The blog challenge prompt is “Learn something new? Share it with your readers.”

Well, readers, this is tricky.

I am an information collecting junkie. Always have been. I was that weird kid who read dictionaries front to back. When I finished Merriam-Webster, my mom brought home the school psychologist’s dictionary and I read that in its entirety. I went through the DSM-R and DSM-III thoroughly. I read the thesaurus and a slang dictionary I got at a book fair. When I took Abnormal Psychology in college for fun, I read the textbook before the first month was over.

I gladly pay Wikipedia $3 a year to keep the lights on, because that is a mecca of information for me. My kids like to play the Wiki Game where they pick 2 random topics and see how many clicks it takes to get from one topic to the other. One of my kids is a pro at the 7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game and an absolute fount of information when it comes to connecting actors and movies and musicians to each other without using technology–he just has it all stored in his gray matter. Same with another son and basketball stats.

So if we are talking trivial information, pick a topic and I can probably pull out some obscure fact–if I can’t, one of my kids can.

If we are talking about a physical skill, I have slowed down in that department. I don’t do a whole lot of active stuff anymore. Arthritis puts a bit of a damper on that when my hands and back don’t cooperate and I can’t stand or walk for long periods of time. I dink around with adding to my existing skill set–trying out new recipes, learning to crochet a different pattern, that sort of thing. Did a tedious crochet project last week with thread and my grandma’s itsy bitsy needles–one turned out great and the other one did not, and now my thumb is inflamed from maintaining thread tension and I will need to rest it for a week before I redo the flop.

I think I will stick to exercising the area between my ears for the time being. On to the next rabbit hole!

The blog challenge prompt is “had a problem and found a solution?”

Well, yeah–that’s kinda what life is about in my experience. I am a strong proponent of the BSA motto of “adapt and overcome”. There be a whole lotta adapting goin’ on around here. But here’s two–

I’ve had a solution published, so that’s kinda cool. FamilyFun magazine shared my idea for keeping track of internet passwords in an address book. Now they sell password books all over the place, so apparently people really liked that solution.

Not every solution has been ideal. I was always trying to come up with a way to drain grease off of browned hamburger. I knew to not pour it down the sink drain and clog up the pipes. I’m not coordinated enough to pour it into a metal can or glass jar. My favorite solution was to use a turkey baster to suck it up–unfortunately, getting the bulb clean and keeping the rubber from degrading proved to be difficult. So for now my solution is to use a gravy ladle to scoop the grease out into a bowl. Once it has cooled, I either toss it in the trash or set it out for the cats so they don’t get hairballs–that’s a two-fer solution (two-fur, if you will).

Life is full of challenges that need solutions. I come from a long line of problem-solvers. When my great-uncle was a small lad, his local barbershop had a problem with these 3 dogs that came by every day and cocked their legs to hose down the shop’s screen door. Uncle Leo went home and wired a battery to a metal grill. He returned to the barber shop and attached the grill to the screen door. Then he and the rest of the barber’s clients sat and waited. The 3 dogs trotted up to the door and the biggest dog let a stream fly, let out a blood-curdling yelp, and ran for the hills. The second-biggest dog, walked up and started to hose down the door, yelped like he’d been shot, and bolted down the street. The smallest dog crept up to the door, gave it a look, and walked away with his nether regions unzapped. Problem solved.

Keep your eyes open–there’s always something to improve or invent!

Blog challenge prompt was “what I learned from” and this is a funny little graphic I made a few years ago that seems to fit the prompt–

Blog challenge prompt is to write a “how-to”. Looks like it’s time to dust off a draft I started back when my kids were much younger–

We all have those things we want to happen.  Like NOW.  Or even better, those things we really don’t want happening EVER.  Well, there are two acts that guarantee setting things in motion. 

1. Start cleaning.

Want your kids to come home after a long day out mudding, sledding, or otherwise wreaking mayhem on the environment?  Calling them won’t work.  Texting them won’t work.  But put a mop to the floor and suddenly you have the entire pre-teen neighborhood stampeding through your house.  Will it happen as you fill the bucket, so you don’t have to commence scrubbing until after the last shoe print has marred the entryway?  Ha.  You won’t see the whites of their eyes until you have swept, mopped, and dried the floor to a masterpiece of shine.  You won’t even see the whites of their eyes then–you’ll see the muddy tracks on the floor.

