Jancrab123's Blog

Philip

jancrab123 — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:27:39 +0000

Philip is my younger son. He works troubleshooting for businesses on the computer, but he is a poet, a musician and a playwright. A particular piece of his work stands out to me; a performance that I went to in Austin at a young players club. He had recently ended a relationship with a young woman (who I would have loved to have had as a daughter-in-law) and it was about that relationship. You have to have seen the play to appreciate the poetic beauty of it but I will try my best to describe it. There were about six people sitting in the back of the stage, three males and three females. They each had a line to repeat that signified a little cross-section of life. I can’t remember them all but one stands out because it was obviously about me. One of the women was saying “I’m sorry you’re sad Mom, don’t cry, things will be OK.” (I had recently slit up with his dad) Each person said something fairly mundane about life. This was life going on in the background and as the play went on each of them took a turn to raise their voice so every comment could be heard although they were all talking at the same time. They would all start together and then it would stop at the same time, and then start again. In the meantime, Philip, as one of the main characters, was having quiet conversation with a girl in the foreground. After a while the two main characters put their arms around each other and began to dance. The play was entitled, “We never danced, you and I.” The most touching part for me was when the young woman concerned, appeared from the darkness of the theatre, came up to us and said, “Please tell Philip I loved the play”‘ and left.

Steve

jancrab123 — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:43:45 +0000

I love both of my sons very dearly but each year, when his birthday come around, I am particularly thankful for my eldest son, Steve. I was so happy to be having a baby. We had waited two years for him to start coming along and my pregnancy had been great and I had never felt healthier in my life. Then, two weeks before my due date, I started hemoraging. I knew we were in trouble. My husband called the doctor and, as we were in England, the doctor said to have me lie down and not move and he would come out to the house. He checked me out and said he would send an ambulance out to take me to the hospital and on no account must I stand upright. On being checked at the hospital, the diagnosis was placenta praevia, which means the placenta is positioned below the baby and as the baby starts to descend to be born, the placenta tears away from the uterus which can cut off oxygen from the baby. So it was a grave situation. I had an immediate c-section and when I awoke, we were told that the baby had hyaline membrane which is a membrane surrounding the lungs which comes away right before the baby is born, but which will hamper the breathing. The doctors warned us that our baby had a fifty/fifty chance of survival. I cried for two days and was not able to see my baby. On the third day the doctor came to my bedside and said that it looked very hopeful that Steve would make it and he improved every day. There could have been brain damage and Steve to this day jokes that he might have been another Einstein if he hadn’t gone through the trauma. I’ll keep him just the way he is!

Coming to Texas

jancrab123 — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:16:44 +0000

It is over thirty years ago that I first came to Texas. I had been warned about the heat but having lived in England for most of my life, where we yearned for the sun to shine for just a little while every day, I was looking forward to the change. I had lived in Spain for a year, where the sun shone constantly during the day, with temperatures in the mid eighties (which we thought was very hot) with not a bit of humidity, so I was excited that I was going to enjoy something very similar in Texas. I should have done my homework more diligently! We moved into the upstairs apartment of a house in Austin and I thought I would not be able to survive! We had one air conditioning unit in the whole apartment and I spent my entire time when I was at home, sitting in front of it, reading or just sweating. I stayed at my office as late as the security guards would let me and my poor husband very seldom got a hot meal because I couldn’t stand to turn on even the top burners, let alone the oven! I gradually got used to it and could finally handle the heat even before we moved into central air. I learned to love the balmy evenings when the sun had gone down and we would take walks and especially loved to take my visiting family (who loved the sunshine, I might add!) to a baseball game and eat nachos and ice-cold beer on those balmy nights.

