Hello !
Oh look ! It's Sunday again. I hope you have all been doing well.
Is anybody's life rushing fastly past them like mine is? Wasn't it just sweltering August yesterday? I simply can't fathom it already being halfway through October.
...and just like when I posted the last two weekends, it is a very gray morning with not a lot of hope for the sun to come out and stay. Yesterday it was mostly gray till about 4:50 in the afternoon. The sun did decide to come out at that time, but it gets dark here by 7 PM, so only a couple of bright hours.
It really is too early in the season for it to be gray so much. I'm not liking it either, but for some reason, I am not in control of that.
I bought another piece of fun holiday art. It came from Turkey. I have bought a couple of pieces of art just for holidays the last couple of years, just because it gave me a reason to buy more art. My walls can't hold too much more "all the time" art and it was just the excuse I needed, but I think I won't do that going forward.... well, unless it's something pretty special. I found that I don't love packing them away for a year and taking them back out temporary. I don't know why, but I don't,.... so
I didn't pay a fortune for the fun art, but as soon as I ordered it and it showed as shipped, the artist listed it again for twice as much as I paid for it and offered to repaint more of the same if anyone wanted one. I didn't like that. I know, like I said, I didn't pay a fortune for it, but who wants an original piece of art that can turn out to be one of multiple originals of the same thing? Prints I understand, because there is still only one original and I know painting again would not be the exact strokes, but still.... for some reason I didn't like the idea. I also realize that is just MY problem and not everyone would care. It is also on a plain piece of cardboard... oh no !.... it said a "panel" and I am used to canvas covered panels and wood panels that are made for real art, but looks just like flat cardboard and it is a bit flimsy, so I would not buy from there again for those reasons.
Yet.... I have it now and ...there it is.
I didn't realize till I was pulling photos for this post that today would have been my Dad's 95th earthly birthday if he had still been here. He was a good Dad and a responsible man. Happy Birthday Dad !
It reminded me when I pulled this photo up of his tractor. My Mom just sold it in the last month. It did not look like this by then as it had been used a lot since it had been repainted. My Mom is slowly downsizing with the reluctant goal of moving to a smaller place one day. She doesn't really want too as she loves her home and property, but at 89, although she is still quite spry for her age, it is too much for her to take care of and paying someone to do everything is not possible. My Dad loved having a garden. After his Mom passed and her estate was settled, he used part of his inheritance to purchase this tractor and he loved using it. It also came in handy for many other things as their home is in the country on almost 5 acres of land and there turned out to be many uses for it over the years.
One more sweet icon of a good life, whisked away ....
Earlier this week, something made me think of a man from my past. He was only a few minutes of my past, but what made him memorable was that he turned out to be the first boy I ever kissed. You don't forget that really, do you? I was too young to be kissing boys. I was trying to think how old I was 13? 14?... I am not sure.
I met him at school and his name was Tommy. I thought he was handsome. He was two years older than me. For a while we were "going together" ...something you did when you were too young to date, but you were still considered boyfriend and girlfriend. You had to break up if you decided you liked someone else.
Outside of school, I only saw him once during that age. He walked to my house and he didn't live close to me. We sat on the front porch and talked for a while and then took a walk around the neighborhood. Back then, neighbors knew neighbors and it was no big deal if I wasn't in my yard as there were many children in that neighborhood that went to my school and people knew each other for blocks and blocks. We did however take a detour some blocks later on a path that ran beside a creek. It was wooded in places and had giant rocks on the edges here and there, where we ended up sitting and talking and ... kissing. It seemed pretty innocent at the time, but thinking about it now, it is not something you would want your young innocent daughter to be doing, especially with a boy you didn't know. At some point it was time to go back, because he still had to walk back home too. We parted at my house and.... that was that. My Mom didn't know we had taken that walk. I'm not sure how she didn't realize, but she was used to us playing with the neighborhood kids in their yards and the such and I'm sure it never crossed her mind about what I might do. LOL !! Poor Mom.... but let me say again, I was naive! I didn't have sex on my mind or even understand all that could happen, so I wasn't trying to be all sneaky and the such.
