Entry for August 24, 2006

Muppets' Wizard of Oz  The Muppets' Wizard of Oz DVD comes out on August 9th! Check out the ABC.com Muppets' Oz site for pictures and streaming video... and you can download the teaser ads at Scarecroe.com!     Who's Who in Oz updated May 2005   Recast FAQ updated May 2005   Two Things about Muppets' Oz updated May 2005   Desktops updated April 2005   Pictures updated April 2005   TV appearances and ads updated May 2005   Merchandise updated April 2005   Macy's promotion March 2005   Interviews updated January 2005

The theme for the day seems to be these adorable little fuzzy fake personalities that are known the world over. Who doesn't love the muppets?  No one!

So I have not seen this rendition of The Wizard of Oz, but I will certainly look for it now. Thanks to Wisteria Rose for the mentioning and therefore looking for images to copy and paste with permission of course and it led me to this ad and well it is going to submit I hope. thanks again Wisteria love and hugs sweet sister!

LOCKERRIDGE

Entry for July 22, 2006

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France

  Hello good friends,

I am as you may be able to tell, just a little bit tense and tired of it.  No, lets make that a lot tired of it. The only person who can fix this is me. So I am going to do just that. Like the quote above tells you and I,all change is uncomfortable, but it is inevitable. It is going to come.  If you don't learn to roll with it , you will get rolled over, and become food for the crows. I will not be among the picked upon or apart if I can help it. I am being trained for something.  I don't even know what in, but I am going to roll with it, and try not to go insane. Try is a very big word isn't it? Hummmmm..... this may take some more thought,so onto a new and brighter subject.

I went into partnership with my cousin Al to buy 10 acres of property today. We are going to purchase it from our other cousin who lives in California. His dad bought the property from our other uncle and all of them have passed on now. So the Calif. part of the family is willing to sell his share of Ark. back to the Arkansans. It is a nice wooded parcel and get this it has a well already drilled and in a little well house. The electricity is run to the property, and it has on it some Indian grave mounds! This is so exciting to me. I hope they have not been robbed so I might contact the university and see if they would like to do a dig there. I have always loved archeology and this would just put me over the top in exictement. Al said it would be okay with him if I contacted the UofA  and tried to get a field team to evaluate it for us.

If nothing else perhaps we could get a historical rating for the property and maybe set up a small viewing for a fee to a select group or two per summer. I don't want a tourist attraction, but I would share it if I find out it is a neat place to just sit and ponder the universe or if it is a bad thing and cursed. The possiblities are endless with my imagination! I always have wanted a place to draw and paint and write prose or narrative in peace and quiet and this is definetly a place of quiet and I don't know about the peace yet till I can walk and sit there for a while. I bet I could talk Al into a little cabin for sure to get us out of the rats ended race we seem to be running lately.

My boyfriend thinks it would be a good investment for me to make and I trust his judgement about stuff like this. He is not one to say yes to much of anything that might be a little risk of losing money on, but this one he was immediately all for. That tells me it is pretty safe to take on.

My other cousin, the fifteen year old girl that I am going to call Princess, is here until the end of next week. Her grandmother/ mother has willed her to have her house when she turns 18 and her truck when she turns 16. I sure hope she is not going to become someone who you can't put their head in a five gallon bucket. This kind of thing can make a kid go a little too independent and she is already too much that way now. Al is going to rent the house to put money in an account for college for her. If she makes it to college. She was supposed to attend summer school, but well, she didn't so I have no idea what kind of crap they will have to straighten out for her this fall. I hope her dad does not allow her to live here with Al. He offered but she needs to be with her dad now. And he needs to get a hold on her before it is too late to try to get her some sense in her head and something on her mind besides how she is being mistreated. Good grief the kid is so conceited, and so accomplished at shoveling bull pucky that I cannot hardly stand her. I do not want to be the one to have to be her primary care giver. I would probably be charged with abuse in the near future, because her hind end would definetly know what it feels like to get me to swat it a couple of swats when she starts this poor pitiful me, and runs off to pout. I cannot stand that kind of stuff from anyone at all.

