Category Archives: Family

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A Quilt for my Sister

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It’s been two and a half years since my father passed. His wife gave me and my sister all his shirts and flannels. She specifically asked me not to make her a quilt out of his shirts as it would be too painful to look at. She asked me to do something with his ties so I made this pillow.

He had some ugly ties, but that’s ok he’s dead and it won’t hurt his feelings.

I decided I wanted my quilt made out of the flannels and Karen wanted the shirts. So after I cut all the flannels up my sister says to me, you saved one for Sierra right? Remember she wanted one. And in slow motion like Christmas Story the F word went off slowly in my head. So I had to go to plan B. I decided I would make her one as well and do hers first. I finished hers for her graduation from college. If you look at the solid squares you will notice it forms a C for Carty. It resembles well the way my dad makes a C. The middle square has a pocket and in it is one of my dads monogrammed handkerchiefs.

It was probably six months before I finished mine. My goal was to embroider all the Carty’s names and dates since when my father died, the Carty line ended. His dad had five sisters and no brothers. My dads oldest brother adopted a son but he passed at forty-five and did not have any children. His middle brother did not have kids. I still have not done this but here’s my quilt. It is slightly bigger than Sierra’s I have a pocket dead center but have not put a handkerchief in it yet.

After this I put the top to my sisters quilt together. I started hand quilting when my new dog decided to chew the thread. Trying to unwind it was a nightmare and it came off in little pieces. I went to replace it and they didn’t have that color anymore. So it sat in my room forever. About four weeks before Christmas I decided I was finishing it. Back in October I had done a quilt for my uncle and in one of the squares I thought it would be cool to put Love , Eddie in Eddie’s handwriting. I got to thinking if the tattoo artist could get my dads signature on my arm, perhaps there was a way with material. Thanks to the magic of the internet, I found a blog about Sulky stabilizer. Basically you can print from computer onto it. Then you peel it off and it sticks to material. Embroider over the lines and then when the quilt is washed the stabilizer disappears leaving only the thread behind. Originally I had planned for my sister to use washable fabric marker to make this little guy she always drew on her cards to my dad.

However now that I could print from my computer and my dads wife gave me every piece of paper from his work, I had a gold mine of information and creativity. So here is the quilt and then I will give an explanation of each square. This information is for my kids but feel free to continue reading if you are interested.

When my dad was in Shriners having surgery on his legs, he spent a lot of time reading as there was nothing else to do. He was an avid reader for the rest of his life. When I asked for the book Flowers In The Attic, he bought it for me but read it first. He said to me “I’m not sure I should let you read this, it may warp you for life.” I still have the book and now you all know why I’m like the way I am.

My dad became very weird about his birthday. When he turned fifty, my sister snuck over to his house and decorated his yard. When he woke up that morning, he called me and went off on me. So when I called her to tell her he yelled at me, she cancelled our birthday dinner.

We would go out, just the three of us for our birthdays. Eventually it became a nightmare to schedule so we just went for his. We were at Pasta House in Arnold one year when the waiter asked who was ordering first. The following square is what flew out of my sisters mouth. Thank God the waiter kept it on the down low and quietly brought a small piece of cake.

My dad rode a bike all of his life. I remember him riding 50 miles on the Katy trail more than once. My dad wasn’t your normal biker. He never ever wore shorts and always rode in jeans. He did not have a fancy seat either. He gave me his bike a few years back when his knee could no longer take pedaling. My sister got a bike tattoo after he passed. Ho-hum was something he said a lot when we talked on Saturdays. I can still hear him say it.

His applications for top security clearance included every address he had lived at. So I managed to scan them and then line them up so that I could put them on this quilt. They are also in his handwriting.

My dads first birthday after he passed Karen and I planned to go to Salem. We also wanted to find the farm where he grew up. Back in those days his address was John Carty Doss MO. That was not real helpful. I had only been to the farm twice. The first time around the age of ten when the farmhouse burned to the ground. It was believed to be intentionally set by the owners for the insurance. The second time was in 2015 when my dad took Emily and I to Salem and to the farm. I reached out to a person on ancestry but they never responded. However I found a newspaper clipping about it being sold thirty-five years ago and it’s location. It was in the Carty family for almost one hundred years.