Anyway, I tell all that because for some reason he crossed my mind earlier this week. A few years back, maybe 2017 or 2018 I had come across him on Facebook and from time to time, not frequently, we would say hello to each other. He didn't live close by, but still in this state and said he came back to visit on occasion and next time he was in town he'd look me up..... but that never happened.
When I went over to his page though....I found that he had passed away since I last spoke to him... right over a year ago ! What ?? I couldn't believe what I was seeing and yet.... there it was . He had sent me this photo when we had first started communicating again.
There is more to that story from back in the day. After a while I thought we should break up, so I broke up with him. I enjoyed that day with him, but I think I thought it was too much on the afterthought. He seemed to take it ok, but it turns out he was pretty attached by the heart. I didn't know.
Later when he was in high school his girlfriend got pregnant by him and he married her. It didn't last long it seems though, because several years later, he turned up on my porch again, this time he had come with some friends who waited for him in the car. He offered me a handful of rings, that included his wife's little wedding ring and wanted me to be his girlfriend. I had another boyfriend and not only that, my parents would have had a total FIT if I had accepted them and him as no respectable teen would date a man/older teen that had been married and had a child. You can understand why they would have had no part in that and I understood too that it didn't matter if I would think on it or reconsider, it wasn't going to happen !
I got married very young, 18, as soon as I graduated highschool (dummy me !). Some time later, he went by my house and my Mom came to the door. He asked for me and she told him I was married and didn't live there anymore. She may have told me at the time, but I really don't remember, besides, it was too late then.
Turns out, he was on his way the next day?... or shortly there after to enlist in the army, where he was a paratrouper with the 82D Airborne Division. stayed as a career and even after, worked with the government in a civilian role as some sort of Senior Security Specialist... not that I know what all that entailed.
He looked a little more like this when I knew him, minus the mustache :)
After chatting with him the first time on FB, although he didn't spell it out just like this, when he found that I was divorced (he was too, maybe for a second time) ...he said something a little cryptic about not being surprised and although not direct, I took it that he meant that, since he was sure we were meant to be together, there was no way either of our personal lives would have worked out without it. Now that sounds weird a little maybe and he didn't use those words AND said he'd explain one day later (that never happened either).... that is still how I took it from what he did say.
After seeing that he was gone.... a little part of my history, I found that day to be a little melancholy as I thought about him and our tiny piece of history as I worked. As you can tell, I didn't really know him most of my life, just those few moments.
The more years you get lucky enough live, the more bits of your history chip away. The memories get to stay though.... until you get dementia or something.
Ok... that's it for today's ramble.
Love ya !
Jacey
That is a wonderful painting. Perfect for Halloween.
I thought so too ! All the better because someone hand painted it.
Wow I really enjoined reading that bit of your history. Maybe he was right and it was meant to be, or not. All I know is life goes by too fast.
It sure does go by too fast.
It's kind of a romantic thought I suppose and maybe it should have been my destiny, but it seems if it was, wouldn't I have somehow have known it too? Funny thing is, I never heard from him in-between those encounters, of course in the first of it we did talk and hang out before our classes started at school, but after that, he didn't try to stay in contact, so each time took me by surprise. I had NO clue he still thought about me in-between times. Interesting to ponder on a few minutes here or there.
Yeah I suppose it seems a bit too ephemeral to put much emotional stock into...but always fun to wonder about what might have been...
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That's so very sad, I'm so sorry Jacey about your dad's tractor and losing your teenage bf, it's so true about the memories and parts of our history that just seem to vanish so fast and when we least expect it too. I can understand your melancholy.
When I was young, I remember losing a close friend of mine. He was robbed and stabbed for his belongings late one night. For months after that I grappled with the loss and how he was such a bright light in the little world I knew and how he had just been snatched away for practically nothing. I was so damn sad and angry too and absolutely helpless to change it. That episode changed me though and it was probably my first real experience of loss from the death of a friend. I still to this day can see his face in my mind, he was such a gentle and kind person, everyone enjoyed his company and then he was just gone. It still chokes me up to this day.
That halloween painting is lovely but I agree with you about the artist relisting it - I don't like that either, I feel that's quite unoriginal and rather poor of character. I wouldn't be able to recreate a painting even if I tried - it just wouldn't sit right with me.