Once Again

I am posting some of my older poems and articles on my website. Today I posted an article about Vladimir the translator from the mission trip I went on. Vladimir was an interesting person in his own right, especially with the Chernobyl connection. He was forced into that nuclear nightmare to help clean up, “against his will” as he put it. We just don’t understand the ways of another country. And there is a lot of our country that they don’t understand.

I had a lot of nice things to talk about when I was interacting with a lot of people every day. ever since I married Mario seven years ago I have been out in the country with no one around to talk to, I never got connected to anyone the church was to big and to far away to really get to know anybody. In seven years there have only met three people I really became friends with and never got really close to any of them. I was actually getting close to one person but she moved away. I lost all my friends of years ago when I moved. The problem is in times past people would live in the same area for years they would meet others early and would grow knowing all about them, becoming friends or perhaps not. They were never dropped in a strange place alone to make friends from thin air. If I had been working outside the home or going to some kind of school I might have made friends. Now I did work in the schools for a while but there was no teacher’s lounge for like minded teachers to have a place to talk. There was nothing but the teacher’s lunch table in the middle of hundreds of kids talking at a level that is uncomfortable to me.

It was not a good thing for me to be so alone. I always thought with time to myself I would get a lot of writing done. Well I have proved that wrong. The time was there to write but not the drive to write. I need to have the self discipline to get something completed. Before the stroke I did a lot if crafts. They allowed me to see things completed. It allowed me to make things of beauty and feel good about my handiwork. I would not only make designs from books and magazines or quite often made my own designs. After the strokes I have not even been able to make the simplest thing. I tried to teach my niece to make a simple Christmas decoration last year and I wasn’t able to show her what her hands needed to do. Not being able to do what I always took such comfort in doing is demoralizing. I feel more crippled in my creativity than I do in my walk.

I am getting better slowly but, at present, I am very frustrated. I need to take down the Christmas tree but could not even put it up by myself. I had made all those Christmas ornaments they are like old friends to me. Each stands for hours of time I had invested in making a thing of beauty. When I did craft shows I made good money for making things of beauty. that made me feel good about myself. Where can I get that feeling when one hand is meanly a useless claw.

Annette
“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery- from The Little Prince.~ http://onceagain.freeblogit.com/ and
http://sites.google.com/a/wildblue.net/my-corner-of-the-world/home and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/just4christianwomen2journal/ and http://annette-agnello.livejournal.com/

Things went fine except the ham was too salty. I had an entry written in the journaling program this is the second time I have written an entry for the blog and it disappeared into cyber limbo. Just like the picture I tried to get on the blog disappeared between the entry I tried to post yesterday I may have to write everything somewhere else and paste it in this journaling program.

I don’t really feel

Annette
“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery- from The Little Prince.~ http://onceagain.freeblogit.com/ and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/just4christianwomen2journal/ and http://annette-agnello.livejournal.com/

This is Christmas the story of the Widow’s mite reminds me of the Christmas story “Why the Chimes Rang”. In that story the chimes only rang for an acceptable gift. Even the king putting in his crown did not ring the bells. It took a poor little boy giving what he had been saving all year for his Christmas gift. After seeing all the great gifts he snuck up when no one was looking to give his gift because he had become ashamed of it because he considered it a poor excuse for a gift but none of the great gifts rang the  chimes it took someone giving all they had to impress heaven enough to ring the bells. This was because the tower was so tall the bells could only be rung by the angels up above the mighty cathedral.

I first heard this story from a scratchy old record played for us in the Library at the pubic school. That was before God  and prayer were driven from the public school. This album was played for the students we sang real Christmas carols, “Away in the Manger”, “O, Little Town of Bethlehem”, “Angels We Have Heard on High”. In second grade we did a presentation in class where we were the course of angels saying, “glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace toward men.”