One time on the way home from seeing the grandparents I had the hiccups pretty bad. When my dad said this to me, I fully believed him. It scared me and I didn’t hiccup again the rest of the trip.

The quilt wouldn’t be complete without my dads handwriting and his favorite car. He was obsessed with corvettes all his life. One of his work buddies still has his corvette he owned in the 2000’s.

I was at Arnold park about a week before I started all this embroidery when a guy was smoking a pipe. My dad smoked one for a while when I was in grade school. As for the saying below it, it’s a classic. My sister was having a crises in December and when she called my dad to tell him, he said these words and hung up on her. So now anything we don’t want to deal with we quote our dad.

The next two squares are his brothers and their wives and wedding dates. As well as his parents signature and wedding date. It was awesome to find them in all of the stuff I have. And also my dads phone number when he lived on Cavendish Ln. This was before the area code had to be dialed.

And the very last square. The words are from a card my dad gave to my sister. The car is his first roadster that he had custom built back in the day. My sister loved that car and it was TOD to her if he died. He ended up selling it and getting a new one for a total of four old looking cars. This car was also the picture on his funeral card and what we glued onto his parents tombstone in Salem.

Although this is my sisters quilt I must point out something. My dad was a huge KSHE 95 fan and looking at the shirt I realized his first daughter was born in 1967 (me) and his first granddaughter (Emily) in 1992. That must be why he kept the shirt all these years. Hahaha.

Mole Moral ~ Good things came to those who wait, and this gift is worth more than any amount of money!

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Christmas Angel 2023

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This was my twentieth year of being a Christmas Angel. When it was revealed to me who to do I was very excited because both people lived within ten minutes of me. Usually it’s either one person forty five minutes away or two people in opposite directions. For the first time ever I decided to find the houses in advance. So my dog Charlie and I stopped for a coffee and then off we went. The first house I passed the road (if you could call it that) up. It turned out there are three whole houses with my angel house at the end. No place to turn around, park or hide. So off to the next house which was even worse. At the top of 1/4 mile hill straight up and only room for one car. They were the only house and to even turn around the headlights shine straight into the two triple windows with ZERO window coverings. The house is in the middle of woods so no one can see in. So my options were drive up the hill turn around and then try and sneak to the door or park at the bottom of the hill and walk forever. I was mildly panicked about how to pull this off but I knew I would.

So I called my sister and told her she’s helping me. She lives in the middle of both of them so I would pick her up. I convinced her to do the running and I would be the getaway driver.

Night one, first house was foreshadowing of the entire event. My sister jumps out of car and takes off. As she runs back the lady opens the door and I’m like hurry up. So then I say which one did you take. She said they are both the same. I said no they are different ornaments and the other one is for someone who has passed and theirs is three musketeers. So we thought she was going to have to go back to the door and exchange but luckily she grabbed the right one. This house was a little easier because they always took a while to answer the door except for day 11. The entire family was over and my sister decided to hide between cars to watch them grab it. They all come out looking for her so she just had to make a run for it while they all were yelling and laughing tell us who you are. She managed to trip and fall over her own two feet.

Meanwhile over in the house in the woods. My sister decides we will park about 1/2 way up the hill while she tromps through the woods crunching leaves, getting hit in the face with branches to sneak up the side of the house. Somehow she managed not to fall. The second night she gets out of the car and heard someone say you got the present. Freaks her out and we realize someone is leaving so we go back down the hill wait for them to leave and then sneak back up. Day 3 we had a nice note left on the door. My sister asked what the persons name was and when I told her it turns out she went to high school with her and her x husband had a crush on me in middle school. He was like four years younger than me and I was like gross. Anyway super small world. On my dads birthday we decided to go at ten am and low and behold someone was walking down their road. My sister freaks out and says what do we do. I said smile and wave, keep driving like we are lost. So we make it to turn around and she said I’m dropping this off. Makes it almost to door and swears she is being stared out so throws present on top of tree trunk and runs back.