2. Start baking.

You’ve waited all day for that return call between 2 and 4 PM so you can land a great insurance rate.  2 PM.  3 PM.  3:45 PM.  4 PM.  4:15 PM. 4:48 PM.  Watched pots don’t boil, and watched clocks don’t make the phone ring.  Kids are sprawled across the house in various stages of death by starvation, so you wave the white flag of surrender and dig in to mixing up a big ol’ batch of meatloaf.  You get your hands covered in the pink slime of hamburger, bread crumbs, eggs, and various seasonings, massaging the goo as if lives depended on it, when—RIIIIIIINGGGG! Motherf***ingd***sucking***wagon&%&*%#…

Little Jimmy needs 2 dozen cookies by 3:30 PM for the football team bake sale, but the dishwasher repairman is supposed to arrive between 1 and 2 PM.  Do you start the cookies at 12:30 PM so they are done before the repairman shows up, so you aren’t tripping over his prone carcass as you watch the oven?  Do you count on him to be done by 2:30 PM, so you can pop the cookies in the oven and deliver them all warm and delicious?  Everyone likes warm and delicious.  So the clock watching begins. 12:50 PM. 1:00 PM.  1:30 PM.  1:45 PM.  2:00 PM.  Bake sales wait for no one, so you throw those bad boys in the oven.  Just as the timer goes off, the doorbell rings.  You answer the door to let the repairman in, and return to the cookies–a little extra dark on the bottoms.  Every second counts, people.

People wonder why moms are so stressed on a daily basis.  They are constantly determining how to execute multiple tasks with precision timing.  Every part of the household has to be accounted for when seeing that something gets done.  Laundry, bath time, bed time, meal prep, meal serving, appointments, events, pet care, phone calls–all of it has to be balanced or absolute chaos erupts. 

I spend a lot of time in chaos.

Now I’m going to go burn some cookies and miss a few phone calls. 

Cheers.

Been on a little writing hiatus while health issues were addressed, and I promise I will get back to the blog challenge prompts, but I need to say something–

Cancer is stupid.

Cancer sucks.

I’d like to throat-punch cancer.

OK, got that out of my system for the moment. So let’s have a little personal history lesson.

When I was a child, I was covered in moles. No biggie. But then when I was a young teen, the ones on my neck started doing something weird–they would pinch themselves off and dry up and fall off. Doctor was like “Hmm, they aren’t supposed to do that.” So off they came–pathology always came back benign, and I added another battle scar here and there. I have a lot of scars, because my body really doesn’t like being cut–I can still count the number of stitches on biopsies performed decades ago.

Then in my late 20s, I started gaining weight and feeling blah. Had a family history of thyroid issues, but the doctors just told me to limit my calorie intake and exercise more. I was raised to trust doctors to know what they are doing, so I didn’t push it.

When I was pregnant with my second son in 1998, I found a lump on my upper right thigh. It was roughly the size of a ping pong ball when I went to the dermatologist. Dermatologist looked at it and declared it was just an ingrown hair and sent me away with not even a poke. My (now ex) husband didn’t give a crap, because it wasn’t all about him. So I had my son and buckled down to raise 2 baby boys under the age of 2 and didn’t have time to worry about this bump on my leg. Realized I was already a single parent for all practical purposes and ditched the husband.

Met my now husband in November 2001. This boyfriend was a different breed than my ex, and when he saw the now golf ball sized lump on my leg, he FREAKED. It was coming off, no argument. So I made the arrangements, and my dad took me to the hospital for the surgery in December 2001, then treated me to lunch and sent me home to take it easy after making sure the boys were settled in for the evening. 2 days later I was at work (high school special education teacher) when the secretary told me I had a phone call. I went to the faculty break room and took the call, and the room got a little fuzzy around the edges as the nurse said “So, it’s malignant, and we didn’t get it all, so we need to go back in a month and take more off.”

This was the first time I hadn’t heard “benign.” It took me a good hour to process what I was hearing.

Went back a month later and got the rest of the dermatofibroma sarcoma removed–learned what “clean margins” means.

Cool. We’re done with this nonsense, right?

Ha.

My husband and I welcomed our daughter to this world in December 2003. Went in for my 6 week check-up, and the doctor discovered pre-cancerous cervical cells. Unfortunately for the doctor, he did this biopsy with no sedation, and I nearly kicked him into the wall. When it came time to remove the cells with the LEEP procedure, I was sedated. Smart man.

