Original thoughts brought back!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I wonder if anyone else remembers..or am I too old?

Thoughts drift in and out of my mind at no particular time of the day. These musings just appear.

Like for instance...the little slot that used to be on bathroom medicine cabinets for men to drop their razor blades in. Wonder what happened when it all filled up.

Did anybody's Mother make 'orange candy' out of the pealings of naval oranges and I don't know what the other ingredients were...but I loved it.

We used to take a clove of garlic and rub it on a piece of toasted rye bread...and so delicious.

We used to take our tablets or notebooks and drop ink on it and create Roarch Tests and see if we could identify what it appeared to be.

We didn't use a kazoo to make music...took a comb with a piece of tissue paper or toilet paper...and if it didn't tickle your lips to much...compose our own beautiful music.

I wonder if anyone had to wear 'snuggies' on cold days...tops and bottoms...embarrassing but oh so warm and cozy.

Just thoughts and more thoughts. My Sister Elayne and I changed our dresses when we came home from school and put on playclothes.
I wore her hand-me-downs since she was 3 years older.

We used to lie on our stomachs with the radio on to do our homework. It was such a natural position for us.

I can still smell the musty smell on trains from the upholstered seats.

Comfortable...but smelly! I can still see the conductor with his gold buttons on his vest and jacket.

Wonder why they always made men's suits with vests. Most men never wore them.

What makes these thoughts clutter my brain at this time in my life...I haven't the faintest....

Can't wait till I can buy Lego for Shane and Ryan's little unborn son

Thoughts from Hilda

hildag3@gmail.com...it would be nice to know someone reads it I would be thrilled to hear your comments. Thanks

Sunday, May 13, 2007

This helped to pay our rent!

This is a Lego brick. My husband Allen and I had a toy store in New Kensington, Pa. I would say that about 25%

of our store was allocated to Lego...motorized and manuel. We carried a complete line, in fact, the only toy we ordered direct from the manufacturer...and it was made by the Samsonite people.

One brick fit inside the other and a child's imagination could conquer anything he wanted to create.

People would walk into our store and say....I have a 6 year old who has no attention span, although he's brilliant. What would you recommend I buy him.

We were considered the specialists. That's why they came to us instead of K-Mart. We gave individual attention even though our prices were competitive.

Well, we ushered them right to Lego...and weeks later, that same customer would return just to give us rave revues.

Actually we were such a good customer that the Lego People put a big motorized windmill in our big front window. It almost caused accidents.

People did a double take....was that really moving around???

Downtown Orlando has a massive building called Legoland....and it's really magical.

All this was a long time ago, in my life, but the memories are all so very clear.

I just loved that part of my life ... making kids happy~

Beautiful A1A

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Beautiful A1A

 

My husband Allen only had 2 years of living in Florida. He loved it...but he particularly adored driving on A1A. He called it the never-ending garden..but this was his particular spot. If you've driven north...you've gone through this bountilfullness. There's no such word..but it's a lushness that spreads across the top of the road.

We would drive to Manalapan for an ice cream cone. We would window-shop the beautiful windows of the stores...and then we would feast.

Now that I have a GPS...I must drive up there once again.

Another repeat...I'm getting lazy

Sunday, February 8, 2009

We Buy Ugly Homes

Was it just about a year and a half ago that we would see billboards all over the highway...we buy ugly houses.

Well, now I would expect a sign to read....we'll even buy beautiful homes for very little money.

But no....these signs are non-existent...because times have changed. Yep. it all started with the housing market.

Everybody'sgreat American dream...homeowner. But who can blame. We all like to have a covering over our heads.

They made it so easy to own a home...no down payment....no nothing...just interest. That sounds so great.

But now our country is in doldrums. Banks have run out of operating capital...and they're not really interested in owning homes..that's not their business.

Maybe if I was young and had some available cash...I would fall for some of these schemes....but I'm too old to even consider for a second.

Obama has surrounded himself with some of the best heads in the country.