So on the last day since we were almost caught too many times I decided we would knock and talk to the people. The first people have been married 71 years and don’t look a day over 60. They both thanked us repeatedly and told us it was so much fun and made it the best Christmas ever. The wife had just got off phone with the kids. They had called from the lake to see if they had found out who it was yet. Wife hugged me and whispered thank you for making this so special as it will be our last Christmas most likely. I really hate cancer, only the nice people seem to get it. They also thought my sister was a teenager because she ran so fast.

Our other house remembered my sister and her name. The person walking up their road that day was not known to her. However they did see my sister throw the present on the tree trunk but couldn’t figure out why she threw it. They also thought she was a little kid. She said this really brightened her Christmas as well and thanked me a million times.

My point to all this is, the joy I brought these people by such a fun and simple thing was better than any gift I received. The gifts were small and simple but it made them wonder who it was and what would come the next day. It gave them something to focus on besides the circumstances which caused our paths to cross.

Mole Moral ~ It certainly is better to give than to receive.

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Grief is Annoying

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Later in the month it will be two years since my fathers passing. I have been doing well for quiet a while now until yesterday. It was my birthday and my mom wrote something really nice on my Facebook wall that included my father. I cried off and on at work the rest of the day. So when I got to my car I listened to the voicemail he left on my birthday in 2019. Not sure why I didn’t answer the phone that year as I was on my sabbatical from work. But it cracked me up, just like it did when he first left it.

We talked about this a lot at Grief Share. How sometimes it just hits when you least expect it. So I embraced it and just cried. Brian gave me orange roses which are gorgeous. Then a bottle of his favorite wine. Like seriously ruin a great gift but I think it’s because he was afraid I’d hate the roses or something. He’s one of the most bizarre gift givers I have ever met.

Allyson gave me my gift today. And bam grief back again. She took ceramics this year in college and made me this.

It’s Isla with her weird non eye and all. It looks so much like her. She went with me to put Isla down last October. I never mentioned it on social media because it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. She was extremely aggressive and most likely had rage syndrome. She had bit both Allyson and Kayla for no reason. As well as attacked Moonie many many times. I have said all my life I would not have a dog that bit people. It’s just too dangerous. So we sent Isla to heaven with a message for my dad if she can talk. The vet tech about flipped out but Dr. Smith told her it was the truth.

So I’m sad all over again today. But I tell myself dogs will be in heaven even though Pastor Kevin told me many moons ago Jesus didn’t die to save dogs. Obviously he’s a dog hater.

Mole Moral ~ I learned a long time ago, you don’t get over death, you just learn to live with it.

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What it’s like to be me

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My life will always be a comedy of errors and todays post will confirm this.

Yesterday Brian was over at my moms house assessing what needed to be moved and a plan on how to do it. Somehow she managed to trip over a lamp cord and started to fall. He caught her before she totally hit the floor but she managed to bend her foot backwards. This morning when I got a message it still hurt and she thought it could be broken I decided to take her to urgent care. This would confirm no breaks and she could stop worrying.

The nurse practitioner was a little snippy and no lie my mom flipped her off when she left the room. She returned after the X-ray with a total change in attitude and informed us mom had three bones broken in her foot and they needed to consult orthopedics to determine if she needed to be seen now. She comes back a short time later and says she can see them this week but she needs a splint and no weight bearing on that foot. Hopping around on one foot with a walker is not an option. Even I would veto that so I reach out to my sister to see if she has a wheelchair and she does. So mom and I make plans to swing by her apartment storage unit to pick up walker (Brian had just put the stupid thing in there the day before) then to my sisters house for the wheelchair and then back to her house.

