"It's a Blustery Day, WTP"

Who remembers this?

Well, today was a "rather blustery day..."

It rained and rained, and the wind blew and blew and was raw and cold...

This was the temperature at about 3:00 p.m.  54 degrees, here in Florida.

I just looked at the thermometer now and it is 50 degrees at 6:19 p.m., and going down. No more rain, but still windy and raw.

This was after the rain had stopped. I don't know how many inches we got, but it rained pretty steadily for two days.  Still Waters Pond is full again.

You can't tell much from these pictures, but the wind was blowing and well, it was a blustery day...

So, for the first time in a LONG time, I felt like baking cookies! I haven't done much baking in a while because of my neck and arm issues prior to my surgery, plus I prefer to bake when it is cooler weather so it makes the house feel warm and cozy.

(and smell so good too!)

Warm Oatmeal Cookies, fresh out of the oven! Want one?

Click HERE for previous post with recipe

And my other favorite thing to do on a cold windy blustery day is make Hobo Stew: (recipe can be found on THIS POST. Click HERE, and Be sure to scroll down when you get there.)

And Hobo Stew always calls for cornbread:

Perfect food for a blustery day...

So what kind of things do YOU like to do on a blustery day?  

We've had the "fire" in the "fireplace"...makes it feel warm and cozy in the house. Actually we usually just turn on the fire light and not the heat portion, because if we do, it makes the furnace not turn on when it should and then the rest of the house gets too cold. Yes, our "furnace" has been on today, because there has been no sunshine whatsoever, and with all the rain and wind, it's been a very chilly raw day.  We Floridians have thinner blood than people up north because we aren't used to cold weather...so we need a little heat when it's so cold. 

I want to thank you all for your prayers and well wishes for me this past week. I truly am feeling a lot better and so very very thankful. Also want to thank you for praying for my friend "Jimmy", who has the brain tumor. He came home from the hospital yesterday, and is waiting for an appointment next week at the Moffitt Cancer Center, for further evaluation and possible treatment. Your continued prayers for Jimmy and his family are greatly appreciated.  

Also wanted to give kudos to our Putnam County Fire and Rescue and Sheriff's Department today. In the storm a tree blew down across the fence and driveway of one of our church friends, who lives alone and has health issues. After she placed a call to the county, it wasn't long before a crew of workers came and took care of the tree and cleaned up all the mess so that she could safely get in and out of her driveway. Very thankful for these folks who went beyond the call of duty to help a 'damsel in distress".  

Praise God for our First Responders!!

Have a blessed night and Sunday tomorrow my friends.

 

Friday Foto Friends...Memories of Youth

Good Morning Friday Foto Friends! Today is going to be a rainy, stormy day all day long and even tomorrow...they are calling it a "nor'easter" along the coastal areas of Florida and southern Georgia. So it will be a good day to stay indoors and watch the rain. It's supposed to be much colder as well, so maybe even a fire in our "fireplace" might be in order today!

In the way of having some kind of pictures to share with you today I thought you might like to watch the sun going down...

down...

down over Still Waters Pond the other evening. 

It's always a delight to sit out on the swing and watch for the sunsets.

You can't really tell it from the above picture, but that is our holly tree in front of me, and the holly berries are ripe and red and waiting for "customers" any day now. Last year we had such an influx of Robins and Cedar Waxwings that they ate every single berry within a week.  In looking back at that link I noticed it was around November 20th. So let's see if it happens again this year!

But now let us move on to other things that I've been thinking about this week.

Someone posted on Facebook these pictures of my old Alma Mater, Tavares High School:

This is how it looks today.  When I attended there over 50 years ago, (!!! Really??? How can that be?) we didn't have to have that tall fence in front of the school. No one ever thought of doing the horrible things that you hear of happening in schools nowadays back then. But anyway, let's don't go there.

This particular building was built in 1926 and was our Junior High and High School main building back when I attended there. The elementary school building was next door. At that time there were probably only about 500 total students in grades 1-12.  (We didn't even have kindergarten then). My graduating class had 50 students, and a large majority of us were there the whole 12 years.

Here is the current view of our beloved school auditorium, which was used by all grades for their special programs back in the day.  Now I don't even think one full class of students could fit in here at the same time...

Oh, and we didn't have those nice cushy seats back then either. Ours were the old wooden style auditorium seats...not very comfortable, but we spent a lot of time in there for school assemblies, concerts, plays, programs of every kind...cheerleading tryouts, talent shows, elections of school officers, homecoming queen, Miss F.H.A. contest, Mr. F.H.A. Sweetheart Contest (Future Homemakers of America...does such an organization even exist anymore???).  All grades 1-12 used this auditorium back then, so you can imagine it stayed very busy.

And here is the stage, very much as I remember it. I am so glad they still have the red velvet curtains.