At this point, I was starting to mistrust my body. 2 cancer diagnoses in 2 years was not my idea of fun. Especially when they were not even remotely related to each other, so it wasn’t even a recurrence of the first one.

And I am still gaining weight, feeling blah, etc. Also had a few aunts die of breast cancer, so the doctors decided I might warrant watching closely–welcome to yearly mammograms starting at age 35. Doctor still claimed I just needed to cut calories and exercise and ignored my concerns about the family history of thyroid issues.

Got a hysterectomy in 2010 and breathed a sigh of relief that at least uterine or cervical cancer wasn’t going to take me out. But I still felt like crap.

I was getting nowhere with my family doctor, so I went to my rheumatologist in 2011–she had been treating my rheumatoid arthritis with methotrexate tablets for years, which is a low dose of chemotherapy. I am pretty sure she saved me from any cancers really going gangbusters. She took my complaints seriously and referred me to an endocrinologist. Endocrinologist was skeptical, because my bloodwork was great, my thyroid levels looked wonderful, and she couldn’t feel anything odd when she pushed my throat.

BUT.

She listened to me, and to make me feel better, she ordered an ultrasound. Well, it didn’t feel odd, but it sure looked odd. So I came back and they did a biopsy. No anesthesia and hurt like hell, but I didn’t kick this nice woman who was finally listening to me.

She didn’t like the biopsy results, so I went under the knife in 2011 and they removed my entire thyroid that was riddled with cancer. 8 of the 10 surrounding lymph nodes were also cancerous and removed. As slow growing as thyroid cancer is, this meant that it had been there for years.

I fired my family doctor and found a new one for our entire family, cuz f*ck that.

Returned to the hospital in January 2012 and had radiation therapy. That was a wild experience. I had to swallow this giant pill and then stand in front of the hospital room window as doctors in hazmat suits waved a Geiger counter wand at me for a couple days until they declared I was no longer radioactive enough to be isolated (sort of) and sent me home. For 10 days I had to sleep in the spare bedroom and my kids had to visit with me standing at the doorway 10 feet away–the cats didn’t care and came in and kept me company. All of my chairs and computer keyboard and phone had to be covered in plastic so I didn’t contaminate them. I couldn’t cook, and all of my eating utensils, etc., were disposable. But my kids are used to being raised by a village, so between my husband and my parents, everything was OK.

On one of my first outings when I could rejoin the living and not make anyone get radiation poisoning by being near me, we went to the store. I walked past a table at the entryway where people were selling “Cancer is stupid” shirts and my son called me out on it–he said of all people, I deserved to wear that shirt, so I donated $20 and wore that shirt until it fell apart.

Went back in February 2012 to do a scan to see if anything was glowing to indicate that the thyroid cancer cells had spread. The radiology techs were scratching their heads, because they expected glowing in the lymph nodes–not my lungs. So now I got to add a yearly CT scan of my lungs to the testing regime.

A little lung history–I developed a mild cough when I was 18 (1986). I grew up on a farm with crop dusting in the area, and every once in awhile I would find little blobs of white powder in the yard that made a cool purple cloud when stomped. I also grew up with a dad who smoked, so secondhand smoke was a constant companion. So who knows what might have been an underlying factor–either way, I was coughing. It started out occasionally, and usually ramped up from November to March–that was odd, since that is not peak allergy season. Over the years, it got worse. This cough isn’t a tickle. I cough until I throw up. I cough until my legs and arms go numb. I cough so hard that I pull the muscles that hold my eyeballs in place. I cough until my ribs dislocate. If my costochondritis flares up and I cough, I’m done–I head to the ER and get prednisone, stat. Covid hasn’t done this cough any favors–I have had Covid at least 3 times now, despite being vaccinated (really need to go get a booster someday), and each time my cough has gotten worse.

