IF ONLY...

 By Caroline Clemmons

My mom was ac wonderful mother who kept her family foremost in her mind and heart. But, as much as I loved her, I know she wasn’t perfect. Who is?

 Many of her sentences opened with the same phrase—if only. My father used to tease her with, “Mae, if it was raining money, you’d complain about the small change.” She usually responded with an annoyed huff. This phrase is part of our family memories that we recall with humor.

 Lately though, I’ve caught myself saying “If only….” about things I wish I’d done. If only I’d told my Dad how much I admired him. If only I’d told that Virginia what a rat she was. If only I’d done more to help my mom. If only I’d saved more money. Sigh. I have hundreds of “if onlys” clogging my mind.

 Probably the recent passing of my dear husband launched me on this train of thought that has me examining the past. I know it’s not productive. More than likely it’s not healthy.

 Our minister gave a memorable sermon titled “Nostalgia” in which he addressed the healthy and unhealthy ways of examining the past. His sermon  stepped on my toes, but it’s still my favorite of his always meaningful sermons. For one thing, the past can’t be changed. Don’t look back longingly, wishing you could return to another time. Instead, honor the past while making the most of today.

 If only I can do that.

Trick or Treat by Bea Tifton

Yesterday at the grocery store I pondered that oh, so important question, What Halloween candy will we buy? We really don’t need to buy any, because we don’t have any trick or treaters. I don’t think many kids even go door to door now. When I was a kid we did. We planned our costumes carefully and greeted the holiday with anticipation and excitement. We would go door to door. If we knew the people, we were allowed to take cookies or the ultimate fun Halloween homemade treat, popcorn balls. Word quickly traveled when one house had particularly good candy. Some people I knew piled into a parent’s car and drove to the wealthy parts of town, but to my friends and I that was cheating. It was a neighborhood thing. We would go door to door, escorted by our parents when we were very small, then allowed to go on our own. When we got tired, we would come home and gorge ourselves. Mom and Dad would pick through our haul to get their favorites as well.  After a few years people began to circulate rumors of razor blades or candy poisoning, and while we still got to trick or treat, Dad would buy our candy from us. It wasn’t quite the same but as an adult I understand. (Hey, at least we got money to replace the candy if we wanted.) 

Now I see elaborate Halloween yard decorations, but I think most kids go to Trunk or Treat celebrations instead of going door to door. I think those are nice but not the same as the neighborhood celebrations. It’s a little sad. Today’s kids don’t know what they’re missing, but I do. And my father really misses opening the door on Halloween. He loved the little ones the best because they just looked so cute in their costumes and the proud parents would be hovering nearby.

We have a new routine where we buy some candy “just in case” and order pizza for Halloween. We watch the original “Ghostbusters” and “Practical Magic” and snack. I enjoy it. Last year I had choir rehearsal on Halloween night and we did the pizza thing the day before, but it wasn’t the same. This year, the way is clear for pizza and candy on Halloween night. I may even put a Halloween shirt on the dog.

 

Do you have trick or treaters? Do your kids do something for Halloween?

  

Photo Credits:Pexels.com
Terrance Barksdale "Pile of Halloween Sweets"
Yuting Gao "Group of Children in Halloween Costumes"
Charles Parker "Little Girls in Halloween Costumes Standing on Stairs"
Sam Lion "Small Dog Sitting in Light Studio"
Kaboompics.com "A Room with Halloween Decorations" 

Have You Tried AI? Plus Food, Cables, & Musings by @JacquieRogers

 

 

 Have You Tried AI?

Plus Food, Pulling Cable, & Musings

by Jacquie Rogers

Okay, so I'm obsessed--what else is new.  (Don't answer that.)  I've been fooling around with AI because, and here's my very well thought-out reasoning, AI would be exceedingly useful for book promotion.   (And it's something new and shiny, but I'm not going to own up to being so easily distracted, so put that thought out of your pretty head.)

One of the things you can do is make a video from a blog post, so of course I had to give that a try.

Here's the actual post: Holiday Season Already! 

To be honest, I don't think bloggers need to worry about being replaced anytime soon.  Even so, it's a wonder that it came so close.  This was done in steve.ai.

Next I tried a promo type video in canva.com.  You just tell canva what you want and it creates a slideshow for you.  I said, "Blonde woman on a black mule set in the Old West."  Here's how that turned out:

So how about fantasy?  Aurora Valentine is also a blonde.  My instructions were, "Blonde fairy riding a red dragon."  Canva never did get this one correct but not bad--and some of the pictures are better than the ones I paid for on dreamstime and depositphoto.  So here are the results of the Aurora's Treasure promo video:

I don't think it's ready for prime time yet.

Why women live longer than men.

Other Ways To Get in Trouble

Mr R and I have spent the last 3 weeks pulling data cable.  Yes, we've lived in this house four years but he never did get around to doing the permanent wiring.  I've been connected to the server by a cable strung from light fixture to light fixture down the hall and into the spare room, then into the server room.  It wasn't pretty but it worked.  Now we're all wired in, but the price was dear.  I have bruises all over my hands and arms.  Mr R knocked off several hunks of skin and it'll take a while for his wounds to recover.