Can they come up with a solution...or do they know just as much as you and I.

I'm glad I own my little villa here in High Point...I have no debt. Thank G0d.

I pray every night that the unemployed with find jobs...that's so humiliating...and frustrating...and makes a person lose confidence in himself.

I would like to set the calendar back to the 90's when technology doubled and tripled our portfolios.

I guess just plain old greed got in the way...and I'm part of it. What would really make my day is to see a giant billboard.....WE buy Ugly Houses. I often wondered what an ugly house is...was the kitchen where the bathroom should be...were the stairs in the wrong place leading to nowhere. Did they still have coal burning stoves....did they have ice boxes instead of refrigerator.....rabbit ears on their tv...if they had tv.

Did you have to go thru one room to get to another one. Was it painted bright purple? What could make it so ugly. Anyway...I want to see that billboard one again...and then I'll know that times are stable.

I'm repeating myself!

Monday, December 2, 2013

Replaying in my head!

Hiding from one's shadow is an impossible task...as hard as  trying to escape from one's thoughts, being as they're not channeled in any particular direction, but floating uncontrollably out into the world, only to be thought by me. 

Shadows and thoughts are a part of us that have  nothing to do with one another, except they're attached to us.   Memories may fade and shadows may alter, but they're always there.   My thoughts have been taking over my subconscious making me aware of how many people used to be an active part of my life.

Little by little, as I age, I'm losing my friendships.  These ladies have moved into retirement homes to be cared for...having  their meals cooked and served to them,  and reminding them to take their medications, and making sure they're using their  walkers, canes or wheel chairs.

My innermost thoughts are always there, swaying  and crawling to a place that only I can reach, and  enhancing  images in my mind that tend to enter and leave at random.....   coming and going on and on!

I can no more control what I'm thinking than I can of breathing.

Was it always this way, or am I just by myself so much that I'm living within my consciousness.

Am I reliving my life to make sure I remember, or these so-called thoughts just keep tumbling out, causing me to have too much time and not enough to occupy me.

Now it's time for me to take charge and get rid of all this foolishness.    Yes, indeed I can, and I will!    I'm enrolling at our Palm Beach Public Library, where they're offering a course helping seniors cast their hand at creative writing.

This way, I can focus on what's really important to keep my memories alive.

 I'll take a few of my blogs to be shown the way to improve my writing so  more people might want to visit my site..

 My blog is about my best friend.   I confide all kinds of quirky things about me in it and I do laugh at my own shortcomings.

My grown-up children have no idea what they created.

Can't take credit for this one

This was sent to me by my dear friend Ethel Wainer....and how true...and how I relate.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks.

This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling's. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right.

We didn't have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

My fever running Shane Boy!

I just had a conversation with my nephew Paul and he told me that Shane was taken to the hospital on Tuesday with a very high fever with seizures.    My body underwent a series of heartbreak for my darling little boy.  Just the night before, I was skyping with him and he was fine.


Shane's home again but he's still running a high fever which is common in pre school children.  Becky, him mom is a pediatrician which makes me feel better.   She knows what to do.


And all this brought back a memory of  Jeff when he was about 3 years old.   He was running 105 degrees and he was admitted to the hospital.   We never did find out what was wrong with him but he was mighty sick.   I remember his coming into our bedroom to say  the sky was falling on his feet.   He didn't know how to say he was dizzy.


This was such a bad time in our lives.  We knew our baby was terminal and we rushed her up to Allen's mother to baby sit while we took our other child to the hospital.   During that same day she phoned and said the baby was crying and we had to get her because my father in law was recooperating from a heart attack.

Where to go first.   Jeffy did not want me to leave him.   I recall the nurse asking him if he had pooped that day and he didn't understand what she was talking about.   That's not what we called it.


We were a little more baby sophisticated.


Anyway, the fever passed and all was well.....for a little while.   We still had our sick baby and that you don't get over.


And now here I am at this old age remembering....