Grandchildren are God's way of compensating us for growing old~Mary Waldrip

Dear Jared, Hope, Justin, Wil, Ellis and Anna,



I love being a grandmother (or in my case a Grandmom) and I have the six of you to thank for that. I guess I have your parents to thank too, and I do thank them, most especially for being the wonderful parents they are to all of you.

I'm a lucky Grandmom....I got to hold each of you on the day your were born, and I got to see all of you today. Today I got to watch Jared and Justin play basketball with their teams and I got to watch Ellis smile and clap with the crowd. I got to watch Justin looking out for Wil and telling him all about how basketball works. I got to told hold Anna and see her sweet smile and marvel at how fast she is growing. I got to watch Hope and Wil tenderly take care of a baby doll and "pretend to be grown-ups ." I got to watch Jared looking out for Wil and tossing a basketball to him, making sure he could catch it. And maybe best of all, I got to hear Wil tell me I'm not old because I know how to buckle his car seat. I am a lucky Grandmom.

Thanks for all of the good times I've had with each of you and for the good times I have to look forward to. I'm a lucky Grandmom.

I'm with everyone else in being excited and proud and very much looking forward to tomorrow's Presidential Inauguration. In my experience the level of excitement for a new administration is unprecedented. Oprah said we are moving to a different level of consciousness in our country and I think the juxtaposition with Martin Luther King Day is very poignant.

I'm glad that for my grandchildren a president's skin color will not be an issue and I believe that going forward gender will not be an issue. (Which is a good thing since it just occured to me that being President would be the perfect job for Hope, she really likes being in charge, and maybe Justin as Vice-President, still asking why he always has to do what she says.)

I've gotten to meet a few presidents...well, meet may be a bit of an overstatement for shake hands, say hello and move on...but I got to do that with Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Johnson, and Nixon was before he was actually president. Nevertheless, it is a good memory even these many, many years later.

My point here is that as BIG as the inauguration is and all that it means, I'm wondering if there is something wrong with me that I am very content to be able to just watch it on television instead of wishing I could actually be there. All the news reporting about frigid weather, the largest security operation in U.S. history, the largest gathering of Port-o-Potties ever (1 per every 400-800 people), parking not being available any closer than Baltimore and most people only being able to see whats happening on a dozen or so Jumbotrons makes watching it on television with warm feet and a handy bathroom not seem so bad. I appreciate and admire those people who have fought to get tickets, sacrificed to pay to travel and are willing to sleep four to a bed to be there, I really do. I hope it is not a sign of age, but short of someone handing me inauguration tickets, an airline ticket and hotel reservations, I will be thrilled to have warm feet, a warm heart for all that is happening and a seat in front of the TV.

I wanted to add a flag background for this, but I just couldn't make it happen.

Blogging is turning out to be harder than it seemed like it would be. Well, not actually the blogging part, but all the stuff that goes with it. I got through getting the blog account set up with only a few glitches along the way, but now it turns out there is more I need to figure out. It appears that the best bloggers out there have all these cute backgrounds that add personality to their blogs. I'm all for having a personable blog, but I can't quite figure out how to get the backgrounds from where they keep them to, well, back there behind all these words. Even if I can figure that part out (and I will) how do you choose which background to use. It seems like a lot of them have holiday themes, all very cute. The next big holiday is Valentine's Day ( Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow, but I didn't find much on that theme)but the Valentine theme just feels like one I should avoid, for obvious reasons. Or maybe I should choose it as a permanent decor. Most of the other ones just seem a bit too "fluffy" for me. Anyway, see how hard it is.

Next comes pictures. All the good blogs seem to have lots of pictures, and I like pictures a lot and I have a lot of pictures. But again, I just don't know how to get them from there to here. I will get that figured out also, with some outside help, but then comes the question of which pictures to post. Logic says they should have something to do with what I am writing about, but someday I'll have that cute background, and I want them to look good with that too, don't I?

Then there's the spelling thing. I am actually a pretty good speller, but I might like to double check myself sometimes. I know spellcheck is somewhere, I just can't find it.

I'm pretty sure I'm making it harder than it needs to be, but maybe not, since the font just changed on me and I have no idea why or how to change it back.

At 61 years old I often think back and wish I could remember more about myself or my children or some event or activity....all those years and all those things that brought me to today. I like where I am today....I live with Doc, who I call Kenny, who thinks whatever I do is okay. I have 1 son and two daughters, 1 daughter-in-law, 2 sons-in-law, and six grandchildren, all of whom I think are the best ever, and who all bring joy beyond description to my life. I'm not sure that they think that whatever I do is okay, but they let me share in their lives and that makes everything okay for me. Blogging feels like a good way to reflect, remember and share the things that take us from day to day, and with time make up the life we look back on.





Why "Living Consciously"? I am, like everyone, getting older and I hope, like everyone, that continues for a long time, so I want to do it the best I can. I feel like one of the keys to that is to live consciously. It is something I have thought about and tried to do for a long time, but still can't totally define., and certainly am far from being really good at. Maybe blogging will help me along that path.



I expect that I will write more about what I am thinking than what I am doing, more about other people than myself. Many years ago I wrote a weekly newspaper column about my family, things going on in the community, etc. This feels a little like that, without the circulation. Maybe I'll write a lot, or maybe I won't write very often, but I hope I will entertain at least myself with what I write and that I'll have something I can look back on when I think "I wish I could remember................"