Somehow the stage looks smaller to me than it did back then, but actually I think they have added a section out in the front that wasn't there before.

Here is a throwback to 2nd grade, and our class Easter program! Yes, we celebrated Easter in public schools back then, and I remember going on Easter egg hunts as a class as well.  

Here is our whole 2nd grade class on that same stage:

and in this close up, I am on the front row, on the right, with a flat hat on my head and dark sweater. My girlfriend Rhonda is the white cat on her knees right beside me.

And there we are 11 years later, walking side by side as we graduated:

Funny, I'm still wearing a "flat hat"! LOL.

And here's what's left of our class for our 50th class reunion a few years ago. Not everyone could attend, and then sadly we have lost a few of our classmates over the years. My friend Rhonda and I are standing in the second row at the far right end. I am in blue, and she is in black.

As a matter of fact, one of our dear classmates is currently battling a brain tumor with other complications, and perhaps that is what got me thinking about this right now. His name is "Jimmy", and he's the taller guy on the back row, the third one over from the left, wearing glasses. Prayers are much appreciated.

Jimmy is also in this picture below, standing on the back row, in the middle with a bowtie.

Jimmy's daddy was our family doctor in the early years. He took good care of me in this very year, 2nd grade, when I got pneumonia and had to spend a week in the hospital inside an oxygen tent! (Does anyone remember when they did that?)  I missed a lot of school that year, so I am glad to see I was able to participate in this Easter program! 

So now we pray for the doctor's son, who needs the Great Physician to heal him. Jimmy is a retired pastor, and he knows and loves the Lord, and is ready to share his faith with anyone and everyone.  May God give him the strength he needs to fight this battle.

Thinking about that stage got me to remember when I spent a lot of time acting on that very stage. It was our junior year, and we performed "The Curious Savage" for our class play.  You can click on the link below for more information about the play. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of our class performance. I wish I still had the playbook with the script.  I played the part of Mrs. Ethel P. Savage, as seen below:

The Curious Savage

The Curious Savage, written by John Patrick, is a comedic play about Ethel P. Savage, an elderly woman whose husband recently died and left her approximately ten million dollars. Contrasting the kindness and loyalty of psychiatric patients with the avarice and vanity of "respectable" public figures, it calls into question conventional definitions of sanity while lampooning celebrity culture. The play was first produced in New York by the Theatre Guild and Lewis & Young at the Martin Beck Theatre and opened October 24, 1950, with Lillian Gish 

Lillian Gish as Mrs. Savage

in the role of Ethel. Peter Glenville directed the production.

 Mrs. Ethel P. Savage: Referred to as "Mrs. Savage" for the majority of the play, she is a witty, kindhearted, blue haired woman with a shifted viewpoint of humanity. The events of the play are centered around her and her decision to hide the money which she has inherited from her late husband from her greedy stepchildren, to give away to those less fortunate or to fulfill others' random, yet important lifelong dreams. She dislikes her stepchildren, but learns to love the residents of The Cloisters, accepting their own realities and delusions with an open-mindedness that others on the outside do not.

Although I don't believe my hair was blue for the part,  I do remember spraying it with silver hair spray. I remember wearing an old fashioned hat that was loaned to us by a lady in our town.  I carried a large teddy bear much like the one above, and we sewed a little pouch on his bottom where I was hiding the bonds that my selfish step-children were trying to take away from me.  I had over 400 lines to memorize in this play, and today the only lines I can remember are these:

"I do not like thee, Lily Belle;

The reason why I cannot tell;

But this I know and know full well,

I do not like thee, Lily Belle."

Lily Belle was my spoiled, selfish step daughter.  The step-children were trying to have me committed to an institution so they could get a hold of the inheritance.  It was a great play...and the only other memory I have is that on the day of the evening performance, when all the parents and town people were invited to attend, I came down with a sore throat.  There was general panic as no one else knew all of my lines and there was fear they would have to cancel the play. However, I spent the day at my friend's house  (because my mother had to work), and her mother got me some chloraseptic spray.  It really seemed to help, and so that evening I carried my little bottle of chloraseptic spray onto the stage with me and hid it in the couch cushions so that I could spray my throat in between scenes as needed.  "The show must go on!"  And so it did and all was well!  

For our senior year we put on another play, and I honestly can't even remember the name of it, but I remember that I had to wear my mother's red negligee' set (it was an anniversary present to her from my father).  It was perfectly modest, have no fear, but I think I was some gambler's girl friend, or something like that. It was another fun experience.  

I enjoyed acting, and did one more play at a community theater, "The Ice House Theater", and it was the play, "Life With Father".    In this story, the father liked having red-haired maids, and there were three girls in my senior class who were all redheads, myself included, and so we three girls got the parts of the maids. It was a lot of fun to do this play, and I enjoyed acting so much I thought I wanted to be an actress. However, my parents said enough was enough and that the theater was not an appropriate place for me, and so that was that.  So a year later I met my husband and got married and that was the beginning of my best  and longest lasting performance of all.

