Buffalo Gal

It is less than 2 hours to B-Day here at the BuffaloCorral….7 of the 8 grandkids are coming for a birthday party for the two that have birthdays in March.  The other one is 18 and has a part time job and has to work today.  This lets a grandparent know that the times, they are a-changin’ when a grandchild is 18 years old and has a small job on the weekends. 5 big kids—-sons and daughters in law are also due to come today, plus two of the granddoggers, Otto and Jobie. (Our cat will be in hiding within 2 hours also.  She is the only one who will not be thrilled by the invasion about to take place).

Ogden Nash said "When grandkids walk through the door, discipline flies out the window." This is not exactly true at our place—the kids know our guidelines…no food in the living room, when you eat , you eat at the table,  take off your shoes in the hallway, etc. but we will have a wild time today, especially since I told them we could have an easter egg hunt in the house!  The kids are a bit old for this sort of thing but….I make up clues for each plastic egg that is hidden somewhere and they have to read the clue and figure out where it is…it makes it a bit more exciting and challenging.

Now for my checklist:    Garage?  swept and rugs shaken.   Upstairs?  guest beds ready, bathroom cleaned, all "picked up" and put away.  Downstairs?  Vacuumed and dusted, kitchen floor clean, whatever for I don’t know …. because we are having pizza later.  Plastic eggs and clues and candy ready?  Check.  Camera out? Check.  Dog-Paw Towel in place in the garage?  Check.    The only  thing left is to clean up Grandma, something I will do in a few minutes.

It is crazy to clean house before your grandkids, granddoggers, and kids come because the house will need cleaning after they leave.  It is just an old habit I learned from my mother…company coming, you clean up the house.  but for now I have to clean myself up especially after working so hard to clean other things up!!!!!  It was Sweat City just about one-half hour ago!

We are going to have fun, fun, fun even without the sun, sun, sun!

I have blogged once in the past about the hopeless feelings we had after another huge hog barn was approved in eastern Clay County, near Hitterdal, MN.  Now news is received that yet another 425 foot by 50+ foot hog barn is being planned for yet another township…this one between the towns of Barnesville and Hawley.   The family that received the news because the barn would be right across the road from their more than 100 year old homestead of 4 generations of their family are devastated.  Who wouldn’t be?  The prospect of 2800 hogs confined in a barn, with all the manure, all the odor and all the likelihood of pollution of surface waters and underground waters is more than anyone can take in at one time. 

The relentless expansion by a family corporation that begin large animal barn operations in eastern Clay County in the late 1960s has marched forward especially fast in the past decade with the addition of at least 10 huge barns permitted and built in the southeastern part of Clay County.  The residents in that immediate area have suffered all the indignities that go with such an abnormal agricultural operation.  The residents of Clay County are used to farming operations and are most supportive of the family farms of the past and those that presently operate…..but, the CAFO* style agriculture is overwhelming, misery-producing and unacceptable. (* CAFO:Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation)  The health and welfare of people—physical, mental and emotional—is at stake when a huge barn is nearby.  People can no longer enjoy their own property in summertime when the stench is so bad you cannot even open your windows in hot weather!   We know people who have suffered this sort of stress for over 35 years with no relief and no relief thanks to an unresponsive and seemingly uncaring Clay County Commission and the Clay County Planning Commission along with the official Clay County Planner who oversees all such things in the county—-supposedly.  The current county planner has been more excercised by the prospect of dog hair clogging up a septic sytem at a Dog Groomer’s business than he is concerned for the people who have tried so desperately to get help and relief from the overwhelming CAFO hog barns going up constantly in the eastern part of the county.

Now another township faces the fouling of the air, water, and soil from the excessive application of liquid hog manure which will, in  this case leach into ground water since the area has already been identified as an area where the underlying soil is all sand….an ancient underground  sand dune/beach formation  from  glacial lake Agassiz lies under the area where the proposed CAFO barn will go if permitted.    There is no layer of clay in this area to catch and hold any ground water that seeps deep into the soil. Want to have a  drink of that water, anyone, in about 2 years down the road after tons and tons of hog manure have been dumped on a few acres of fields????