Onward to something else. I guess I will start trying to line up a remodeling contractor soon. I should have my mom's estate about cleared up next month and I am going to move into her house. I can't though until I do some changing. I still miss her a whole lot. I mean a whole lot. But it isn't so sharp now. Losing aunt emma jean has really brought my son to his grief over his grandma though. He just would not stop and deal with it. Now it is hitting hard and I am glad I learned a long time ago to let it hurt and get the scar tissue over the hurt, early on. Running away is worse when it catches you . And it always catches you.

Enough for today, hope everything is going to turn out for the best. Or I guess I will deal with God's plan however the best way I can.

lockerridge

 

 

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end. matchbox 20 closing time

    It came to an end today. My Aunt Emma Jean passed away at 4:45p.m. Tuesday July 18,2006.  I was the last person she saw in her life.  I wish it were not so, that she had to go. But Ialso feel at peace for her. She hurts no more. She crys no more. She is bewildered no more. For she was no more Emma Jean here on this earth. She was not the woman I remember when I was small who washed my hair with rain water, to make it shine and feel soft.  She was not the  lady who made things happen if she desired them to. She was no longer anyone she liked to be. She was a stranger to herself and to us, her family. She is now Emma Jean once more in the presence, in the very room with all of God's Glory shining around and down upon her bent head and she kneels before God to receive His gift of eternal life. I feel at peace for her soul. The golden light in the photo I have as my heading for this, her last blog, is the sort of healing warmth,I feel she is surrounded with.  I took this photo as I was going home from caring for her one day.Ithad started to thunderstorm just as the sun was setting. The world was filled with golden rain for a while. I stood in that golden shower,and took this photo.

She wished to be cremated and they are going to make the arrangements tomorrow. She requested to be placed in the cemetary with all of her brothers and sister( my momma) in the appropriate type grave and a marker erected for her. It will be done as she desired. I do not wish to attend these arrangements, but I have a lot of experience at it,and well if Al asks I will go.

This morning I went as usual to Al's house to take over care duty and Al told me she had slept all night without waking. He got up several times to check her and she was sleeping soundly.  I figured she was glad to have gotten all of her business taken care of last night, and had finally relaxed. I did not wake her until 9:00a.m., well I tried with ice water and a cloth to wake her and wet her mouth, but she would not wake up. I did not feel I should call 911, at that time. She was sleeping deeply and had a percosett before bed as well as a lunesta. She should have been asleep.  I called Al instead. He elected to come home and try to wake her himself. He tried and she roused enough to shake her head and mouth the words no, no, no, no more. He asked if she was sure and she shook her head yes. I washed her face and hands, I tucked her covers around her and I let her sleep.

Al and I talked about all of her wishes, she had begged both of us to not let her die in a hospital or nursing home. She was at the time to do one or the other of these things, as Al's finacee was not going to be able to care for her alone even with my part time help. She was lying in a sort of U shape and she was not able to bend out of it. I felt so helpless, I just kept wetting her lips and hand combing her hair. Al said he needed a few things from the store and I volunteered to go, and let him have some alone time with her. I was gone for about 3 hours, returned at around 2:30p.m. She was breathing more shallowly, but still steady. I wet her face and lips, tried to get her to take a drop or two of water from my fingertips, no avail, and left her room around 3:30p.m. I talked to Al for a while and he was calling her granddaughter for the 15th time since this morning, I went back in to check on her. It was around 4:30p.m. and she woke up when I placed the washcloth to her mouth, and shook her head at me no. I asked wasn't she thirsty, she shook her head no once again, I told her that her granddaughter was on the way and she got really agitated , shaking her head and moving it from side to side saying no, no, with her lips. I calmed her by telling her she did not have to do anything she did not want to do. I went out to get Al and tell him she was awake . We needed to get some liquids into her and call 911. If she was lucid and could recognize me, she was not going to go today. We could still help her maybe, but when we went back in at 5:10 p.m. she was gone. Gone.........gone.......

