My daily life revolves around my husband, my dog, Sally, and two cats, Meagol and Little Miss.  My eldest son lives within 12 miles of us and we visit about once a week.  My youngest son is in US Navy stationed in Japan, we only get to see each other maybe once a year but he calls every weekend.  He has a daughter, 10 years of age, and we have only gotten to see her on rare occasions.  We have a vegetable garden and many flower gardens.  We watch and identify birds that come to partake of our offerings.  We live in a big farm house, about 120 years of age!!  Our neighbors are some cows in pasture that come to visit across the fence.  We actually do have a couple of people neighbors but not within shouting distance.  We call our place, Cedar Hill as it was originally called, mainly because we have a very large windbreak to the North and West consisting largely of cedars.  I am retired from the 8-5 business world but my husband still works at a local business.

Cedar Hill Frog Kingdom

You probably know by now that I am an artist and a poet since I seem to flood ALP with my works of art and poetry!!  There are many other interests in my life.  For one, I am a computer nut.  Ever since the first ones came out and there were some monsters, I have been fascinated with them.  We actually got one of the very first Packard Bell’s that came out.  My knowledge of these machines has come from trial and error, more error and many trials of “Oh, what did I do now and how can I fix it!?”  Since owning our PB, I have never been without a computer and pray I never will. It is my contact with the outside world.  I have many friends and family with whom I communicate and this is the tool I use.  I enjoy all my cyber friends here at ALP and all the other places I am involved.  MySpace was the second group I got in after Adlandpro.  There is so much trash there I just wanted to add some clean stuff and maybe some of those people would appreciate real beauty.  As you can gather, I get very few hits on my videos and blogs!!  I have discovered, though, that lots of folks appreciate what I do.

Videos of Cedar Hill

It seems sometimes like I have lived at least 2 lives.  I was born and raised in South Alabama, Blue Springs, to be exact.  Our school, Blue Springs, went from grades 1-12 and I did them all right there.  Just this week my best friend from school and fellow graduate visited with me.  We lost contact during the years we were raising our children and regained it within the last 7 years.  It was a wonderful visit and we were exhausted from trying to catch up and talk at the same time!!

From my country home, I left Mama and Daddy and moved to the Big City of Montgomery, Alabama.  It was an exciting time and I made lots of new friends, had many interesting jobs and attended business school.  There were many choices of future husbands out there and I chose one with a good family background and thought I loved.  We had two wonderful sons together and I was completely devoted to them.  After about 10 years our marriage began falling apart but I stayed in it for another 11 years and with my teenage sons supporting me, divorced him.  It was a struggle but we made it and were able to see both of them graduate from college.

My sweet Mama was getting on in age and I wanted to be closer to her so we moved to Selma, AL.  Actually I worked in Selma and drove 90 miles a day to work and back.  I lost my Daddy in 1971 just after my youngest son was born.  Mama was my best friend and we had always been very close.  It was left to me and one of my brothers to take care of her after she suffered several mild strokes.  I lost her in 1989 and had married my second husband in 1986.  He was a tremendous support for me but Mama is one we never get over losing and she is still with me in all my daily life.  After her death, my husband who was from Kansas, decided he wanted to move back.  I moved here in 1991 and it was a struggle to readjust from Alabama to Kansas, so for many years I was back and forth.  My brother was an accountant so I would go back to Bama to help him during tax season.  Kansas weather was so harsh for me.  It is always too hot or too cold.  We lived in rural Lyon County for a few years and then moved to Burlington in 1994.  I worked here as Site Manager for Meals on Wheels and then for a local chiropractor and got to know many of the people here.  We have found Burlington, KS to be a friendly and sociable town.

At the end of 1999 my eldest brother died from cancer and my accountant brother had been diagnosed with lung cancer.  They needed me in Alabama.  My brother wanted me to come back and stay with him; he was single and still working.  My sister’s husband also had cancer and was in remission.  My other brother had been very sick for several years and finally had heart surgery.  My husband said ‘go help your family.’  So I went, I had my own apartment but spent most of my time with my brother and as his disease progressed, it was fulltime 24/7.  He had children but they lived some distance away and he wanted me there.  I had a black guy who helped me, actually my brother had raised him and he considered him his Daddy although my brother would discipline him when he said it. There are many stories I could tell you about those times when his pain got so bad and they gave him all that horrible medicine that should be banned from our society.  We had to laugh to keep our equilibrium.  He died in February 2001, my brother-in-law died two weeks later and my other brother died in June of same year.  With all of this, I had to GET A JOB(!) to support myself.  My brother had promised that his children would take care of me after his death.  They truly did, they abandoned me!!  Well, work I did and at a hospital.  The hardest job I ever had in my life and it got me.  It was time for a change.  My sister was sick by this time and I was too sick to help her.  I moved back to Kansas in September and she died the following February.  Of our family of 8, all were gone except me and my younger brother.  He is still well and lives in South Carolina.