I go to the doctors constantly to see what they can do about this cough, because it is annoying and makes my quality of life suck. I go to a pulmonologist, an ENT specialist, an allergist, an infectious disease specialist, and I even went to Mayo Clinic for a bunch of testing–Mayo in Rochester, MN, is lovely and I want to go back as a tourist sometime to that area. What all of this has shown is that it is not GERD. My diaphragm is a little weak on the left side. I have achalasia, which is a fancy word that means food gets stuck in my throat sometimes. My lung function is abysmal–on a good day, it’s around 40%. I can’t walk up stairs, bend over to pick stuff up, carry heavy items, walk for long distances, or skip my meds unless I want to cough for a good 30 minutes while trying to breathe. I take Zithromax 3 times a week to prevent bronchitis. I take glycopyrrolate twice a day to keep my airways dried up. I take Zyrtec and Singulair on the off chance that it is allergy-related. I live on Dayquil and Benadryl to keep mucus thin and dry up what is left. I always have cough drops in my pocket. I have 3 nasal sprays I do twice a day. I have the Navage nasal rinse system. I have multiple nebulizer medicines. And that is just all so I can function minimally. I struggle to walk through a store to do shopping without stopping at least once to catch my breath. I haven’t seen the last few places my kids have lived because they are not on the first floor and there’s no elevator. If sightseeing involves walking and inclines, I am not able to do it. Gave up a lifelong dream to tour European castles because I would never be able to climb the stairs. I have to choose carefully the days I do laundry, because that means bending over and lifting wet clothes out of the washer and up into the stacked dryer. I had all of my teeth pulled years ago, because cough drops cause decay.

So yeah–this cough has made a mess of my life. And I kept going to doctor after doctor after doctor asking them to make it stop and figure out what is causing it.

Every year the scan showed the spots on my lungs, but since they weren’t growing at all or just barely, the pulmonologist kept a “wait and see” stance. Finally last month I hit my limit on how much this cough is wrecking my life and the doctor agreed to do a biopsy.

Neuroendocrine tumor

Carcinoid tumorlet

Synaptophysin positive

INSM1 positive

Pankeratin positive

Ki-67 is pending.

Well, well, well… would you look at that. As I mentioned before, I haven’t trusted my body for years–it’s a traitor and I just wait for where cancer is going to crop up next. Every year my endocrinologist checks me for thyroid cancer recurrence and says “Cancer free!” and I think “yeah, sure.”

Now I have an appointment with the oncologist on June 6th. My kids have done their research, so we know treatment options are going to be surgery, chemo, and/or radiation or all 3. They tell me the world record for different types of cancer in one person is 12, so we’re about halfway there. I’m up to about 5 or 6 different types of cancer at this point. In 2023 I noticed I had a pimple on my left temple that was not going away; it finally clicked that this was probably not a pimple and I should go get checked for basal cell carcinoma since I had seen similar spots on my dad and his mom. Got that removed and confirmed as not benign, added a facial scar to my collection, and carried on with life.

It’s annoying that my kids have never been old enough to remember a time when I was not a cancer survivor. They have grown up with me always getting surgeries and scans and taking meds. It is frustrating for me that I haven’t been able to be more active with them. I make a great spectator and can cheer from the sidelines (as long as I don’t have to climb too high in the bleachers) and drive them any place they need to be, but I can’t DO stuff. Luckily, coughing doesn’t stop a sense of humor (although laughing can trigger it), and my family uses dark humor to cope. I’m glad my kids are resilient and pragmatic–they make a great team when it comes to facing whatever we are dealing with. And I’m glad they have colleagues and friends who keep them entertained and busy and able to enjoy life. We don’t do collapsing and refusing to get back up well around here–we might sit down and ponder, but then we slap our knees and say “welp” and get up and power forward.

I’ll probably be back with an update on this latest adventure at some point, but for now, it’s time to get up and go forward.

Have you ever looked at someone who is roughly your age and yet has a completely different mindset? Maybe I’m weird, but I have. What makes people tick has always interested me. I tend to watch people and look for patterns and links and ways to make things “fit” in my brain. I’m always trying to answer “why”. Lately the theme that keeps reoccurring is generational–I look at someone and determine the age of the parents they were raised by and often think “Yep, there it is.” Not always, but it still intrigues me.

I am solidly Gen X. More often than not, I identify with whatever meme or tiktok is floating around about Gen X. I wonder where in the hell y’all were hiding back when I was in the trenches as a hair band headbanger fan being bullied by preppies, and why you all are suddenly claiming hair band music as your own when I know all y’all were listening to Duran Duran and sneering at us for following Twisted Sister. But sure, go ahead and claim you jammed out to “Welcome to the Jungle”.

But even in Gen X, there were very different mindsets. My parents were relatively young when they had me, 24 and 22, but here’s what made the difference–they were raised by older parents who fell in the Silent Generation category.