I guess it is time to put this "show" to rest and get it posted before the day is over and done. It's still raining and I don't think we'll be going for our walk today.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane with me. I wonder if there are any other young (or current) actors out there in blogland? Would love to hear about your experiences if so.  Today I can't even remember what I had for breakfast hardly, let alone memorize over 400 lines. Oh to have the memory/mind of a 17 year old again! LOL.  

I like what God says promises in the book of Isaiah

Isaiah 46:4

"Even to your old age, I am He,

And even to gray hairs I will carry you!

I have made, and I will bear;

Even I will carry, and will deliver you."

Yes, no matter how old we are, or even if our mind goes, God will still be there for us...He will carry us through anything we have to go through.

This is good news.

Thank you again for your kind thoughts and prayers for my friend Jimmy.

Have a blessed and happy Friday.

Catching Up

Hello Friends!

It's November already! Wow! October sure flew right by us like a rocket ship out of control.

Even Halloween kind of caught us off guard, because our town told the kids to go trick or treating on Saturday night, Oct. 30th, instead of Sunday. Unfortunately, no one told me!

However, with "Lily Grace's" help, we got the little packages of candy ready to pass out as quickly as we could and had a great time watching the children parade up and down in front of our house...

Yes, Lily was a great helper. She wore her Brownie Scout uniform for her costume, mainly because Mommie never got around to making anything else for her, but it served the purpose and she was quite happy all the same...

She had some assistance from Mr. Jack O'Lantern:

I wish I had thought to take more pictures of the cute little trick or treaters who came to our door, but I was so busy passing out candy I forgot, except for this one interesting dune buggy thing that kept changing light colors...

I thought that was pretty cool, but prayed the kids on the back of it didn't fall off...

Some of you may have already seen this great discovery on my Facebook page.  From a distance I thought it was some kind of Halloween decoration beside the road, but as we got closer to it I realized it was only the "Ghost of Christmas Past."  

Yes, I passed up on this great "bargain", which was left there for the garbage collectors.

Ha Ha Ha.

So, I wanted to thank you all for your kind words and prayers for me on my last post.  Praise God I am feeling so much better, and was even able to go to church on Sunday. I especially wanted to go because it was Pastor Appreciation Sunday and we had a pot luck dinner after church.  

Here is our wonderful pastor and his wife. Very special people that we love dearly.  His wife Carol is also our worship leader/choir director...a very busy and talented lady, and a good friend.

I love this plaque that our UMW ladies gave to the Pastor:

I was so happy to be able to attend the dinner, although I am still having some difficulty with swallowing and it was a bit frustrating to see so much wonderful food and not be able to fully enjoy it, but I needed the fellowship more than the food.

Here I am on the right, and my good friend, the "other Pamela" is in the middle, and another dear friend, Lisa, on the left.

My kids Benton and Rose were also at our table, as was my hubby, but he was busy being the photographer in place of me, so he didn't make it into any of the pictures!

Here are just a random sampling of some of the pictures of our dear church family, enjoying this special time of fellowship and TOO MUCH food together!

As is the case in any church across America, we all have great cooks and we sure love to eat!

Always a joy and blessing to spend this time of fellowship together

We are blessed with some of the sweetest and best...

And the most fun too...

It was a great way to honor our pastor

As an added blessing, the church presented my hubby with this very nice card, as a way of honoring him for his many years of service in the pastoral ministry. He was truly surprised and blessed, as was I.  We were not expecting this, and it was very humbling and so nice to be thought of in this way.

Wow! That truly brought some tears to my eyes. So glad I persevered and made it to church!!

Also, in case you are interested and want to follow along with Sunday's message from Colossians 4, here is the video:

Back to the present:

This morning I had a follow up visit with my Primary Care physician, and everything was declared to be looking good.  I am feeling a bit better every day, and my appetite is getting better too as my throat heals and I am able to swallow better.  I was shocked, however, that the scales did not show that I had lost any weight over the last week...I wonder what they put in that Titanium brace installed in my neck? Maybe it was really made of lead...oh, I hope not...that would not be good. LOL.

I think this picture from my November  "Country Seasons" calendar (by John Sloane), is a fitting way to close out today's post...

Psalm 42:1

 "As the deer pants for the water brooks,

So pants my soul for You, O God."

I am very very thankful for how far the Lord has brought me in this healing process, and I just want to give Him praise!  And thank you all again for your kind words and prayers.

I am still trying to stay caught up with you all, but as soon as I think I've read them all, there's another whole bunch of new posts to read! You are a wonderful, but prolific group of writers! LOL.

Love you all!!

Happy November!!