Quiet Time…

Woke up this morning to the pitter patter of rain.  Thankfully, we didn’t have the winds like we did on Christmas Day.  It took me a day and a half to clean the yard up from wind damage.  Plenty of firewood coming up.  I had an oak tree blow down that was about 30 feet tall.  As soon as I have clear weather I’m going out with the chainsaw and begin working on it.  Should be enough for most of the winter next year.

Bradley was in a mood last night for some reason.  Snapped at me over a cell phone charging cord that he had lost.  Wanted me to get dressed, go out in the rain and look for it because he thought it was in my van.  I handed him the keys and told him to go look for it, and he got mad because he was in the middle of a video game and didn’t want to stop.  I called him on it, told him that ADULTS as he is so quick to name himself, don’t act like selfish spoiled self-centered children.  They don’t take their moods out on others; you either talk about what’s bothering you, or deal with it quietly, but you don’t take it out on us. He actually apologized, said he didn’t realize he was snapping at me,and that he didn’t stop to think what it sounded like to ask me to get dressed and walk out in the rain for him to continue playing his game…progress? I hope so.

Everyone is asleep still, I can hear Brian in his room snoring like a buzzsaw, lol.  I can tell by the volume that he’s getting sick.  He has sleep apnea, won’t wear his cpap machine, but I can tell from how he snores after all these years when he is congested. Not too suprising since we slept in a house without heat or electricity for three days in near freezing weather.  It didn’t seem that bad to me, but I rarely ever get sick.  Added to the cold, I had to tell him repeatedly to get dressed before going outside.  I kept finding him outdoors in his boxers, tshirt, and barefoot. We live in the country, it’s not as though he were going to be seen, but still.  I swear, he’ll be joining a nudist colony someday.  He hates to put on  his clothes.  He finally got dressed after I near threatened bodily harm if he didn’t.  I don’t know how my kids got so hard headed, must have come from their mother.  I’m not like that at all….and now I’ll start moving to avoid the oncoming lightning strikes.

I also think that I may have to take Brad to the ER for an xray today.  He and Brian were horseplaying in the grocery store parking lot day before yesterday, vying for who got "front seat privileges".  Brad tried to run for the door, and Brian stuck his foot out.  Brad face-planted the concrete pretty hard.  He was bruised and scraped, but otherwise appeared all right.  Last night, he showed me his left knee, and I think he may have a fracture.  There is swelling, and the bruise is completely black with a red center.  ouch. I put an ice pack on it last night and gave him some over the counter medicine for pain and swelling, so when he wakes up this morning we’ll see what it looks like.  It’s always an adventure with those two.

I don’t know if anyone out there is as big a fan of autobiographical histories as I am, but I am currently reading two fascinating books, the first, Voices of Slavery, was compiled by the Smithsonian.  It was originally tape recorded interviews with surviving slaves in the South, and this book has 100 transcripts of life under slavery in their own words.  Then I found a Kindle book by accident called "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself" by Harriet Fann Jacobs. 

As a southerner in the U.S.,  and someone who grew up during the later years of the civil rights era, I am familiar with racism and bigotry.  I was also fortunate enough to have parents who did not tolerate that kind of attitude in us or our acquaintances. Still, it’s strange to me that my ancestors could have been involved in treating people the way slaves were treated in America at that time.  I highly doubt most of my direct ancestors ever owned anyone, we were mostly sharecroppers, living on someone else’s land and farming it for the privelege, but that didn’t preclude them from the social mores of the time.  It was acceptable for any white man or woman to treat any black man woman or child in whatever way they wished, without consequence.  In the 1920’s my grandmother witnessed the lynching and hanging of a black man by a mob, because he shoved a white woman away from his daughter.  The woman was beating the little girl with a broom handle.   I wish I could say I can’t imagine, but I can.

Anyway, the books give an insight into history and the strength these men and women had to have to survive.  It’s both heartbreaking and inspiring when you read it in their own words.   Sometimes I feel the need to actually learn something, instead of reading spy novels, lol.

I really need to stop doing that, they say a little knowledge can be dangerous.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be a danger to anyone.

I finally added a photo to my profile, no good ones of me, I’m not very photogenic. In real life I’m often mistaken for that really buff movie star guy.  I’m sure you know then one, it just doesn’t translate into photos.  I cropped the picture below to get a head shot of myself, and decided to include the original.  This is me with my sons at my fiftieth birthday party a couple of years ago.