According to Indeed, the Silent Generation are those born between 1928 and 1945. They valued hard work, loyalty, and being thrifty. They believed in respecting authority and your elders, and they were resilient when facing adversity. “This is the way we’ve always done it” was just fine with them, and technology was viewed with suspicion. Dad or Grandpa had “their chair” and you didn’t sit in it without express permission. My dad was actually born in the Silent Generation in 1944. My mom was born in the Baby Boomer Generation in 1946, but she was raised with the Silent Generation values; in astrology, I would call her a cusp baby.

Let’s go back to Indeed, where they discuss the Baby Boomers who were born between 1946 and 1964. According to Indeed, Boomers were goal-oriented, independent, and competitive. They liked to work collaboratively and engage in social activities. This is where you get the hippies, folks. They loved to gather ’round the campfire and sing “Kumbaya” and ’round the office water fountain to plan weekend cocktails, bridge parties, and civil rights protest marches. This was NOT my parents–the only gathering we were going to be doing was at the grandparents’ homes with other family members for food and visiting, or the occasional neighborhood pitch card games. There was definitely none of the wacky tobacky at our home. I did have aunts and uncles and older cousins who imbibed, so I wasn’t completely cut off from the counterculture, but it was not my nuclear family’s jam. We had beer and bourbon, not LSD laced kool-aid.

So along came Generation X. Indeed says we were born between 1965 and 1980. We like to be given a goal and then left to our own devices to meet it without micromanagement. We’ll figure it out, trust me. We believed that education was important to get ahead in the world, and we learned enough technology to not completely embarrass ourselves. If we are stuck without power and technology, we can pull out the pen and paper and do things the slower old-fashioned way, but we appreciate the speed and efficiency of technology. Don’t always trust it, but we respect its usefulness. Tech gadgets are pretty snazzy. According to Emma Singer, https://www.purewow.com/family/gen-x-characteristics , we bucked the trend of dressing up in the work place and brought denim and jersey knit to the corporate world. We see no problem DIY-ing projects even if it is cheaper and faster to buy them in a store. We grew up fairly unsupervised and independent, since our parents were both in the workforce usually, earning us the nickname “latchkey kids”.

So why are some Gen X kids stalwart traditionalists who appreciate the simple things in life and favor peace and quiet, while others are waging corporate warfare like coke fiends chasing their next high? Look at who their parents were and how their parents were raised. Some of us had parents who were “old souls”, and some of us had parents who fought the establishment on the regular. Some of us had traditionalist parents and did our damnedest to fight against all they stood for in an effort to be independent.

It has trickled down to my own kids and their friends. I got a late start on having kids in my mind, but apparently quite a few of my peers delayed having kids. The first set of my generation’s kids are Millennials, born between 1981-1996, while the later set are called Gen Z, born 1997-2015.

Millennials don’t chase carrots unless that carrot is going to bring value to their life. “Because I’m the boss” doesn’t carry much weight with them; instead of following blindly, they are more apt to shrug and invite the “boss” (complete with air quotes) out for drinks. They have DVRs and remote controls mastered as soon as they can grip them in their chubby little toddler hands and figure out they are good for more than teething toys. They love a good project and will dive in and work until it is complete with a complete disregard for timelines. They really love getting to spend time with teammates and bouncing ideas off of each other and working toward the greater common good. If you are going to praise them, do it immediately–by the time their annual review comes around, that is ancient history. Millennials are so creative and flexible when it comes to problem-solving; it is a delight to just sit around and ping-pong ideas with them.

Then we have the Gen Z crew. They were born with a smartphone in their hands. They have grown up in a world that is changing so fast, and they take those changes on beautifully as they zip by. They are independent and really don’t see the point in the traditional boss/worker bee dynamic–if someone tries to pigeonhole them too tightly, they will pull up stakes and go do their own thing. Even if a Gen Z is completing traditional tasks, I guarantee they have multiple side gigs going on that different pockets of people in their lives have no idea about. Your straight-A honors student walks out of those classroom doors every afternoon, holes up in their room, and transforms into the most fearsome warlord known to virtual man in the latest FPS game. That shy girl who never speaks up is down at the local soup kitchen every weekend serving warm food and even warmer compassion. Take the time to get to know these kids, because they are a wealth of creativity and information if you just show interest and let them open up.

