Author: Kim Janine Ligon

We had been in isolation for fourteen months not venturing outside of our immediate environs. I was giddy with excitement. Fully vaccinated with numbers constantly improving we were going to travel. Since we didn’t get to have Christmas with my husband’s family, we were going to have a May day picnic as a delayed celebration.

First, to pack. We couldn’t find the night light we travel with until we got the suitcases. There it was patiently waiting for us to be freed. We left it in the overnight case the last time we travelled so we wouldn’t forget it the next time. Then we forgot that! It had been soooooo looooooong!

I was certain when we reached the county line we would hit a force field that would bounce us back home again – like Jim Carrey’s character did in “The Truman Show” movie. We held hands and successfully zipped across the county line. Then state lines were crossed into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and finally, Illinois. It was a rush to be driving over fifty miles per hour while negotiating hills and curves and curves on hills. We’d almost forgotten how to drive on a highway. I even had to pass an Amish couple in their buggy. After the past 431 days in exile, it was very exciting!

I was concerned about going to a more locked down state. We have been mask-free since April 9th. My husband even wrote new lyrics to the tune of “Born Free” in honor of the emancipation. Once you’re vaccinated, losing the masks is the next step to normalcy – one we are eagerly taking! We did wear masks in the Kroger in Illinois to comply with the posted request. Our niece is the store manager and we wanted to keep her out of trouble!

My sister in law, her husband, and my brother in law hadn’t eaten in a restaurant yet even though they had opened, but they did with us. Two nights in a row. And my sister in law and I visited the alpaca ranch where my loom came from. I got to share some of my creations with them and of course, buy a little fiber for future spinning!

Saturday was the main event. The Christmas in May picnic in the park!

As you can see, it was a made to order day. Blue skies. Light breeze to flutter the tablecloths but keep the bugs away. Seventy five degrees. We had twenty-nine relatives from the immediate area in attendance. They hadn’t gotten together during the pandemic so it was nice for them to see one another too! We feasted on fried chicken and ham with all kinds of salads, devilled eggs, baked beans, and desserts galore! It was wonderful fun! The kids ran and played as all four generations of the family enjoyed the delayed celebration. Our nephew in law wanted to sing Christmas carols, but we refrained from that!

Later that afternoon we got to witness our great nephew go to his senior prom with a lovely date – but not until he had driven his dirt bike on the jump course in his back yard while wearing his tuxedo! Any girl who would tolerate that has to be a keeper! Luckily, the jump was successfully completed without incident and they were able to leave on time for their prom.

It was a jam packed two and a half days. We got up super early Sunday morning to beat the predicted bad weather. We ordered a pizza after unpacking, ate and then hit the hay! We were so exhausted we both slept over twelve hours. We didn’t realized we’d had a phone call just after going to bed until we saw the answering machine flashing light the next morning. I guess we were exhausted and out of practice!

Here’s wishing your “normal” becomes reality soon. Enjoy!

As we pass the one year anniversary of the great pandemic beginning, I feel a little hopeful. That’s fostered by the beginning of Spring. In our front yard one of our Bradford pear trees is in full bloom and the the other not far behind it. There is at least one of these beautiful trees in each yard on our street.

Our daffodils are much shyer about blooming this year than in years past but there are a few yellow heads popping up out in our woods. They always make me smile.

The weather is moving into that sweet spot after the winter’s damp and cold but before the blazing heat of summer and especially before the blizzard of pine pollen that springtime coats our deck with. It is perfect to sit out on the deck in the afternoon sunshine and do our crossword puzzles. The time change tomorrow means they’ll be longer afternoon sunshine.

And I got these in the mail on Thursday.

My sister Ann is learning how to use her new Cricut and I got the goodies from her practice. In addition to the coffee cups I got two shirts with my spinning romance logo that she neatened up. I love getting surprise packages and now I’ve gotten one two months in a row. In February my sweet friend Susie in Oklahoma sent me a lapghan she crocheted that is perfect for using while I knit or read in my recliner! Thank you Susie and Ann for the day brightening surprises!

And we’ve had our second vaccinations so now we’re actually talking about travelling and best of all, I’m helping plan our family reunion that we have on the odd years – I mean odd numbered years – we just escaped from a very odd year even though it came with an even number!

We’re on the cusp of normalcy. I’m hopeful that the trend continues! My prayer for each of you is that this is the year when you get to hug the people you haven’t seen during this covid mess, get to travel beyond the borders of your own county, and get to celebrate the miracles of everyday life with the people you love most in this world!

Enjoy!!!!

Yesterday was the third anniversary of the creation of this blog site. I almost forgot to celebrate because it was also the date of another thing to celebrate.

My husband and I finally we’re able to find a spot on the hospital’s website to schedule our first COVID vaccinations.

It was quite a production winding through an orange cone maze like you were at Disneyland, only in your car. They had all kinds of people checking to make sure you were scheduled, you were you, what your temperature was, what you were allergic to, and then you finally made it to the garage where they let you roll in for your vaccination. Then they gave you a fifteen minute timer and sent you out of the garage to wait in the parking lot. If you had a violent reaction or the timer went off you were supposed to honk your horn and the sheriff’s deputy who was working would come check on you. Fortunately, we only had to honk when the timer expired!