(I don't know why Blogger isn't putting any space around the photo--that's above my pay grade.)

We pulled wire from the floor of the server room, under the house, to the corner of the garage where you see Mr R now.  From there, the wire goes up the wall to the attic and over to the outside wall, then down that wall to his computer.

To be honest, we should hire this work done, but there are two problems.  The first is that our area's real estate is HOT and there are no contractors that do small jobs in a reasonable time frame.  The second is that no one can do anything that meets Mr R's notion of how things ought to go.  So...we pull cable, scooting around in the crawl space and in the attic--both places particularly desirable to spiders.

Now for some bad news.  The jewelry store, Norman Jewelers in Caldwell, where Dad bought Mom's wedding ring set has closed.  Three generations worked there, and I guess there's no one to take over and it's time for the current owner to retire.  Sad to see.  But the good news is that Mr R bought a ring for my Christmas present.  It had to be resized, of course, so we're picking it up tomorrow.  From then on, no more Norman Jewelers.

That's me standing in an empty jewelry store, and my ring on the right.

Naturally, Walter has been asserting his rights as head of the household.

Walter the Bed Hog

Happy Valentine's Day and I hope you get books--they last a lot longer than chocolate and you can enjoy them several times over. ☺

Until next month, Happy Reading!

Jacquie's Website | Amazon author page | BookBub

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If you're on TikTok, friend me!  My handle is @jacquierogersbooks.  

You can get videos of Honey Beaulieu and Sassy's latest updates there.  And goofy videos of her scribe.  Heck, we even do a few cooking videos.

Keep up with Jacquie Rogers' latest news at the

Pickle Barrel Gazette!
Honey Beaulieu - Man Hunter series
Hearts of Owyhee series

Summer Memories by Bea Tifton

Rain Trueax is in a non-Internet zone, so she has graciously allowed me to fill in.

Ahhh, summer in North Texas. That blistering heat that just sucks the life right out of me. I tend to do a reverse hibernation in summer because as an adult, I am prone to heat exhaustion. I stay inside, treasuring the fact that in the modern world we have air conditioning. The man who invented AC should have gotten a Nobel Prize.  Even running errands requires hydration and fortitude. But it wasn’t always that way. As a child, summer breaks were longer than they are now, and carefree. My mother didn’t overschedule us to death. We were allowed to roam, barefoot and half feral. By the end of the season, I could have stepped on a nail and it wouldn’t have gone through the tough soles of my feet. We would come in during the hottest part of the day and rest up to go out again as soon as the midafternoon heat lifted. 

 

When I was very young, we lived in East Texas along the banks of a beautiful lake. A creek ran past our house and we had a big yard. Ah, paradise. In my family, the words, “I’m bored” were forbidden. When one thing paled, we simply found something else to do. We had more freedom than children do now, albeit with a healthy dose of stranger danger just in case. We rode our bikes without helmets along the street or on bike paths children had worn through the pastures and vacant lots. If we had been very good and Mom was in a mellow mood, we were allowed to ride all the way to the Snap E Jack for some candy. I explored the creek and the lake, playing with ladybugs, turtles, and tadpoles. My sister and I would entice the occasional crayfish to come out of his hole by dangling bacon on a string. We always let them go, but they were such funny little creatures that we were fascinated by them. Minnows in the lake, caterpillars and cocoons on our plants, playing war with cattails; the world around me was my summer science lesson. My father patiently answered my questions why and how, occasionally referring me to our set of encyclopedias for answers. We swam to keep cool and roller skated without knee pads. 

 We moved to Florida when I was nine. We lived on a wooded lot surrounded by citrus groves. My friends and I would make pretend houses outside in their yard. We would get things no one wanted anymore, and furnish it with fascinating odds and ends.  It wasn’t wooded in their neighborhood, so not as many snakes.  And Florida has snakes. They would sun on the doors of our covered porch, so we would have to push it open and jump back, waiting for the snake to fall and slither sleepily and grumpily away. They would lurk in the palmetto bushes and drop down from the trees. I developed quite a phobia, but I never got bitten. We had an enclosed pool and I would spend hours swimming, pretending I was a mermaid.

When we moved to Texas suburbia, we lived close enough to an amusement park to get seasons passes. My mother would drop off a pair or a group of us, let us spend the day there, and pick us up again, hot, sunburned, smelly, tired, and happy. We would roller skate in my neighborhood for hours, down hills that scare me to death to think about it now, and we would ride my bike or shoot hoops at the nearby elementary school. 

It’s ironic that I spent so much time outside and now I hide in the comfortable, cool spaces in my house. But I have many great memories of summer. As hot as it was, a popsicle or a run through the sprinklers would cool us off. Then we were ready to go again, off into the world.

Do you have good memories of summer? Leave a comment below. 

 

Photo Attributes: 

Bare Feet: “Summer is Good for the Sole” G F Peck Visual Hunt

Turtle: Blake and Becca Visual Hunt

Ladybug: Carplips Visual Hunt

Mermaid: Annette Batiste Day

Roller Skating: “Children at a Roller Rink” Simpleinsomnia Visual Hunt

Popsicles: Jason Trumm Visual Hunt