I am horribly upset by what is happening in my county.  Our planning commission is hopeless…with two notable exceptions who are both female.  They are the only ones who question the wisdom of permitting hog barn after hog barn in Clay County.  The rest of the members dully go through the "worksheets" required to get a permit….check to see if the blanks are filled in and then vote in favor of yet another pollution disaster.  None of them of course, live anywhere near a hog barn of tremendous proportions….only one of them who can think for herself is from the eastern part of Clay!!!  If you live in Moorhead or just outside of Moorhead, it is easy to  approve permits for environmental horror stories. These commisson members seem to only be seeing dollar signs, for the corporation and for the county….the county code speaks of the right to enjoy your own property without being affected by outside sources that cause negative consequences.  That part of the county code is totally ignored.   I would sincerely love to be able to arrange for about a ton of liquid hog manure to be delivered to the front doors of certain commission members. It would be what is called swift and righteous justice.

Eastern Clay county…and probably the remainder of the county, if things continue as they have for the past two decades   —is being turned into one big mess of Hogwash!

Welcome to Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Missouri—revisited right here in our own backyards.

Another proverb about being a grandparent comes from the well quoted source, Anonymous,  and says "Grandparents hold our tiny hands for just a little while but our hearts forever."  All the tiny hands are grown into half-grown hands among our 8 grandkids and this proverb is so true for us.  Another Welsh proverb says "Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild."   Our first grandchild is a girl and she is about to graduate from high school in just a few weeks.  I am stunned.  How did this happen?  She was a tiny girl whose tiny hands I  held while we took a walk around the block.  How can she be 18 years old already?  I did not cry at my sons’ graduations but I fear I am going to need a bathtowel at her graduation in late May.

When I remember the birth of each of our 8 grandchildren, I clearly remember getting the news and going to see the new baby for the first time.  Our first one was born in Fargo fortunately so we could see her within hours.  The second one was born in Fargo, and the 4th, 5th, and 7th—we nearly broke our legs getting there to gaze upon the faces of our grandbabies.  The third one and the sixth one were born in cities too far for us to get there immediately but it did not take too long to see them either.  Holding each precious baby was a fulfillment of the proverb about perfect love; we had a second chance to have babies after our own had become adults.  What a gift!

Each of them has brought us so much joy, it cannot possibly be measured.   Memories flood in on me…..the oldest girl asking me if I was old…my saying no, not really, why do you ask , and being told that I had a lot of wrinkles;  the second one asking me if I got my pretty dress at "Wal-Mert"….the third one covering herself with her first birthday cake and rubbing it into her curly brunette hair; the 4th one looking so much like her mother I could hardly believe it….the 5th one looking so much like her dad that I thought I was holding my own infant again….the sixth one a precious little white headed babe like her daddy, the 7th one smiling at me the first time I held him when he was a month old; and the final and 8th one being a clone of another of my own baby boys….he still is in every way!!

I love to hear the door open from the garage and hear one of the eight voices ask, "Gramma, are you here?"  Oh I am here, all right, and I am at your beck and call…come in and we will have a little snack together…want to watch cartoons? ESPN sports?  One of my many kids’ videos or DVDs?  Want to read together?  I will read whatever you want!  Gramma is here and she will hold all of you in her heart forever, just like the proverb says….even though your tiny hands are no longer available…you are too old for that kind of thing now and some of you are a bit shy about getting a hug and a kiss, especially in public.  But the love just grows and grows and will keep on growing as long as I am alive.

Last night I fell asleep listening to  the rain drive against the  bedroom window; it was a pleasant sound, a comforting sound that causes me to have a few flashbacks to other rainy nights and days.  For instance I can have a vivid memory of a gentle April rain return to me instantly when I think of walking, in my little plastic raincoat, to the church about a block from my childhood home to go to "Bible School" in the evening when a missionary (something I had not heard of before) came to teach at the little church for a week.  This was where and when I learned a childrens’ song, "Jesus Loves The Little Children, All the children of the world…red, yellow, black or white, they are precious in His sight….."  I can bring up that rainy evening memory and the memories of that week any time I see a rainy day come along, even now.  I also flashback to a rainy May 1 when all of us kids delivered MayBaskets to each others’ homes and the custom was to run after the "deliverer-er" and kiss them.  I recall running about a block in the falling rain trying to catch my Maybasket friend and I think I did catch him/her because I remember giving someone a very wet kiss…can’t remember if it was a girl or a boy but being I ran so far, it may have been a boy! 