She realizes she has no cigs so I agree to stop at gas station. She then smoked one while I’m fetching the walker. I start the car to leave and it will not start. So I have to call Brian who is currently at my moms house. He is busy power washing her siding to get her house ready to sell. Luckily he was just finishing up. So he has to drive to my moms apartment to jump start me. My mom cannot get out of the car because she can’t put any weight on her foot. So my car starts up and he tells me not to turn it off. Yeah duh!

We fetch the wheelchair and make it to her house. Luckily she never took the wheelchair ramp down from when she broke her ankle back in 2010. We barely made it in the door because the wheel got stuck on the entryway. By this time Kayla had arrived to go to the store and pack some things up. So I dropped her off and came home.

Brian backs my car out of the garage and looks at the battery. He then took old one out and bought a new one. I am so thankful he can fix anything.

Mole Moral~ It’s never simple in this family!

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My sisters new ride

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Sometime back when my mom was still at rehab my sisters engine blew in her car. It’s a known issue with that vehicle but since there is no recall she was basically screwed. It would be a year wait for a new engine or she could spend four thousand dollars for a used one with no guarantee it wouldn’t do the same thing. She had been using my moms car during this time but my mom is ready to drive again so Karen has been looking for a car.

She found a used Nissan Morano which both she and our dad had owned back in the day. It only had 107,000 miles on it and was located in Rolla. Now Rolla is thirty minutes from Salem where our father grew up. I just knew that this was the car. So Brian says I guess you two bimbos need me to come with you. We were planning to go to Salem after to make sure the two hot wheels were still glued onto our grandparents headstone. Once I realized if we bought the car he could drive mine home, I was like yes come with us.

Karen called to make sure it was still there. She swore the person on the phone sounded like Flo from the show Alice (think Mel, kiss my grits). So we all head to Rolla. We pull up and it’s like a mom and pop shop next door to the owners house. The person that answered the phone was a shy timid guy who was super nice. Karen and Brian test drove it and Brian says it’s a good deal. So we talk about how to pay. They got burned by a personal check but the banks are closed for Christmas Holiday so I cannot get one. (Side note, my mom is paying me back and Karen is paying my mom). So my sister says how about if we give you five hundred cash and the rest a check. He has to check with his boss and get car inspected so we go into Rolla for lunch.

The guy calls as we are finishing lunch and agrees to the deal. So I say to Brian how much cash do you have on you. He starts counting out his money. He has exactly 480 and Karen has twenty so we don’t have to deal with ATM. In the meantime this dude is watching the entire scene basically giving him the look of you are paying that much money for two old beaters, they must be really good. Bahahaha

So when we return to sign the deal Karen notices a picture on the wall. It looks almost exactly like my dads first roadster including being red. Then she sees another with four corvettes one of which looks just like my tattoo on my arm. I was like I knew dad lead us to this car. As we were heading over to Salem underneath the sticker that said the year was a date written in white. Karen says what the hell is that. I said probably the date they got the car. Karen look at it. It was 12/21 which is our fathers birthday. He would have been eighty-one this year.

Mole Moral ~ Signs are everywhere. Often we are too busy to notice, slow down and pay attention.

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The Pea Princess

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If one has read my previous blog, they know that my mom was in the hospital for thirty-five days and then spent another two weeks at a rehab facility. I should have written this first but the trip home was too much of a comedy not to post first.

Briefly my mom had a big surgery to move her stomach out of her chest back into her abdomen. Leave it to her to experience a complication that occurs one percent of the time. But after five days with out of control pain I forced her to go to the ER. She was running a temp and her heart rate was in the 120’s. The ER did a CT and lab work while out in waiting room. Because I have access to her my chart I saw her WBC was 20 so I knew she was not going home. She got tired of waiting and wanted to leave. I said nope, not happening. Once we got to a room and the ER doc came in looking freaked out about CT results I knew my waiting room assessment was spot on. I just had no idea that the on call surgeon assisted with my moms surgery and said she needed to be transferred to SLUH or St Mary’s because only they had the equipment to do what he needed to do surgically. When she had a bed at SLUH and was in their ER in less than three hours I knew it was life or death. I have never known SLUH to have open icu bed for transfers (at least in my endoscopy world).