Annette
“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery- from The Little Prince.~ http://onceagain.freeblogit.com/ and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/just4christianwomen2journal/ and http://annette-agnello.livejournal.com/

I had to go pay my husband’s term life insurance today. It had an interesting due date, the payment comes due Dec 25. I’d be willing to bet the office will be closed that day.

They have someone working there that I’m sure must be legally blind. I have never seen anyone pull the resolution of the computer screen that large. There are about three letters on the screen at a time and he still appears to be struggling to see what he is reading, even at that seriously enlarged size.
I almost did not recognize him today. I guess he has a Christmas party today or something anyway he was really looking good today. Except for the cowboy boots, those spoiled the effect of the suit.

Years ago I was at a retreat and one of the people there was blind. She asked me what the big tree in front of the building was like. Consider how hard it would be to describe a 20 foot fir like they have in the national Christmas tree display. Colors meant nothing to her or size the smell was easy to get across but nothing else really got through. Sadly, I felt she was as much in the dark about that tree after my description as before.

For once I am trying to get today’s entry done before bed time. Today I had my sister-in-law over for lunch. It’s nice to see her without her daughter. It gets blamed on her late husband doing all the discipline. When he died she needed to step up to the plate and be the parent, sitting limits providing guidance, and sometimes discipline.  She has been trying to be the child’s best buddy ever since her husband died. The child has been running the show since she was three. The only way Gianina could come here today was slipping over during school, sort of behind the child’s back.

I have been running late on things lately because so much has demanded my attention right now. As bad an attitude as I have been getting about Christmas this year all the prompts are about Christmas. I know, I wrote them for the group I’m in. Today’s prompt was: “Christmas past, Mother as a child wrote about her Christmas presents, have you ever written about one of your Christmases?”

My mother to my knowledge only kept a diary a few months when she was a child. I have that diary. When she wrote about Christmas in that little notebook. There were eight kids and very little money for a farm family. She told of an orange, a dime, a few pencils, and other very small gifts. The orange sounded like the biggest deal. My parents always tried to get gifts we would like. My two brothers were a lot older than I was so I never saw them get a toy. I had inherited some of their old toys as they grew up and moved away.

The Christmas I remember best was my second year of collage. My roommate had a small collection of Raggety Anne dolls. Did you know they have a date on their labels her oldest one was from the 1940’s. My time living with her the Raggety Anne dolls were 48 years old. She convinced me I should get one, she convinced me to want one. That year the younger of my two brothers spent Christmas with us with all his family. His first born was about four and sitting on the floor by the tree with me. Helping hand out the presents. Mother had asked me what I wanted so she got her twenty year old girl the Raggety Anne doll she wanted. My niece then four took one look at the doll and screamed, Mine!” I had to convince her that was my doll, hers was in the next box. It was not a Raggety Anne and I don’t believe Alisa was ever satisfied with it but I was going to keep my doll. Remember I was much younger then…

Annette
“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery- from The Little Prince.~ http://onceagain.freeblogit.com/ and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/just4christianwomen2journal/ and http://annette-agnello.livejournal.com/

Frankly I am Santaed out and it is only Dec 6. Nineteen more days of Santas with perhaps a break tomorrow because of Pearl Harbor. I’ll save my comments on that for tomorrow. Back to the Santas I have watched lots of other things but today I am watching the 1973 version of Miracle on 34th Street. I like the first two because the have the post office solve the identity of Santa. I don’t quite remember the ‘90s version but it seems to me they cut out the post office entirely. That is really not surprising because that film was made around the time the phrase”going postal” was coined for someone showing up with a gun.

This morning I was reading Luke chapter 1 the whole idea of Christmas should be about the miracle in Bethlehem not the one in New York. Reality has become politically incorrect, in favor of fantasy. That fantasy is being force fed and any glimmer of belief is trying to be stamped out. Where are the rights of believers. This nation was founder by people with strong Judea-Christian beliefs and values and there is an attempt to erase all memory of those early values.