olivene21@netscape.net

SUNRISES, PHOTOGRAPHY, TREES & SHOPPING LIST....

By Olivene Godfrey

The first thing I do when I get up every morning is look out of my bedroom window at the magnificent view we have from our front windows and porch of our house. As I gaze at the ever changing scene, I thank God for my vision. The sun coming up over the mountains is a gorgeous sight which I have tried to capture on film.

When we moved to our house 26 years ago, I used a Ricoh 35 mm manual camera and experimented with the settings until I found the right ones to shoot my sunrise pictures. I had three of the pictures enlarged and they hang on my home office wall and I am very proud of them. I also used this camera in my newspaper and magazine work until I retired.

My interest in photography began as a child. My parents gave me a little Brownie camera which I carried around with me often and snapped pictures of my family and friends. I have stacks of photo albums that go back over 60 years ago, some that belonged to our parents, go back even farther. We treasure these albums. Over the years, I owned several cameras and several years ago son Barry gave me a 35mm Minolta automatic camera which makes great pictures. Alas, old age has affected my vision and steadiness of hand so I have had to give up photography.

But, son Barry, inherited my love for photography and he has saved each of the different cameras we gave him over the years.
Now he uses a digital camera which amazes me. He can shoot pictures and almost immediately can develop them on his computer. He prints out the best of the pictures which we send to relatives who don't have computers or if we want the pictures to go in an album. His camera also makes mini-movies and no one is safe at family gatherings with Barry shooting candid movies of the unaware kin folks who are gesturing and talking which is being
recorded by the camera.

ABOUT THOSE TREES.... When we moved here 26 years ago, there wasn't any trees or shrubbery near the house. We fell in love at first sight with the house. It is situated atop a foothill of a mountain range here in northwest Georgia and overlooks a beautiful farm with a lake and picturesque barn and the mountains just beyond. But we had little privacy and no shade from the hot summer sun. So my late husband, Ralph, who had two green thumbs, went out into a nearby wooded area and dug up some little trees. He carried them home an lovingly planted them and cared for them. Today, when the trees are covered with greenery, they are tall and majestic, providing not only beauty, but privacy and shade for the house. We are grateful that Ralph lived to see the trees as he had envisioned them when he planted them. He also had a landscape plan drawn up and bought small shrubs at K-Mart and planted them and they too have grown big and pretty.

THE LIST.... Ingles, the huge supermarket where we buy groceries, in our hometown of Chatsworth, GA. overwhelmed me when I first went there to buy groceries and it took me forever and I was exhausted from back tracking to and fro in the upscale store.

Finally, I picked up a copy of the store directory which lists products by aisle number. The next time I planned a shopping trip, I spent a little more time working on my list. I listed products and foods I needed under aisle numbers and departments, such as bakery, deli, etc.... I cut the time I spent shopping in half and was able to enjoy my pleasant surroundings more.

See you next week....

SUNDAY OUTING --SHOPPING AND DINING OUT-MY FAVORITE THINGS....

By Olivene Godfrey

After a week of being under the weather, I slept nine hours Saturday night and woke up Sunday morning feeling chipper despite
the cold, windy weather outside. The sunshine was shining brightly which is always a welcome sight. I felt too good to let the cold weather keep me from a planned outing. So, son Barry and I proceeded to take care of morning chores and then got warmly dressed for the planned trip to nearby Dalton.

We took the scenic, two-lane route to Dalton and the flowering trees and shrubs along the way were gorgeous. We are hoping the cold weather this week won't bring a killing frost to all of our spring beauty here in northwest Georgia.

Our first stop in the city was at the huge super Lowe's store.
Barry could spend hours browsing in Lowe's and Home Depot.
Since he was a small child, he has loved hardware stores.
Unfortunately, I can no longer spend as much time as I would like, too, as I tire easily. If I ever learn to operate my power bike properly, I could shop in comfort in large stores. Now I am afraid I would run down customers and knock over merchandise displays. When warm weather is here to stay, I plan to practice driving the bike on the concrete outside our house.