Buffaloguy has flashbacks about the day that World War 2 ended.  He was only about 6 years old and was sitting in a barber’s chair in the Seattle, Washington area where his family had spent the last year of the war after his Dad was drafted.  The barber got the news from the radio and every adult male in the barber shop began to dance, sing, hug each other, and carry on ….and little B.G. was totally confused.  He got left in the chair with his half- a- haircut and sat patiently until the Barber came back inside after going out in the street to hug more people and rejoice at the war’s end.  It was a great day for all the people who had endured such a time as World War 2 produced in this nation.

When I think of sheet terror, I flash back to a day in early spring when I was less than 4 years old; I had little black rubber boots with red soles which I dearly loved.  I loved them so much I was constantly testing them by wading in puddles, melting snow water streams and  one day, probably in March when the snow had melted,  I decided to walk out into the muddy garden plot.  As I walked further out, my feet sank deeper and deeper into miry, sucking mud and eventually both my boots came off as I panicked and began to pull my feet out of the mud.  I was struggling to get back to the grassy lawn and my shoes got sucked off next; then my socks, as I cried out in terror for my mama.  I cannot recall if she heard my cries..probably not because I definitely remember it was not a warm day and the windows would not have been open.  I did get out of the miry pit and onto dry land and someone must have retrieved my boots, shoes and socks…but that part does not flash back….just the part about getting sucked down and loosing all my footwear.  This same thing happened to one of my sons many years later but he had a brother with him and the brother came tearing to the house to report it to Grandma who was staying with them at the time.  She got her turn in the mud and successfully pulled the grandson to safety but his boots got sucked off also.

The same two sons can flashback about their pocket gopher adventure, some years later when they were elementary school boys and were working each afternoon after arriving home on the school bus, as their dad’s pocket gopher trappers.  Every gopher caught in those days got its dead paws clipped off and deposited in an empty peanut butter jar which was kept in the freezer. I can get flashbacks myself about finding those gopher paws when I was searching for a package of frozen food in the same freezer.  More than once, I yelled and jumped when I encountered the paws-peanut butter jar.  But the true flashback incident occurred when they pulled a gopher out of a hole, caught in the trap but still very much alive, to their surprise.  The boy who pulled the trap up got the full impact as the gopher came to life and snarled and snapped at him.  He dropped the trap,the gopher and all his dignity, as he whooped and hollered in terror and did a little dance around the gopher mound.  His brother, who saw it all, never let him forget it and even drew a very amazing cartoon of the event with a dramatic picture of a monstrous gopher coming up out of the hole, looking very much like "Jaws" which was popular at that time.  The monster gopher had a set of teeth just like a shark and was emerging from the hole to attack the brother who was gaping in horror, in the cartoon.  It was titled "PAWS" and I wish I had saved it.  It was amazing artistry and cleverness for a nine- year old boy.

I can also flashbackd to another time when I was almost too young to remember much of anything but I remember standing in an outhouse, locked inside by my equally young playmate, Eddie.  We had been playing farm and I was the "cow" and Eddie put me in the "barn" but then went off and forgot all about the "cow".  My mother and Eddie’s mother searched frantically for me when they realized I was missing.  Their frantic cries for me were finally answered by my little voice, saying "I am in here!" and they both found me in the old outhouse.  My mother pondered later about the consequences if I had been impatient and decided to crawl up on to the outhouse seat where I would surely have fallen down one of the "holes".  I feel certain a Guardian Angel was hovering over me that day.  I only remember standing by the locked door in the dim little house waiting for Eddie to let me out.

All of us experience flashbacks in one way or another; hopefully all of them are either funny  or recall an incident that was memorable—-and it turned out was well as my "cowbarn" flashback did.

