MONDAY MAGAZINE

 

Hello, friends!  Hope you are all doing well.  It is another hot day and Joe and I have just come in from working in the yard.  It is a huge job.  I took some pictures and plan on doing an end of the week post rather than giving you a picture here and a picture there.  All I will say is that it now looks as if someone lives here rather than an abandoned building.

I have found a new vlog that I absolutely love.  It is called "Renovation East" and is filmed by Andre a man who lives in Eastern Germany near Berlin.  He has bought an abandoned house and is completely renovating it.  If you are into renovations, you will enjoy this.  He posts once a week (usually on Sunday) and the videos average 10-12 minutes.  I showed it to Joe last night and he liked it.

I want to respond to some of the comments from my last post.  About the ice cream, that was totally my fault.  The people in our store do not bag your groceries.  You do that yourself.  I should have put it in a double bag, but I didn't think of it.  Our trunk was very full and I shoved it in there and put it on its side.  Live and learn.  I have no one but myself to blame for that.  

I am not upset that I went to the hospital twice.  I have faced cancer and death several times and since then things like that don't bother me.  Too much else going on in life to be bothered by things like that.

And with that said, let's read another story from my Monday magazine.  Today I will share the second story:

Jenny had spent summer nights on Aunt Mary's sleeping porch ever since she was 7 years old.  Back then, she was scared of night sounds and Aunt Mary would sit in the rocker and read to her until she fell asleep.

Now at 15, she no longer feared the darkness.  She would lie wide awake watching the shadows of moths against the curtain.  She felt safe here, as if nothing could touch her.

Jenny pinned the curtain shut on nights when she wanted to feel cozy and private.  Other times, she threw it wide open and lay with her head at the foot of the bed so she could feel a sprinkle of rain.  She never told Aunt Mary who would have scolded her.  "You'll catch your death of cold," she'd say.

Jenny loved it when Uncle Jim mowed the grass in the evening.  On those nights, she would stretch out and breathe deeply, imagining she was in a meadow in England.

Out of all those nights in all those years, she'd only missed two on the porch.  One was a time when a wind storm shook the branches of the oak trees so violently that Uncle Jim escorted her inside.  The other was an evening in July so unseasonably cold that Aunt Mary wouldn't let her stay out.  "There aren't enough quilts in the world to keep you warm on a night like this," she said.

Being on the porch had helped Jenny face her fears.  One night when the moon was full, Billy Henderson hid in the bushes and made spooky noises.  "He's harmless," Aunt Mary said when Jenny ran inside.

Now Jenny lay on the bed, listening to the song of the crickets.  Next year, she'd have her driver's license probably her first kiss.  But here she was still a girl and there were times when her feelings surprised her.  I don't think I ever want to leave, she thought.  Sometimes it seemed, the scariest thing beyond the curtain was growing up.

And here's the pictures that go with it.

One more story to go.  I'll bring that to you next week.

I hope you have a great evening.  I'm going to hop in the tub and then make dinner.  Hamburgers and fries.  Easy tonight.  See you all later.

Kathy