In Lowe's we found the French doors we were looking for and we chose the one we will buy a little later this spring. Barry wrote down the model number on a pad so we will know which one we want later. We will need some carpentry work done inside the floor by the sliding glass doors we are replacing with the French doors. I am looking forward to the day when this project is completed.

We also filled our store buggy with items we have been needing such as my reading lampshade in my office. It is over 50 years old and was given to me by my sister, Jeanette, who bought new lamps that year. It is so old that it is back in style as we saw some lamps like it in the store.

When we finished our shopping, we went to nearby Western Sizzler steak house and ordered the lunch buffet. The food was delicious and we enjoyed the meal very much but I was glad to return home later and spent some time relaxing with the Sunday paper and taking cat naps. Later, I talked to my sister, Jeanette, for our weekly hour long telephone chat. I went to bed early last night but had a restless night. I may have slept too much over the weekend as I feel fine this morning.

I may take a nap this afternoon. I have a beef pot roast cooking in my Crock Pot for supper and the aroma is filling the air in the house. see you next week.

SPRING BEAUTY & ALLERGY, FURNACE PROBLEM, PESKY SQUIRRELS....

By Olivene Godfrey

Well, folks this has not been a good week. And it started out so well with spring in the air and the pear tree blooming, and other plants and trees budding out and flocks of robins landed in the yard every day. It was enough to make ordinary people wax poetic. But, all of that beauty can play havoc with allergy sufferers like me. After several weeks of feeling pretty good and getting out more, WHAMO! The old allergy attacks were back and I have been in pain as my fellow allergy sufferers will understand. And my arthritis pains started acting up. So, I was not feeling so well, when the next WHAMO hit Barry and me.

It was while we were having a cold snap last week and we got up one morning and the house was icy cold. Since the furnace is old, I was afraid it had stopped working. One of our projects for this spring, is to replace the aggravating glass doors that lead to the patio with French doors and I could see that going out of sight if we had to buy a new furnace. Upon checking out at the propane gas tank, Barry discovered that for the first time in 26 years that we have lived here, the gas tank gauge registered EMPTY! I called the gas company and the propane gas was delivered out that afternoon. When Barry got home, we wondered why the house was still cold. And Barry discovered that something was wrong with the gas not getting to the furnace. So with nighttime coming, I called and left what was probably a hysterical message on the heat-gas repairman's answering machine. The next day, the repairman came out and flushed out the gas line and all has been well with the furnace since then. I think we can still afford the new door. Thank goodness, for our electric blankets the nights we slept without heat.

While on the subject of spring, we have a problem with about a dozen or more squirrels who are living not only in our yard and destroying bird feeders, but are spending a lot of time in our attic. Barry discovered a small opening underneath an ease. We called a carpenter who said he could fix it but not until we got all the squirrels out of the attic. I looked in the yellow pages and found an ad for a company that would take care of such varmints. I called and was informed that the company would charge 75 bucks for a house call and an additional $70 for each squirrel removed from the attic. I told Barry and we decided to wait until July or August when not even a squirrel could stand the heat in the attic.

Thinking about the pesky squirrels reminded me that while they look cute occasionally, they are ,after all, rodents. And that reminding me of the time when my late husband, Ralph, a tough World War !! veteran , and I had to live in a cold water flat in an old building downtown because of the housing shortage.
One night we returned home after seeing a movie in town and we were surprised, to put it mildly, by a large, gopher rat in the middle of the bedroom. Ralph grabbed up a poker that was next to the hearth of the coal grate we used for heating the room, and struck the rat. The rat jumped up in the air and tried to attack Ralph. While this dual was going on I was standing in a chair screaming. Finally, Ralph beat the rat to death with the poker and then took it outside. I was scared to go to bed that night because of the rat episode. We moved to a better apartment as soon as possible.

I am hoping this coming week will be better for me. The sunshine beckons me out today but I am not certain if I will venture outside with this allergy raging.

JONQUILS IN BLOOM AND SPRING MUSING, CICADAS, & OATMEAL....