I have just read the account of the Fargo City Commission meeting last night when way over 100 people  from a Fargo neighborhod showed up  to plead with the commissioners NOT to put a homeless shelter (a "wet" house) in their neighborhood.

This is a most interesting social phenomenon plus it is a human phenomenon as well.  It is a deeply ingrained  human trait—-not wanting to have something in your neighborhood that might well degrade your property values, threaten your kids, possibly enable the residents of the facility (liquor stores and bars in the immediate area) and the most human of all responses….the right to control and enjoy your own piece of the earth which you have bought and paid for and continue to pay for by taxation.  It is an intrusion.

This is not just a human response….animals are highly territorial and regularly "mark" their territory and defend it against intruders.  All our dogs have always protected "their territory". Our last dog would make almost daily trips out to our mailbox where he would raise his hind leg and let the other dogs know that this was his place!!!      Do a little bird-watching and you will see protection of nests and territory there also.  I  always cheer for the little birds who chase marauding crows away from their nesting areas.  The wild geese in our river bottom right now are having territorial battles as I type.  Each morning I open the sliding door to our deck which faces the woodland and I hear the tremendously vocal arguments going on among the geese over who can build a nest here and who can’t.

As humans we are expected to  practice compassion for those among us who have stumbled and fallen and are gripped by addictions.  I am continually puzzled by the definition of alcoholism as a "disease" when it appears to be a decision, just as choosing to become hooked on cigarettes is a decision.  Smokers are held accountable for their addiction and are also subjected to ordinances in cities …and even in some states… that prohibit their addiction by law.  My question is why not treat alcohol addiction the same way?  Why are alcoholics NOT responsible for their behavior when Smokers are??   Those of us who are disgusted by being exposed to tobacco smoke look down on the smokers who make us miserable. Some of us glare at a smoker in a public place.    However we are not supposed to look down on an alcoholic person.  This is a strange paradox, to me.

We should probably not be looking down on anyone but the fact is, we do.

I read an account of the interview questions that CBS’s Katie Couric asked John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth yesterday (I did not watch it…just could not do it).  I was pretty horrified by the questions that got repetitive and very prying.  I feel sorry for the Edwards-es having to answer the crap Couric asked.  I feel sorry enough for the fact that Elizabeth’s cancer has returned in a more serious form and that they have to deal with this in the midst of a campaign which they have chosen to go on with; they are taking more criticism and unwanted advice about that also.  I just feel very sorry for them.  I am not in tune with John Edwards, politically, but I am deeply sympathetic to their current crisis.

Anna Nicole Smith died from a massive overdose of prescription medicines??  I am so shocked.  This poor woman who chose to make herself a national spectacle for so many years has slowly but surely killed herself and nobody cared enough about her to stop her from doing it.  It would seem that people around her enabled her, including unscrupulous and irresponsible doctors who kept prescribing drugs without checking to see what else she was consuming.  Her poor son died in the same way.  What a  horrifying commentary on the American way to drug oneself into oblivion. 

Nobody is willing to put up with any pain, any discomfort, any anxiety, any sleeplessness….so the advertisements  for prescription drugs that I have previously railed over, continue to take their toll by encouraging Americans to "ask your doctor" and get on the bandwagon—-take more drugs and more drugs.  Live out your lives in a drugged and disheveled state of body, mind and spirit.  We modern Americans seem so prone to addictions, be it addictions to prescription or illegal drugs, to cigarettes or alcoholic drinks, to food and overeating, and even to things like cell phones and blackberries and other technological gadgetry.  We must obsess over things and use them addictively.  What is the difference between digging one’s grave with your own teeth (over eating) and smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, or taking too many drugs?  Not much difference at all—-all of them are destructive, ultimately, and all of them take away an individual’s freedom.  Even excessive consumption of caffienated drinks is a form of addiction and many of us are caught up in them!!  I love my morning coffee cups (at least 3 of them).  So I am hooked also.