My biological kids were all born in the Gen Z age range–1997, 1998, and 2003. But because they were born to Gen X parents who were raised by Boomers who were raised by the Silent Generation, they have a Millennial mindset sometimes. My kids know their parents are old. There’s no getting around it. When I walked into my second son’s kindergarten meet & greet and saw the other 20-something parents there in pajama bottoms and with tattoos and piercings and dyed hair, I was acutely aware that I was in my mid-30s and did not have much in common with the other parents. The parents I could vibe with were those that had kindergarteners as their youngest children, whereas my kindergartener was one of my older children.

My kids had to be parented differently than I was. The world I grew up in is GONE. Kids can’t be turned loose to roam the town until dark anymore now that predators are more common. When I was a kid, we knew who the creeps were in town and if we saw them, we skedaddled into the nearest house of someone we knew. Creeps are better at hiding in plain sight these days.

My kids have a world that is both bigger and smaller at the same time, thanks to technology. All of my kids have friends online from around the world, and I don’t consider them to be any less friends than the IRL ones. They have so many opportunity avenues open to them that my generation didn’t have, and I love that for them. My kids are slightly hindered by my lack of tech-savvy, but they know how to do their research and find the resources they need to figure stuff out. The world is their playground, and it is beautiful to watch them fly and explore. And my kids have the advantage of having been raised around many generations–they knew their great-grandpa Jim from the Silent Generation, and their Boomer grandparents. They are thoroughly marinated in Gen X thanks to their parents, and all of this blended nicely with Millennial media to create the fascinating people that they have become.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

This past week’s blog challenge prompt was to write a Frequently Asked Questions post. Alright. Here’s 5.

What’s your favorite color?

Purple. But not every purple. I like blue purples, not red purples. Don’t tell me “purple is purple.” It most assuredly is not.

Blue purples:

Red purples:

I will take a periwinkle over a magenta any day.

Met any famous people?

I usually answer this one with Lou Diamond Phillips.

Back when he was promoting the La Bamba movie, he had a band and they came to Hays, Kansas for a show. They stayed down the street in a cheap motel and one day they apparently got a hankering for ice cream. So the band walked down to Dairy Queen where I was the shift supervisor. The rest of the staff were kids who immediately freaked out and ran to the back of the building hyperventilating. I walked out and got the man his medium vanilla cone and life went on.

But I have met a couple other people I think were pretty cool. Our hometown had an author who wrote a book:

Got to meet her in her sister’s living room when my mom was the 4H reading leader, and we have an autographed copy of the book.

I also got to meet the artist Woody Crumbo when he spoke in Hays, and we have 2 signed prints from him. He was very nice.

Then there’s the blasted member of Kingdom Come that wouldn’t leave me alone when they played at Fort Hays–sorry, buddy, I don’t even remember which one you were and I didn’t want to. Stop asking strangers to go to your hotel room and have some self-respect.

Do you listen to anything other than 80s hair bands?

Why yes, I actually do. 80s hair bands are always my go-to, but that’s not all I listen to. My kids actually listen to some very good artists, so I don’t mind letting them handle the road trip music selection. But if I am left to my own devices, I actually like some 50s and 60s bubblegum pop. I will always prefer Elvis over the Beatles. I know KISS started in the 70s, but other than a few songs here and there, I am not really a fan of 70s music. Regular 80s pop is pretty good, but I do love my glam metal.

Men knew their way around eyeliner and hairspray back then, too. https://xsrock.com/seriously-how-many-people-thought-at-least-some-of-the-band-members-in-poison-were-female-at-first/

Do you still draw?

Only when one of my kids or someone asks me to do something for a project they are working on. Last week I drew a buzzard on a board for my aunt. My eyes and hands are jacked up from arthritis, so I don’t do a lot of detail work in any form. I can, but I don’t sit for hours sketching anymore. But good news–my kids inherited my artistic ability, so the legacy lives on.

You must love to drive–you are always on the go.

I hate driving. My plan as a teen/young adult was to get a job in a small town and settle down where I could just walk everywhere I needed to go. That didn’t happen. I like my autonomy and being able to just go where I need to go, and my kids have many places they have needed to go over the years, and my husband gets lost since his stroke years ago. It is really nice to have kids who are able to drive now, but when they aren’t around, I drive by default. I am an absolute jinx when it comes to vehicles–if it can break, it will. Not a fan.

Got a notification today that I got a new follower here–welcome, welcome…

OK, the other day I just flat ran out of steam and time. There’s a few more things I need to say about the dream home. Being disabled blows, y’all.