My mom had surgery that day and would have another within four or five more days. She and I truly believe the only reason she survived (she’s no spring chicken at 78) is because of the outstanding care she received at SLUH. Her surgeon had just arrived three weeks prior as the new chief of cardio thoracic surgery. Later he would tell me he treated this complication often and people were sent to him from all over the state. So she received excellent care surgery wise. However, it was the above and beyond nursing care she received that was instrumental in her recovery.

She spent the first week in ICU and those nurses were so incredibly kind, smart and attentive it made me want to leave endoscopy and work there. No worries I reminded myself why I left critical care in 2000 and how two months of it at the beginning of Covid was enough for me.

She was then moved to a regular floor. There were times when I know those nurses were working short and yet they never used it as an excuse and continued to act like my mom was their only patient. And no it was not because I was there all the time (I wasn’t) or calling them constantly (I didn’t. I still had access to her my chart so I followed her labs daily without bugging the nurses). It’s just how they are.

Now my mom was a bit of a PIA about her pillows. I swear she had every spare pillow on the floor in her bed. Well they decided my mom was like the princess and the pea. Since she nicknames people all the time they started calling her the pea princess. We all got such a kick out of it. When her chest tube came out and her esophageal stents came out I knew her time at SLUH was coming to an end. So I started thinking about a thank you gift. It is well known I can bake but I thought nurses always get food and it just makes us fat. Flowers are pretty but they die. Then the perfect idea came to me and I ran with it.

Every nurse needs a good black ink pen. And because my mom is snarky and funny, I decided on snarky nurse pens. But because not all of her nurses were snarky, I also did some custom ones that said “thank you from the pea princess”. My mom about started crying when I ran the idea by her. She loved it. I found the picture on the internet and Allyson helped me remove the background. I took it up on a weekend after she was discharged because the weekend charge nurse was phenomenal. Both my mother and sister also really liked her as well.

On the ride home from rehab just one week ago my mom thought she was going to need to buy a wheelchair. I went along with her while in my head thinking she was crazy. Yesterday we went to primary to get her blood pressure straightened out. (Rehab messed with her medicine till she was running 90’s over 50’s and so dizzy she couldn’t hardly walk with walker). The only time she used the walker that day was to see him. She’s all over the house without it. He said no more blood pressure medicine for now. A week without it and she was 120/70. He said she’s lost so much weight she may no longer need it. So my favorite saying “will continue to monitor”.

My mom was convinced no one would remember her. The fact that it’s a rarity to have a patient in the hospital for thirty five days alone is enough. But couple it with the fact she could have easily died and the fact she rarely asked for anything and was so freaking funny she will be remembered by some forever. When she left for rehab her nurse called me to tell me and said she (the nurse) cried when my mom left. A couple days ago someone called to set up home PT and said I never took care of you but I heard all about you. She left an impression on many that she will never know this side of heaven.

Mole Moral ~ So often people focus on the negative and complaining. It’s a choice to recognize the good and amazing. Focus on that and let those know how much you appreciate them.

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Everyday is an adventure!

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My mom had surgery to move her stomach out of her chest and back into her abdomen on September 9. Her surgeon is the best for this procedure and I knew she was in good hands. He went over risks which seemed small compared to the benefits. She had lost about fifty pounds and was continuing to lose weight. Did fine overnight and then started with what we thought was gas pain from the CO2. Post op day 5 the pain was so out of control she was suicidal so I made her go to ER. I’m going to condense the next 50 days. She ended up with a huge chest infection where her stomach was. It later turned out one of the stitches in her esophagus ripped out causing a hole in her esophagus. So everything she had eaten and drank leaked out making the infection worse. They ended up placing 2 stents to cover the hole for three weeks. She was on IV food and not allowed to eat. She was on a total of five different IV antibiotics to clear the infection. She spent 35 days at SLU hospital where she received excellent care. She loved all the nurses and they loved her. She was then sent to Mercy rehab for 15 days to recuperate. She is doing better but needs to eat and get her strength back. She lost a total of twenty one pounds during this ordeal. It was one thing after another during this time and why I thought discharge would be smooth is beyond me.