Gipsy

jancrab123 — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:48:48 +0000

Gipsy is my cat. I have had her for about four years and she is my pride and joy! She is many different colors ranging from white, through all the browns and reds to black. I had arranged to take her from the litter when she was six weeks old but the mother cat deserted some of the kittens when they were two weeks old. My neighbor, the owner of the mother cat, came and told me that if I wanted a kitten I needed to come and get her. What in the world do you do with a two week old babt cat with barely a stitch of fur on her?! I went to the pet store and found out. I left with a tiny feeding bottle, several cans of formula, and a heating pad. What happened in the ensuing weeks and months was a wonderful experience for me and an encouraging start in life for Gipsy. I held her in the palm of my hand and she sucked greedily at the bottle. I laid her in a box of cotton on top of the heating padwith a soft toy for good measure and she thrived! I had been told that one has to rub the little “hiney” of a motherless kitten to encourage it to excrete which I dutifully did, and even that seemed a miracle of nature. Needless to say, she did very well and I might add that even Rosie had her part in making her the secure and contented cat she is today, by letting Gipsy snuggle up to her and suckle. Amazing!

Saint William Festival

jancrab123 — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:23:03 +0000

Last weekend I went with some friends to the Saint William Festival in San Antonio. It is a yearly event similar to the Night in Old San Antonio Festival. It was a lot of fun. Four streets are blocked off and are set up with arts and craft booths with everything you could think of to buy, from paintings and pottery to floral crowns for the ladies, which our male companions dutifully bought us and we wore for the day. The event started out with a parade which had to be the longest parade I have ever seen. The floats were wonderfully colorful and the riders threw out candy and novelties. There were numerous bands and I always love to see the young people taking part in making music in public for all to enjoy. Then, of course, there was the food! We ate nachos and enchiladas, turkey legs and chili dogs and, of course we had to have funnel cake and ice cream. We really made pigs of ourselves and it was wonderful! What a great day to spend a day, and I went home with a wind chime with the mellow sound of cathedral bells to hang on my porch and remind me of my visit to to good ol’ San Antonio!

Rosie

jancrab123 — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:02:58 +0000

I had a dog, Ralph, some years ago. He was a black, male fluffy terrier and was my constant companion for more that ten years. He died one day, of old age, I suppose. He was deaf and going blind. I missed him terribly. A few months went by and I started thinking maybe I should get another dog. I worked in an office with a glass front looking to the outside and one day, I noticed a little white, fluffy dog running around in the parking lot in danger of getting run over. After a while, she came and sat outside my window, looking in at me. It was a hot day and my heart went out to her so I put a bowl of cold water outside for her. I noticed she didn’t have a collar on and her fur was matted and unkempt. I finally decided to bring her into the office and she sat by my feet the entire afternoon. I put up a “dog found” sign in the window and took her home with me. I took her to the vet who said she was about two years old and had badly infected flea and tick bites and that she had evidently just had puppies! The groomer had to shave her because her fur was so matted. No-one responded to my sign in the window so I figured Rosie had come and found me and was meant to be with me. She has been a faithful companion to me for about five years now and I wouldn’t be without her!

Moonstruck

jancrab123 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:54:33 +0000

I watched “Moonstruck” for about the fifth time last night. I was surprised to see that it was playing on public television. I suppose it has become somewhat of a classic. I know some of the dialogue lines have become famous. I’ve been trying to figure out it’s appeal. For sure, it is superbly acted. I can’t think of one of the characters who could be better acted than by the actors in the movie. Of course, Cher is prize as the bereaved widow, searching for a suitable man to have a proper wedding to. Frank Gardenia has to be one of my favorite characters as the melancholy father who feels the need to have an affair because his life is “built on nothing”. His long suffering wife, played by Olympia Dukakis, spends a lot of time searching for the answer to why men chase women. One of her lines stays with me and I have heard it quoted. To her confused father-in-law she says “Old man, if you give those dogs one more bite of my food, I’ll kick you till you’re dead”. I could go on and on; all the characters are superb and I love them all. Of course, the dialogue has so much to do with it and the fact that it is set in the midst of a hot-blooded Italian family. The main “character” may be the mischievous moon which appears over New York one night and sets off new passions within the characters. One line that has become a classic quotation is, “Snap out of it!” It is a seemingly inappropriate but totally spontaneous thing for Loretta to say when she slaps Ronnie’s face for telling her he is in love with her. It works! What a movie!