By Olivene Godfrey

My jonquils are in full bloom and even though winter is having what I hope will be one of its last gasps, I am hoping spring will soon be here. I always think of these words in the Bible's Song of Solomon about this time of year: "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is coming and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

My son, Barry, and I had mixed emotions about spring last year as it was our first spring without my late husband, Ralph, who loved spring, too. He enjoyed planting and caring for a small garden and had a green thumb. During the years that Barry and I cared for Ralph during his illness, we neglected the house.
So, last spring we had the wood trim painted white on our brick house and had new carpet installed in the den.

Barry and I also cleaned out closets and did some other cleaning jobs. When I cleaned out Ralph's clothes closet and packed up his clothes which we gave to the Salvation Army, I felt sad. So many things remind us of Ralph. But, we try to keep going and we are planning several home improvement projects for this spring, too.

One recent night, our good friend, Larry Ballew, took Barry and I out to dinner at a nice restaurant and night had fallen when we returned home. In the winter months, the nights here in our rural area in northwest Georgia are totally black and usually silent. But, this night we were greeted by a shrill, chirping sound that we recognized as the song of the cicadas
Usually, we hear them only during the summer and they aren't harmful insects except to tender young plants which may be damaged by their breaking of twigs.

I didn't know much about them so Barry researched on the Internet more than I really wanted to know about the cicadas. I found out the most prominent periodical cicadas are seven species from North America, three with 17 year cycles. Some of us in the country tire of the loud din of their "chorus" at night. Barry found out that most cicadas are strong fliers that spend their time high in the trees, so they are rarely seen or captured. And that is enough on this subject.

ABOUT THAT OATMEAL....

I guess people who know me think I am beginning to sound like a commercial for Quaker Oatmeal. I have always liked the taste of oatmeal and when I would eat it for breakfast, Ralph would say that it would "stick to my ribs" better than my usual light breakfast. So, when I saw the commercials on T.V. about the Quaker Oatmeal lowering cholesterol, I decided to try it as I had always been plagued with high cholesterol. I was taking a prescription medicine to lower my cholesterol, but it was still too high. I have eaten oatmeal almost every morning for about a year. Last week, I had lab work done at my doctor's office. The next day, I had an appointment with my doctor and she greeted me with a smile and a pleased expression on her face and handed me the report of my lab work, with a circle around the cholesterol number. It had never been that low. The doctor told me to keep on doing whatever I had been doing and I told her about eating the oatmeal. She said she would tell her other patients about the oatmeal, too.

So, if you have high cholesterol and haven't been able to lower it by diet or medication, why not give the oatmeal a try?

IMPORTANT GOALS SPUR OPTIMISM

By Olivene Godfrey

Someone said that the greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one. Gladstone said,” No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes."
But, alas, we often think we are perfect, that it's impossible for us to be wrong in any case. If our decisions backfire, we can always blame someone else.

Sometimes uncertainty is a way of avoiding mistakes and responsibility. We think if no decision is made, then nothing can go wrong. And to the person who thinks he is perfect, to be wrong is a horrible fate. We progress by acting, making mistakes, and correcting course. If you can't correct your course if you just stand still and do nothing. You can correct your course as you go along, by choosing one that seems to offer the best solution.

Big people, big personalities, make mistakes and admit them. It's the little person who is afraid to admit he had been wrong. Thomas Edison said he never became discouraged while working on a project because,"...every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

Then we've all known the type personality who looks for a scapegoat or excuse for his failure. Usually he blames society, the Establishment, life, the breaks. And, of course, he resents the success and happiness of others. This seems proof that life has not been fair to him. Resentment is an attempt to make our own failure palatable by explaining it in terms of unfair treatment.

The person with a "chip on his shoulder" does not make the best companion or co-worker. When others don't warm up to him, he has additional reasons for feeling resentful. Some people seem to feel good only of they are miserable. And, they literally begin to search for "injustices". They feel they have been wronged under the most innocent circumstances.

The truth is you set your own goals. No one owes you anything. You are responsible for your own success and happiness. Resentment is a "failure mechanism" and is self-perpetuating unless we step in and break the vicious cycle. The person who is actively engaged in striving toward an important goal doesn't have a pessimistic outlook for life. Striving toward goals which are important to you - not for status symbols - but because they are consistent with your deep inner needs, is healthful. I think that my mother who died at age 92 still making plans for the future lived that kind of life, of always having a project to work on and goals to look forward to.