I am still wondering where the beautiful morning went!   About five minutes after I hung out many blankets, the northwest wind came up, the clouds rolled in, and the wind snapped the clothesline the blankets were hanging on—I had to gallop out and rescue the blankets before they got flapped all over in the yet- dirty winter grasses.  The old adage about "If you don’t like the weather in the Red River Valley, just wait five minutes" is true today!

March 26 was my father’s birthday so I always think about him especially on this day.  He was very influential in my life and was the best Dad in the world, in my opinion.  I am sure there are many other daughters out there who would say the same about their own Dads.  I had an email from my cousin Margaret(her Dad was my Dad’s brother) who lives in California and her e mail triggered good memories about my Dad and the way he took his two daughters fishing in the woods to the northeast of where we lived at that time.  He and his friends had a small tarpaper shack on a piece of rented land in the deep woods east of Waubun and not far from Bad Medicine Lake.  They called their Little House in the Big Woods, "The Best Shack In The World" and the "driveway" into it "The Best Turn In The World".  Going to that shack in summer meant fishing on a small lake that was loaded with walleyes.  I only fished with my Dad because he was the only one who would bait my hook and take the fish off the hook when I caught one. Staying overnight in that shack was an adventure in true frontiersmanship.  The shack was not mouse-proof and we had to sleep to the sound of scurrying feet all night.  My sister and I were always convinced our sleeping bags would be full of furry woods mice with the big ears…they did not look like the "domestic mice" we saw at home!  Many fond memories were made on those outings to fish in the summer, or to spend time in the snowy woods in the winter.

I heard robins this morning and many other bird songs and calls.  It seems like a lot of birds arrived over the weekend or maybe they are all out singing their bird-versions of "Oh What A Beautiful Morning!" today.  It is a glorious sunny day, it smells like spring, and I feel like I could do almost anything today…spring cleaning, put blankets out on the clothesline for a good spring airing,  or spend another day outside in the yard and rake up dead leaves from garden beds.  I won’t do it all but I will get a start on some things that need to be done. It is a wonderful feeling…this Spring Fever.

One of the Weirdos was back with a comment on my last blog…the sort that can only express themselves by name calling.  "It" called me a couple favorite slurs and then opined that being in the garden on March 24 is due to global warming!!   I have news for the Weirdo…I remember farmers being in their fields BEFORE  March 24 in the spring of 1969!  I suppose that was due to Global Warming too! HAH!  But this was in the era when the Hysterics were warning us about Global Cooling!              Fortunately I am the editor and "IT" got deleted instantly.   There is not only the fact that the "Pen is Mightier Than The Sword"  but the newer fact that a Blogger is a "mighty" Editor!   I have no idea why the Weirdos persist…. they must need to vent their venom with their anonymous monikers.  They are pathetic.  I once saw a cup with the words, "Don’t Let The Turkeys Get You Down" inscribed on it.  It is a good adage to adopt when dealing with Weirdo comments. 

I must go out on the deck and enjoy the sounds, the sights and the definite smell of Spring in the air this morning.  I think I shall drag my Grandmother’s old rocking chair out there and enjoy the morning while it is still fairly young!!   (Hey, I thought I said I was going to get lots of things done this morning)     It might be more important to enjoy this
Glorious Day first.

I got into my garden on March 24 this year!  This is a once in a lifetime record (so far anyway)  The glorious spring day on Saturday led me straight to the raspberry patch that I rescued from utter destruction last summer.  I have two nice rows of raspberry canes that I protected when Buffaloguy got disgusted with the raspberry patch last summer and took his mower tractor to it—-but I….like the Chinese student who stood in front of the military tank in Tienamin Square in Beijing in 1989—–I saved some of the raspberries from the Terrible Tractor Mower!!   I told B.G. that from henceforth, I was going to take care of the raspberries and they would be a perfectly groomed bunch of canes, weedless and productive.  Well I stuck my foot in  it, literally.  Yesterday as I could not control my urge to work on the patch, I sunk in spring mud up to my ankles but I would not relent.  In the bright warm sunshine, I raked out the dead leaves, took out a few dead canes and applied the pre-emergence weed control liquid to one half of the patch.  I tried to avoid getting scratched by the canes but no matter how careful I was, I got lacerated and could taste blood on my lip.  I thought my face was going to resemble a candy cane with bright red stripes from the nasty prickles on the canes…not good since I had to sing a solo in church on Sunday morning and I did not relish looking like I had been fighting with a pack of furious cats who had not been de-clawed.  But by then I was exhausted,  I was getting scratched badly by the canes, my hind quarters were stiffening up from squatting and crawling and my temper was nearly at the boiling point, so I went inside and will deal with the other half of my rescued raspberry patch on the next sunny day.  I dragged my my tired body and my garden shoes caked with about 5 inches of sticky mud back to the house where I cleaned up and collapsed into the ever faithful recliner.