My yard

jancrab123 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:11:10 +0000

I love doing yard work. I like being out in the fresh air and sunshine. I like the workout it gives me and I love the satisfaction of seeing it all come together and become a beautiful, flowery place to look at and walk in. My previous yard was a reasonable size and did not have a lot of flower beds to cultivate. As soon as the spring came, I would start on it and within a few weeks I was quite pleased with the job I had done. I then moved, and now I have a larger yard with a big front flower bed and several in the back and a lot of lawn to mow!. There is even a raised bed at the end of the back yard for growing vegetables. What was I thinking of, taking on a house with such a yard? Will I be able to continue to mow , trim and edge all myself? Last year I proved that I can still take on the challenge and was very proud when my son, on visiting, said, “Mom, your yard is positively sculpted!

I’m trying not to be faint-hearted this year. Lots of weeds have grown in my lawn and my flower beds are growing up with things that shouldn’t be there along with the perennials that should. So far, I have potted geraniums for my front porch and half way weeded the front bed. I have put down “green” fertilizer on my grass to discourage the weeds and pruned my crepe myrtles. My next job is to remove all the rocks from my rock garden and add mounds of soil to build it up again and then, my favorite thing, to go to the nursery and add some color!

A huge Victory!

jancrab123 — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:58:12 +0000

We started out as members of the fledgling organization, Million Mom March, which was formed after a huge march on the mall in Washington of 75,000 people who were demanding sensible gun laws of our representatives in Washington and around the country. This was in 2001. We lobbied in the halls of government in Washington and those in Austin. We took our legislators fresh baked apple pies to their offices to remind them that we were still out there expecting them to act on doing something about the ridiculous number of senseless gun deaths in this country. Through the years we had some victories and some defeats, such as the sunsetting of the Assault Weapons Ban which was very disheartning. We are now a part of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and still go around to Schools and boy’s and girl’s clubs to speak about staying safe from the dangers of guns. We promote the ASK Campaign at PTA meeting which encourages parents to ask if there are guns in the homes where their children play and if so, whether they are stored away safely. We have met and worked with many victims of gun violence. Recently, the Brady Center won a lawsuit against the dangerous “guns in the park” rule. A preliminary injunction was issued by the federal court in DC, against continued implementation of the rule, which allowed concealed guns into national parks and wildlife refuges. In addition, the court held that Brady is “highly likely to prevail” in showing the rule was illegal. Who knows, maybe we willsave some lives with this victory?!

jancrab123 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:56:18 +0000

My father was French. He went to England from France with an aunt when he was seven years old. He was thirtyfour when he met and married my mother and a year later, when the second world war was beginning, he went to London to try to sign up in the British army. He had told my mom that he would be back later that day. Unfortunately, the French army had different plans for him. My mother received a telegram later that day to say that he was signed up with the French army and would be shipping over to France the next day. That was the last she saw of him for almost two years. She soon learned that she was pregnant with my older sister and Judy was almost two before he got his first leave.

I believe that my dad had a much harder time in the French army than he would have in the British army. He had known he would. They did not provide their soldiers with good sturdy boots and their uniforms were ill-fitting and uncomfortable. I don’t know much about the conditions that the army over there found themselves in and what they did. I do know that my dad was completely deafened in one ear and partially deaf in the other when he left France, from bombs exploding around him.

The story about all this is so sketchy in my mind and I so much wish that I had asked my dad about his experiences. He didn’t talk much about those times but I think he would have in his later years, if only we had asked him. He died when I was eighteen, soon after the only boy of his six children, was born. It’s quite a sad story, really, although I have many happy memories of time spent with him. I hope he knew that I loved him very much.