Sorry I've been remiss

So my sister says to me, "Are ya gonna blog sometime, or am I gonna have to quit going to your page to check it out?" She should talk, she blogs about once a month. So yes, I need to blog. I've been pretty busy, but all the same, it's time to get to writing.

I have been in a cleaning project, trying to get some things ready for my daughter's yard sale, and just going through stuff. I've thrown some things out (do we really need to keep receipts for car repairs on cars we haven't owned in 2 or 3 years?) and a few days ago, I coerced the Man into sitting at the desk and going through a large pile of keys-I found several sets in the desk drawers, and a few behind a partition in the top drawer-like a secret stash. And lo and behold, what should appear from behind the partition-a lost set of keys to a Ford van we owned several years ago. I remember looking everywhere for those keys, and now, 5 years later, I find them.

As part of this cleaning out, I've found several old cassette tapes and have been listening to them-one of my mother and my daughter when she was about 2, another one of New Year's wishes from I think 1982 when some of our family was gathered at my mother's sister's home, one titled the "Plank Family Singers", one of a conference call between us siblings in 1984, and one that my dad made in 1982 talking about his early years. I'm going to give them to my brother, who says he can digitize them and burn them cd-tapes are pretty fragile after 20 years. I don't know if my children will even be interested in listening to these, but I was fascinated to hear my dad's voice again, telling stories about riding a horse to school, about their first car in 1917, and of my mother and my aunt expressing their hopes for the new year in 1982.

Between these tapes and reading my brother's post about sounds he remembers at night from the home place, I'm feeling pretty nostalgic. Hearing those sounds and being comforted by them is what drives me to escape from the city-I hear owls and trains where I'm at, but it's all the other stuff that crowds in that I don't wanna hear (and see) which makes me crazy. Recently I've heard a loud car drive several times up and down the street, heard yelling between car windows as two cars passed by each other in front of my house, and saw (and heard) a man relieving himself in my neighbor's yard after too much to drink. There are days I can't stand it, and then, I make myself say, "I choose to be content where I am and with what I have, until such time that I am moved..." And that's the end of that story.