The mini forest–kids need a place to explore nature and build forts. Growing up, we were literally across the road from a creek/river. We spent hours climbing over small cliffs and across shale “beaches”, slogging through the creek and picking up leeches and getting black feet from the sludge that coated the bottom. Was it cow poop? Was it decaying trees? Both. It stunk to high heaven, but it was like soft, gooey pudding. Yes, I also licked salt blocks that were set out for cows. Fight me.

— Whew. Alright, had to take a brief break to dispatch a snake. My mom came in all a flutter (she’s 77, let her flutter) and asked if Tim could get rid of a snake that just scared the s*** out of her. Tim grabbed a pitchfork–our family prefers a hoe, but sure. He stabbed it a couple times, but it slipped away into the grass. He has assured Mom it is a garter snake and harmless–he also didn’t have his glasses on, and we have those pesky Massasauga rattlers here in eastern KS that are the size of a garter snake, so Mom and I are leery. We also have a lot of copperheads in this yard for whatever reason. Hate those suckers–don’t care what breed, don’t care what benefit they provide to the ecosystem.

Add that to the dream home list–NO SNAKES. The frogs and crawdads can stay, and I will even allow bees as long as they don’t stab me and send me to the ER.

OK, so forests. We live in Kansas–there are no true forests here. But back in the day, homesteaders were required to plant trees to improve their land. I find it fascinating to drive around the back roads and see a pasture with a stand of trees in the middle of nowhere, because I know that once upon a time, that was someone’s home. Our neighbors to the west had a nice little tree-filled pasture, and my brother and our neighbors’ son spent hours using fallen branches to create walls and forts. He had a legit tree house that his dad had built that was a masterpiece, but we liked dinking around with fallen limbs like this:

Not my picture, but it’s cool. https://www.audacy.com/wbbm780/news/local/stop-making-forts-in-the-woods-officials-tell-visitors

Also not my picture, but it is the river I grew up next to:

This particular picture is in Arkansas, but it’s what I experienced. https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/the-saline-river/ It amazes me that Jon and I spent hours there and never took a picture. I guess hauling a camera along when you know you are going to get wet isn’t a priority. Dream home needs a dream creek.

Back in the house, we need a conservatory/music room. My family needs music like others need air. I still have the record player my dad bought in France when he was stationed there in the 60s, and that was what I spent my childhood listening to vinyls on. I still have my dad’s vinyl collection and my own. We also have the pump organ that my great-uncle modified into an electric one. We have my brother’s drum kit. We have a number of electric guitars and keyboards. We need a place to jam out, and it probably needs some decent soundproofing in case others in the house don’t care for the musical genius emanating from the room.

In the rec room I mentioned in the previous post, we need a table and some bookcases that hold our board game collection. We like board games. We don’t always follow the standard rules supplied by the game creators, but we have fun.

The elevator I mentioned in the previous post–it needs to be big. It needs to be able to transport furniture from floor to floor, and it needs mirrors so people can check their appearance on their way out if they want to. Furniture moving and mirrors aren’t really compatible, so we need a way to fasten moving quilts to the walls to protect the mirrors.

The laundry room will have at least 2 sets of washers and dryers. I needed a laundromat setup when the kids were small, and sometimes it still would come in handy. We need the big monster washer and dryer for bedding, too. No point in skimping now.

The kitchen needs an industrial dishwasher.

Honestly, I wouldn’t even mind if we had stainless steel countertops to make cleanup easier. Man, holiday dinner cleanup would just zip right along with this setup. Heaven.

In the ideal world, I would also have a few guest houses around the main house. I want my kids and their families and friends to visit, but I know sometimes they need their own space, so they can have their own guest homes. Each of them has different tastes and hobbies, so they can be individualized. One needs a fishing hole nearby, and one needs a basketball court.

I think that about does it for what I remembered after I posted the last time. See ya in the next post!

I’ve been waiting for this blog challenge prompt. “Describe how you would decorate your home if money was not an object.”

I have been creating dream homes since I was a young child. The home I grew up in had 3 bedrooms upstairs–and NO BATHROOM. I have a number of sketches scattered around in notebooks where I was plotting out how to convince my parents to renovate the closet in the eaves into a bathroom, since the eaves were right above the existing first floor bathroom and that would make the plumbing slightly easier. It never happened, and now that home is demolished and shoved into a pit and buried in what was our front yard. Said house is the picture for my blog–R.I.P., 1917 Montgomery Ward catalog home. You were beautiful, and I loved the built-in curio cabinets.