Then I got into March Madness….a bonafide "fairweather NCAA fan" who begins the cheering and watching when it gets down to the Elite Eight.  Then, I who know nothing about any of the teams or the players or the coaches, gets "into it" picking my favorite team and being disgruntled if my team does not win.  I had to walk away from the game between Oregon and Florida today because I got upset with the announcers and commentators who obviously were favoring Florida instead of Oregon.  Those were MY Ducks!  We lived in Pullman, Washington for 5 years and the Ducks were in our conference! I watched them play the Cougars (Washington State) from the slopes of "Poverty Hill" by the Washington State Student Union building for 4 years straight.  We wives of graduate students and other students did not get passes to the games so we sat on the hill about 100 feet from the stadium and tried to watch the football games, with the help of transistor radios and local broadcasters from the university station, KWSU.  I got miffed when today’s commentators seemed to pooh-pooh the mighty Ducks from Corvallis.  I know they lost so I  grumped off to the the computer where I am still occupied.  

 Now I will watch North Carolina and Georgetown and I wonder how my youngest son will do for this game.  The Tarheels and Goergetown were two of his favorite teams back in the mid-1980s when he was a high school boy.  His Dad aways irritated him by calling the Tarheels the "Asphalt Toes" and the son was not a good sport about such teasing then.  He might really be conflicted today but then maybe he doesn’t care that much.  I have to watch of course.  Fairweather fans always get excited by these games and I will too.  I do not know which team I will favor but I remember my sons liking  Patrick Ewing way back when, and I heard someone say that Ewing’s son is playing now….I don’t know if it is for Georgetown or North Carolina but I think I will cheer for the Ewing team.  I had a Georgetown T-shirt once….a hand me down from one of my boys.  That’s reason enough for my devotion later when the second game comes on.

I have a fresh bag of Doritos also so that sweetens (or salts) the March Madness pot.

We spent a lot of time outside today, including a trip to see the newest Menards’ store.  The drive was more interesting, however, as I spotted a group of Canadian Honkers who had landed on a frozen lake along the highway.  I suppose it looks like an open lake to the geese as they fly over, so they land—-on ice.  A goose landing on an icy surface is a lot of fun to watch….they come in for their landing and careen all over the ice, with wings flapping, much honking and fluttering til they finally pull to a halt.  Then they walk on the ice and resemble Red Skelton doing "Freddie the Freeloader" with their wobbley steps on the slick surface.  Geese in flight are magnificent creatures but a goose walking on ice looks a lot like a very inebriated fat man trying to get up a curb along some Skid Row.

The flights of wild geese are increasing daily.   Huge flocks of hundreds of geese fly over in the familiar "Vee" formation, sometimes very high and sometimes at lower altitude if they are looking for a place to set down for the night.  We see a lot of low flying around here as there are abundant corn stubble fields near us.  The truly wild ones are heading for nesting grounds in Canada while the "resident geese" , who live year-round in Fergus Falls along the Ottertail River, are flying out to our area for nesting.  We get many nesting pairs annually in our woodlands and we also get in on a lot of fights for territory for building a nest.  Geese can be very loud and irritating since the fights go on throughout the night when territory gets more scarce.  Their honking is incessant by early April.  Pairs fly over our house at near jet plane-buzz mode.  Sometimes it appears that they are going to hit the roof but of course they always clear it.  Our cat, who has taken to sitting out on the deck in the morning to soak up some spring sunshine, is very puzzled by these loud honking fly-overs. When the swallows come, she is really in trouble, since they are not shy about swooping and buzzing anything that comes close to their chosen nesting spots.  I cannot walk out to my clothelines without getting harrassed by mad swallows in the summertime.

