aches and pains or grandchildren while you waited behind her.  When you sat down in an office, waiting for an appointment, and an elderly man began telling you how old he was so you would say, "My, you don't look your age!"  Could it have been when you were in a hurry to get to work and a senior driver was poking along in front of you.  In America, we are impatient with senior citizens, aren't we.  I was very impatient..until I became one!

Intrusive Thoughts

Have you ever been busy, enjoying yourself at whatever you were doing, and without warning intrusive thoughts sneak in your mind that make you feel sad?  The thoughts may be of nothing in particular, but a shadow falls over you like a blanket of sorrow.  Can't explain what just happened or why it happened, but it did.You can be with a room of people or alone.  At the beach or sitting in front of the TV.  In a car headed for vacation or at work.   The mind of a women is a curious thing.  I don't think most men have these moments like we do.  We brush them off, but we are never sure when they will return.  No wonder half the world is medicated and the other half need it.  We're all a little depressed, aren't we.  I think I'll get busy now.

Ice Cream

My name is Carol and I am an addict.  I am an ice cream addict, that it.  Addicted to vanilla, but will eat any flavor.  My best source is Dairy Queen but it is no longer serving..closed...gone. My next source is McDonald's.  The problem is it takes three cones to make one good one.  I might order two and pretend it is for someone else.  I hide and eat.  Been known to buy a cone and drive out to Bowling Park and watch the ducks as I eat.  From whom am I hiding?  I don't want to be licking on my cream while driving and take a chance of being seen by some skinny woman who points to me and tells her children to look at the fat lady eating the ice cream.  There, I'll told the truth.  Wish I had a cone right now.

A Stranger in My Own Hometown

I don't know, sometimes, if I am a stranger in my own town or if my town is full of strangers.  Who are these people in the grocery store, walking the aisles and smiling at me with that smile given to strangers?  I don't know the people I meet going in and out of the post office.  I don't know the people working at McDonald's or the new Dollar Store.  (Well, some I know by face and a few by names, but the most are strangers.)  Did they move here while I was buried in a classroom and didn't know there was another world?  Even at church, I'm having to learn more names than the names who were once there.  "Now, who is that," I might whisper to Guy as if he might know.  He looks at me like, "You think I know."  I could honestly have moved to a new town and be no worse off because all of a sudden I am a stranger in my own hometown.