Coroners and Ems vehicles and the funeral home all made the parade today and it is over for the physical pains, and mental suffering she so bravely withstood to make everything right for her family. She was one of the bravest women ever to be born. I am envious of her place to which she sees all of our family waiting for her. Today marks the end of Emma Jeans beginning. And the new beginning from that ending. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

lockerridge

July15,2006------Passion always comes with a high price to pay..............

Hello my friends,

This is a day I would rather not have in my life. I am sure that it is a day no one wishes for themselves ever. I was asked to help someone I love to gain release from pain, permanently. I could not do it. I am torn up inside and can't patch myself back together it seems.  What does a person do when they are asked to help someone pass on? When they love the person and have watched them everyday struggle to live, and it gets no better, only worse. The pain they are feeling is so intense they pass out at times. There is no cure, there is no hope for anything in the future except pain and loss of personal pride. The help they ask for is readily available to you to give to them, in the form of legally prescribed powerful pain medication. I am a coward I fear. I could not live with that on my list of "did I do the right thing?" questions for God when I see Him. I fear it would be wrong, but is what she is suffering right? It must be for He has not called her to Him yet. Tests such as these are cruel to ones mind and heart, and the scars last forever.

I have noticed in the last 10 years of my life, that God will give you what you hate most to deal with before you die. Whatever you are in your lifetime, He will take it from you, to spend your last days as naked as you came into the world. If you are independent and self-centered, you will be given the humbling to become totally dependent on others and you must think about others to be in this condition. You think of all of the people in the past you could have helped, should have helped, but didn't. You will be faced with having all the decisions of how you will live your life and spend your money given to someone else. You will be completely dependent on others. You will have to accept what you hate the most as being what you are now.

If you are dependent and timid, you will have what you are leaning upon and hiding behind taken away and you will have to stand on your own in front of a crowd. You will be forced to be the total opposite of what you have been all of your life. This is God's way of showing you who He is and what He can do. In short He shows you He is in control, He is God, not you.

I have had my faith tested and stretched out so far it has cracked and torn, but I always have managed to tape up the cracks and glue it back together when it gets torn. I know who God is and I sure will never forget it. I just wish I could stop being taught so many lessons. I am too dumb to breathe, I think sometimes. Too many I's in this blog. Need to get to some of the How are you, part of it me thinks. (no I)

But since I have had no time to be here in a while, there is nothing much to report except, my aunt is a lot worse, as you may have guessed. She is on Percosett's now and they are making the pain easier, but not gone. I can only guess at what it would be like if her circulation were to suddenly return and all of the wounds she has were to regain all nerve feelings. It would be so bad she could not even scream. As it is she turned white and passed out the other day when she stood up to be helped into her chair, from her bed. 1 step away. I caught her, but I will never forget it, ever.

This sclerderma disease is the most cruel illness I have ever witnessed before. Cancer is mild compared to it. I have watched her turn into a hard plastic like person. Her skin has many lesions where the collagen has collected into a open place beneath the skin and the skin tightened on it and it just splits open like, well, a watermelon.   If she happens to tap herself just a little bit she does not bruise as  you and I know it. She just get a red place and that turns into a hard knot that opens and looks a lot like an eyeball, in its socket. And it does not get well. Nothing does. It just gets bigger and more sore. I would to God, He had never let this happen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She has probably in one weeks time eaten enough to fill one dinner plate with food. She takes 23 pills a day, and that does not include the salves and cremes to be rubbed onto the skin and her wounds. I am the caretaker during the day and she is not  a good patient. She has gotten meaner than a snake the last few days and has taken to chewing me out for any and everything that is wrong. I have had no time for myself at all in a long time, and I am sorry to say, I am resentful of it. She is more demanding and I am worn out. Her son is worn out. We are all about to lose our minds, but she is still with us and I will continue to keep her out of nursing facility as lon as possible. We have a program here for home health workers to come out periodically as well as hospice, which starts next week. Maybe I will get some relief then. And so will she.

Gotta go and do something else or I will never sleep tonight, take care of yourselves my friends, have the time of your life every single day, and if you are wanting to do something, and keep putting it off till a better time of money or free time. Stop and go do it now. Tomorrow may not allow you this curtesty, of manipulating your life.

lockerridge.