My mom called around 10:45 or so for me to come get her. My sisters engine blew in her car so she has been using my moms car. My mom felt my SUV would be too hard for her to get into so I was driving to my sisters work when I got a text from Kayla. Are you at work? I just blew a tire on highway 40. So I call her to make sure she’s not hurt. We have triple A so I tell her they can put her spare on. She informs the last time she blew a tire (on the way back to Springfield) the tire store threw the spare out because it was dangerous to drive on. Now to say my stress has been off the charts for two months is an understatement so I say let me call your dad because I don’t know what to do. So I call Brian and tell him what happened, he says call triple A and tell them to tow to nearest tire store. I said thanks and call Kayla. Now Kayla was on her way to school and can’t leave the car. So originally I was going to wait with Kayla and then go get my mother. I call her back to update her. Then my sister was like I will wait with Kayla, you go get mom. So I call mom back. I don’t think rehab has ever discharged anyone as fast as they did us. Well as we come upon Kayla and my sister I see my husband has arrived so I drive on by. Then turn around to go back towards home. I tell my sister Brian can wait for tow truck because I know he is not going back to work and I need to get my mom home. So Karen leaves. Brian calls me and says are you coming back to get Kayla I have no room in my work van because his partner rides with him. I’m about to lose my mind so I turn around again and head back to them. Now mind you my mothers back seat is jammed packed with her crap so I ask Kayla if she wants to put it in the trunk. She is as stressed as dance competition days and said no I want to get off the side of the highway now. She shoves all of my moms stuff over to the other side and gets in. Then Brian calls and says he needs her triple A card so she gets back out runs it to him and gets back in the car. She is so shaken up she no longer wants to go to school but wants to go back to her place. She puts her address in and we start down 40 East. All of a sudden she realizes her apartment keys are with her car keys and she cannot get into her apartment. So we end up taking her to school and then I take my mom home. In the meantime Brian had to wait over an hour for the tow truck but followed them to Dobbs and arranged for a new tire.

I seriously cannot make this stuff up. It is very comical and before we pulled off I said to mom this is like who’s on first. She looks at me like I’m nuts and says what. I said you know who’s in first, what’s on second, I don’t know is on third. She then starts laughing and says we have a gift of being able to laugh through trying times. I said who did that routine. She says Abbot & Costello. I said oh yeah all I could think of was the Hardy Boys. She informs me they were detectives. Yes I know I read their books.

So Kayla is safely home. I got my mom all set up in her house. She looked at Facebook briefly and then fired up the switch to check in with her villagers on Animal Crossings. She was suppose to take a nap when I left but instead started checking email. She needs to eat eat eat to get her strength back and put on a little weight. She got around very well with her wheeled walker and in the words of Dr. Heavey “I think she’ll do just fine”.

Mole Moral ~ Everyday is an adventure. It’s a choice of how you tackle it. The moles choose turning it into a comedy!!

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Goodbye Yellow Rose Bush

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Brian and I moved into our house in 1990. I cannot remember if we planted the rose bush that year or the next. Anyway I picked yellow at my moms suggestion as it was her dads favorite. I never really took great care of it which really annoyed my mom because it was amazing. A few years back Brian and I started saying when it died we were getting divorced. He would also say he peed on it every night and it just wouldn’t die.

At the end of last summer my rose bush looked dead so I cut it back super short and contacted a lawyer. Just kidding. This spring it has not come back. I looked up average life span of rose bushes and it said 30-35 years. So I certainly did something right.

My dad died almost a year ago so I started thinking about what color rosebush I would replace this one with. Maybe because my house is burnt orange and my brick has some black in it, I thought about black. With the internet it makes it easy to find. So I researched them and found two really cool ones. Of course no plants are available until next year but seeds are. So I decided I will grow from seeds. I researched how to do this and after planting the seeds they go in refrigerator for 6-8 weeks for stratification. After that they need grow lights for warmth. So I ordered the seeds today. I have enlisted Brians help because after he took over the Christmas cactus from his moms plant, it made a bloom. Of course he moved it to a different window with better light but I need his help.