If only humans were like the wild geese in that a pair of geese are lifelong partners and will  never leave the other until they are parted by death.  They watch over their offspring with deep devotion and tireless vigilance.  What a great world it would be if human parents behaved like the Geese parents.

I am glad to watch the geese return, nest, fight, and entertain with their icy slapstick dances and flip flops.   Now I am waiting for the first flight of sandhill cranes to come over in their circling formations, riding the air currents and making their distinctive crying sounds.   Spring is truly upon us and I have seen the sun set in the middle of the horizon too!   Life is good!

"A Grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television." is the adage I chose today.  Everyone who has taken care of grandkids can identify with this one. Grandmas (and Grandpas) are usually extremely vigilant when it comes to caring for grandkids. It is such a joy that you do not want to do anything else but WATCH them…they are endlessly fascinating and you actually feel like you are getting a second chance with  your own children.  When you were raising your own, you had so many things you had to do just to keep on top of daily things, you often missed some of the wonderful things your kids said or did—or you were too young to appreciate it all.   But grandkids……..when you realize the great gift of a second chance to do it all again, nothing goes by you this time. It becomes an endless delight to play games like "Hi-Ho, Cherrio" or other equally un-challenging ones.  You let the kids win at the simple little card games.  I remember our highly- competitive Great Grandma Anna chiding my mother in law for "letting the kids win" but Anna was a cut-throat gramma when it came to playing games.  She WANTED to win them all.  I have played the memory game, "Husker Du", many times but the kids always win and I do not even "let" them.  I simply cannot remember where I saw those little pictures on the game board, so the kids are delighted to win all the time.  Grandparents actually sit down and watch "Little Bear" videos with their small grandkids.  Seeing the delight of the kids is more important than watching a simple little kid-vid. Reading aloud to the kids is another pleasurable baby-sitting delight.  They remember the books they like best and I still get requests from my half grown granddaughters to read "What! Said Granny: A Bedtime Story"   The twelve year olds love the zany picture- story about an extremely funny looking Granny and her grandson who spends his first overnight at Granny’s house.  They like the drama I employ when shouting "WHAT?" from the increasingly frustrated Granny who cannot get her boy to go to bed.

Going outside and playing hide and seek becomes a thrilling experience, especially for the kids when Gramma pretends she cannot find them, even when their little butts are sticking out from behind a tree trunk.  Hiding  plastic eggs and making up clues so they can figure out where they are is such fun! My grandkids are old enough that they love reading the clues and trying to figure them out…we did this in February inside the house!  The two grandkids who were staying with us for a week said it was the most fun they had at the farm!   It is so easy to make great memories and you can do it without even leaving the house. 

Cooking with a grandchild can be an adventure in major housecleaning.  When two granddaughters were baking in my kitchen, I was the "Cinderella" who cleaned up the  spilled raw eggs and the powdered sugar that ended up on the floor, after they had hastily attempted to clean up the sugar with a wet paper towel.  They "frosted" the floor with their clean-up, so I got the wash-bucket and finished the job.  It is good excercise to get down on your knees and do a bit of floor washing, is my way of thinking.       Buffaloguy remarks about my patience with the grandkids, something he says I had less of with our boys.  I shame-facedly admit that it is true…I am far more patient with the grandkids, (fewer hormones now!)  realizing that impatience did not good at all in "those days".  I have apologized to my sons in the process, for times when I was too impatient…like the time they broke open a gooey ball point pen on the new carpeting just after our home was built and moved into.  That was a major eruption, one I now regret.  They forgave me ,cheerfully, as grown ups.

Watching grandkids now is sharing conversations with  half-grown young men and women. This is another wonderful stage of being a grandparent; their senses of humor, their knowledge, their growing conversational skills make them the best of companions, and I continue to be so grateful that I am a Gramma and can spend time with 8 of the best kids in the whole world!!