I also grew up with every Barbie Dream Home in existence, and that made me realize houses could in fact have more than 2 stories AND and elevator! Sign me up! The dream homes probably also contributed to my lack of fear when it comes to using not-neutral colors to decorate. I was really proud of the peach and white bathroom I had in one house as a young adult, and I had no problem painting my son’s room multiple colors when he asked for a puzzle piece room.

Shocker, people–it’s just paint and it only took 1 coat of primer to return it to a soft light yellow when he moved to a different bedroom in the house a few years later.

I have had several “dream home” ideas over the years that came to fruition. I really liked my laundry system at one of our houses.

Yes, my kids are color-coded–it makes life easier. With this system, I didn’t have to lug laundry baskets up 2 flights of stairs and the kids knew where to look for clean clothes if they didn’t have any in their rooms. It also made it easy for them to grab one basket at a time and know what drawer to dump it into when they did put their clothes away.

So– what would my dream home look like these days if money was no object?

Well, there are a few renovations I would do to the house we currently live in–we live with my mom, because 1, we could not afford a house payment on disability, and 2, we didn’t need a 6 bedroom house after the kids grew up and moved out. But there are a couple things I would love to do to make it more accessible as a disabled person. I currently am very limited in what I can do in the basement because I have like 40% lung function thanks to severe asthma, and stairs are my enemy. We need a chair lift so I can venture down there more often. We also need a bathroom in the basement so we can stay down there longer to work on projects. All of the plumbing is there, but the fixtures are not and there are currently no walls–so we need walls and fixtures. Then I would also add a she-shed/library/art studio/cat-condo out in the yard with AC/heat and plumbing so my books and craft supplies had a home.

Now, if money were no object and I could build a dream home from the ground up, that would be a whole different beast.

Think gothic monstrosity like the Munsters or Addams Family homes. Yes, I know that involves a lot of stairs–that’s why there will be an elevator tucked in behind the grand staircase. There would be a lot of woodwork, and I love cherry finish, so it won’t be light wood. How many floors? Well, once upon a time I read a book that had a sub-cellar below the basement, so we will have 2 basements–the sub-cellar would be a root cellar type room, but stone. I grew up with a dirt basement and I abhor snakes, so stone. And we need at least 3 stories above ground so I can have a little room up in the top where I can gaze out at the surrounding land a community. That cozy little turret will be decorated along the lines of Professor Trelawney’s room in the Harry Potter movies–lots of drapery and pillows and windows.

We need a media room–theater screen, sound system, karaoke area, comfortable seating. Gotta have a popcorn machine and soda fountain.

The library is wall-to-wall shelves, cherry finish woodwork, with a few cozy chairs and a couch and desk. I also need a book wheel, because I enjoy running down tangents when I am reading, too.

The kitchen would have a cabinet that contained the kitchen mixer and popped up to counter level to use it.

A double oven is a must-have. I have had several over the years, and they are mighty handy. I am not a fan of open flames, so the stove would be electric. Sidenote–need a generator for power outages. The refrigerator would have a water and ice dispenser in the door, and would be a 2-door one with plenty of room to slide in trays of goodies to cool or freeze as part of the construction process. There would be a large counter with bar stools so people can visit while hanging out in the kitchen.

The master bath needs to be accessible, because arthritis–but I like to soak in a tub, so I am tired of showers only.

Gotta have a king-size bed so all of the cats have a place to snooze. Walk-in closets would be great. I also need a large jewelry cabinet to put all of my earring collection in.

The basement would be a rec room–bar, pool table, card table, ping pong, skeeball, all of that jazz. There would also be a small kitchenette there for snacks.

We need a pool–I like aqua therapy for arthritis. We need an indoor one to use year-round, but an outdoor one would be cool, too. On the patio would be a firepit and seating. We would have a bat house and bird houses, and a fort made of sunflowers in the yard. I like redbud trees and spirea bushes. No lilacs or baby breath–I am severely allergic to those popular plants. We need a wooded area, a mini forest with a path to meander down.

It’s not part of the home, but we also need a chauffeur to handle driving duties and a comfy conversion van or RV so the family can go exploring and I can be relieved of driving duties.

So yeah–dream big or go home, right?