So it looks like the rosebush is dead but our marriage lives on. Who knows maybe my next career will be growing rosebushes and selling them.

Mole Moral ~ Death is inevitable but from it new life springs!

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A visit to Salem to celebrate my father.

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Only my sister and I could turn what should be a sad day into a comedy of chaos.

Our dad would have turned eighty today on the shortest day of the year. He always commented on how he hated winter between the cold and dark and being born on winter solace. He had shared his wishes that he be cremated and have his ashes spread between his brothers. About six years ago my dad took Emily and I down to Salem to visit the cemetery, the farm he grew up on, his parents house they moved too after they retired from cattle farming and his brothers house.

My father was cremated but Brenda expressed she couldn’t part with his ashes. We were fine with that. My creepy sister wanted a necklace with some of his ashes so the funeral home gave us some in a small bag. I almost forgot to grab them this morning. We decided we would spread these.

So we head out at 6:30 swearing Salem was a three hour drive but instead was a short two hours. We drove to house first since we went there a lot when we were young. The carport had been turned into a garage. The back of the house had a sliding glass door and a deck. However the propane tank still in the backyard and I could still envision the trellis that was up that had the climbing roses on them. I could also still see grandmas close line and garden.

We then headed over to Uncle Bobs house. I was one number off of the address and I swear the house didn’t look the same as it did five years ago and the yard seemed much smaller than when I was a kid. The senior apartment center my grandma lived in next was right next door. We drove around trying to remember which was hers and which was our Aunt Gracie’s. I had an address and I was like oh it’s her apartment number. When we drove to the recreation building I was like oh yeah I looked it up on the internet.

Then it was time to go to the cemetery. I mean how big can the place be. Karen had found on a gravesite locator website they were in section B. We couldn’t even find section B so we asked a worker who was clueless. He gave us the number to the county clerk. We finally find section B and are wandering all over the section. I finally say call that lady we are never going to find it. So she calls and the lady takes her number so she can go look it up. As we are walking to the car to warm up I’m like stop, look it’s right there. If we would have only parked in front of the B sign we would have seen it right then.

Karen brought some stuff to leave and I was so distracted I almost forgot the entire reason for the trip. I notice the order of graves is Uncle Tom, Aunt Margie, Aunt Ruth and then Uncle Bob. Now how exactly was I suppose to spread them between his brothers when the wives were in the way. Thanks dad for not thinking this through. Bahahaha. So I spread a little over his two brothers and then his parents.

In the meantime Karen has her crafting glue out and is making a very nice display to add to the grave marker. She was annoyed she only had one memorial card but decided to glue the words side out. She also picked up a hot wheel Camaro that was half blue and half green to represent both his cameros. After she gets it all glued I say too bad we didn’t laminate it because the rain will ruin the memorial card. So she gets all finished and screams happy birthday John Carty and gets in the car.

All of a sudden she remembers she has her laminator in the car. She also has an electrical outlet in the car so we go to the gas station to use the restroom while she also finds laminator sheets. We get back to the gravesite and she now has to carefully peel his memorial card off that she stuck on with gorilla glue. She plugs in the laminator and it’s too much voltage and blows the circuit. So not to be deterred she slides the card in the pouch and cuts it down to size with her straight edge paper cutter. I said it was a good thing she had that as our dad could draw a straight line without a ruler and always had picture edges perfectly straight. She did a perfect job and glued it back to the headstone and it’s now safe in the rain. I wish I could say the rest of the day was uneventful but we were off to find the farm.

