Winds are brewing...

Whimsy and Hugs!

Nothing but wind! Well, let me get a cup of something magical and tell you about the winds in Missouri this spring! They are what you call, FIERCE. I mean, when I put some shoes out on the porch the other day to return, I happened to just think about checking if they "blew away...  haha.." Well, yes, as a matter of fact, they were half way to the road by way of the wild and crazy April Winds.

Above is a masterful blend of my Chai Latte, which I didn't really love, and a few chips of dry ice from an order of  Pizza Pretzels from QVC. I can say I enjoyed the dry ice more than either of those delicacies. But of course, I couldn't drink any more after that...  Such a lovely moiling of bubbles and steam, that sublimation of dry ice and liquid... I'm quite mesmerized. One of my favorite tricks if enough dry ice remains in the carton, is to submerge it in my dishwater...  Children love to play, don't we?

I'm loving the scent of pure vanilla in the oven. Evidently an old Real Estate Sales trick is to pour 2 T. vanilla into an oven safe cup and set in a 200 degree oven for at least 30 minutes to an hour. The house smells as if vanilla sugar cookies were about to appear from the cookie jars of all womankind!

In our little corner of Paradise all is the same, which is the equivalent of "All is Well," I think. Yet, looking outside, it is NOT the same as I see the red bud blooming wildly and the Spring wheat now sprung nearly 15 inches tall in places, flat in silken obedience to the wind in others.

Mom is coming along better than most expected, as the professionals who come to care for her are fond of telling her. It is a quite sad to see her little eyes get wider when well-meaning professionals tell her she wasn't expected to live. I think it scares her. She has begun to want to piece together the fateful days and moments after her stroke, so I always tell her the truth, although I might be giving the PG version at times. What she wants is reassurance that she will someday soon get out of that bed and resume her life, that nothing like this will ever happen to her again, that she won't fall out of bed when she is lying right in the middle of it with her eyes squinted shut. I do that in the lines of hoping for the best. The best is already better than many ever hoped for, so why not shoot for the stars?

She has been telling me marvelous stories about her childhood and about her childhood home in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was wondering what happened to that home, and she, of course, remembered the address. I looked it up on Intellius and White pages and discovered it was sold two years ago in foreclosure. I found a photo of it today, which looked quite like she remembered it. I found the name of the buyer, and I found his photo on Google Images. He's a 34 year old young man who must love sports. Mom enjoyed the Internet sleuthing, and she told my son all about the photos when he came by last night. Since Internet Technology is his life, he wasn't as amazed by Google Armchair PI as Mom. Go figure.

I am still sorting and cleaning and pitching and organizing. I don't see an end in sight on that job. And each box that I happen to fill and send by my son garners the usual queries: "What's in this? You didn't get rid of the ---? Did you?" He is not on board with any clearing of any cluttered memories.

Have a good weekend. If the wind blows you my way, stop in. We will have something better for refreshments than Chai Latte spiked with dry ice. I promise you that.