There is no written address for the farm. Back in 1962 the address was The Carty’s Doss Missouri. Luckily at some point I think my grandparents saved the newspaper clipping that announced the farm had been sold (it was in the Carty family for almost one hundred years) and said it was located on a highway next to a bridge. (I knew which highway and the name of the bridge but the entire world does not need this information). So off we go. We come to a bridge and I see the house but I’m like I thought it was white so we keep driving. Now I did take pictures of it five years ago which are uploaded to Walgreens. The actual farmhouse burned to the ground sometime in the seventies I think. I remember Aunt Ruth Uncle Bob and grandma talking about it and we even drove out there at that time. So I’m like wait maybe that’s the house and I’m thinking of the white farmhouse. I’m like I’ll look on Walgreens except we are in middle of nowhere with no cell service. So my sister says why didn’t you screen shot the picture. Thanks genius. We go back and I’m like that has to be it except the barn is now gone as it was near collapse six years ago. So my fathers entire family is gone, his childhood home and the barn he did homework all gone. So I snapped a picture, did not see a for sale sign, and we decided to drive over to licking to see the house my uncle grew up in.

The house was as I remembered once we looked at the address correctly. I don’t remember houses being in the back of them. I did remember if you turn left out of driveway a short distance on right was a gravel road or you could keep going straight. Throughout my life I would dream I would turn down the road and it went on and on to a scary place. Guess what I learned it’s just a short distance to a main road. We also went straight and that road goes on forever. So hopefully those stupid dreams are gone forever. The roads seemed much scarier when I was a kid. We drove over to the high school and said I wonder where moms house was that was close to Judy Ellis. She will probably say that was the house but I don’t think so. However I have zero sense of direction so who knows.

We finished our day by stopping into our cousins cafe in Sullivan. Both of our cousins were there so we got to see them for a bit and had a wonderful lunch. It was an ending to a very nice day.

Mole Moral ~ Only a mole could walk all over a graveyard stomping on people when the grave was literally right next to the road. Rest assured I dropped a pin on my map app to be able to find the grave easier the next time.

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Angel’s Landing

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About a month ago I was talking about this trip at work during a case. The CRNA student is from Utah and said if you go to Zion you must do Angel’s landing. He told me that towards the end there are chains to hold onto so you don’t crash one thousand feet down. My high fall risk self vetoed that immediately. And then we arrived at Zion.

First of all, I was not impressed with Zion. It is way too crowded and parking is ridiculous. Our first day we wandered in at ten and there were zero parking places. So we went out of the park to Springdale where they charge forty bucks a spot. Every spot was taken so we parked in the lot for the hotel and risked being towed. The next day we arrived at seven-thirty and the parking lot was two-thirds full. So if you are going to go to Zion get there early.

On our second day I was peer pressured by Brian to do angels landing. When we reached this sign he said I could wait for him.

There was no way he was calling me a chicken for life so we trudged along. The climb up to the point of the chains was intense to say the least but we made it and I didn’t die.

Brian tried to tell me this was wider than five feet. I said sure crackhead and looked straight ahead and at my feet. No way was I looking down.

We made it to the top. The scenery was breathtaking but it was so crowded we didn’t stay long. We feared we’d get shoved off the edge so we headed back down. Going down all that was way scarier than up.

You can see the chains in this photo. This section super narrow and not five feet wide.

This last photo is the switchbacks. Going down was easy, coming up was a workout.

So the question I know everyone is asking, did she fall? And the answer is of course I did. It was at the very end of coming down the chain section. I was literally ten feet from a no fall climb and thinking about the text I was going to send to Dr. Heavey about not falling (he loves to keep track of how many times a trip over stuff )when I hit sand and went sliding lost my balance and fell backwards landing hard on the left side of my butt. My poor left side looks like Brian beat me when in fact I’m just a clumsy bull in a China cabinet.

The reason this hike is so risky is because of the massive amount of people going up and down at the same time. Many get impatient and rock jump and shove around slow people. The crna student told me the park is going to make it a permit only hike which I think is a great idea for safety. They were all set to do it and then guess what? Covid of course.

Mole Moral ~ Amazing things happen when you step out of your comfort zone as the next two blogs will show.