So far so good…..our second one is in three weeks. Jim is so hoping being vaccinated will allow him to be maskless, but that doesn’t appear to be likely yet. I think he would have had them tattoo his forehead as VACCINATED in big red letters if he could just lose the mask. But numbers of cases are dropping and vaccinations are being given so I remain optimistic that the light at the end of the tunnel is NOT a train!

While I’m talking to you, I have to vetch a little. I am very tired of everyone, especially certain government employees, using COVID as an excuse for lousy customer service. This morning we went to the Post Office. I had eight packages to send – fruits of my spinning, weaving, knitting and crocheting labors.

When I walked in the lobby side door there were seven people in front of me. After almost ten minutes, no one had come out of the inner sanctum. The guy at the front of the line walked up and tried the door. It didn’t open. He started pounding on it -then walked out. I hadn’t realized that everyone was waiting for it to open. It was after nine and was supposed to open at eight- thirty. People started pounding on other doors. No response.

Now, I know some of you are kindhearted and worried that something bad had happened to the postal workers within – that they had been prevented from opening on time to serve the waiting taxpayers by some homicidal maniac upset over their Christmas packages still being undelivered. Nope. We could hear laughing from behind the post office box bank. Lots of laughing. It sounded like a real celebration. It reminded me I’d forgotten to celebrate my blog anniversary yesterday. I don’t know if or when the downtown Post Office opened today. I went to Pakmail where a friendly young man smiled with his eyes and cheerfully dispatched my parcels!

Only in a COVID universe would we put up with this garbage…but hopefully that’s going to change soon! Keep washing your hands. Wear your masks. Get your vaccinations and pray unceasingly for this to end.

Can you feel the virtual hugs I keep sending you?

This fall my husband’s sister sent me a birthday gift. Two thoughts came to mind when I opened it – why would she spend so much money on me and what in earth was I going to do with it? Frankly, I was a little aggravated that she’d sent me a ” do more work” present when I felt like I had more than enough on my plate already. It was a ten inch tabletop loom. Where was I going to put it?

We eat breakfast and lunch at the kitchen table. Not to mention it is the temporary repository for all the minutia of life requiring sorting, paying, filing, reading or tossing. No space for a loom.

The dining room table has been stripped of its tablecloth since early in the pandemic. One end is my husband’s and one end is mine for all your various projects and the middle is for afternoon crossword puzzle solving in this colder weather. No room there for any long term placement.

We eat dinner at a table that has one end covered with spinning accessories, logs and notes since my spinning wheel sits on the floor at that end. I used to clear it off when we had company to have a place for board games or cards. But that was in the Before Time. No project room at that table.

I was beginning to be curious about whether I could figure out how to weave. My husband wasn’t crazy about me beginning a new space consuming project. (We’ll not speak of those he has in process.) He’s dubbed the area around my recliner in the den as my nest since it is surrounded by projects in progress, skeins of yarn, and patterns. I’ve already told you about my spinning wheel area – for my first wheel. In the kitchen, I have a second spinning wheel made from an old treadle sewing machine. It used to be the same sister-in-law’s until she gifted it to me. Hmmm…

After the first of the year, I ordered a loom stand ( and a little fiber) with gift cards from two friends. When it came, I put together the loom, the stand and successfully connected the two. The loom came with a ball of yarn and instructions on how to weave my first scarf. I decided I was up to the challenge of learning a new trick. After all, I’ve been retired five years and in pandemic hell for almost a year. That’s a lot of bourbon under the bridge.

I had to carry everything into the guest room to have enough room to spread out for the initial loom setup – picture husband eye rolling here – it was a complicated process with inadequate instructions, mostly pictures. But I persevered and voila!

It is a peaceful, rhythmic process once you get it set up, that took over five hours the first time! When I finished the sample scarf, I dug out some yarn I’d spun that was leftover from an earlier project. It was not enought for another knitting or crochet project, but the perfect amount for a woven scarf. It’s coming along beautifully.

After my initial reluctance to appreciate the gift, I’ve found quiet satisfaction in the fact that I can learn a new skill – one that results in soft, beautiful results. I read somewhere that learning new things helps keep the devil of Alzheimer’s at bay. That can only be a good thing!

Thank you Jean for a gift that lured me into honing my learning brain cells, but I don’t think I should push my luck with anything new requiring space consuming apparatuses.

Wishing you all a little peace and satisfaction in this still insane world. I love you! Bet you can guess what you’re getting for next Christmas!

My Aunt Marlene has always had a beautiful smile. It beams in the photograph my father took before the Winter Cotillion at the University of Illinois – when the two oldest Schnepper boys took their best girls out for a formal night on the town. My parents had just been married and Gordon was dating Marlene Eyer – a pretty girl with twinkling eyes and a mischievous smile.

Aunt Marlene was a nurse by training and practiced her profession in a variety of settings. I think it must have been extra comforting to get some TLC from a nurse who had that radiant smile beaming at you.

After my grandparents, Aunt Marlene assumed the responsibility of coordinating the every other year Schnepper family reunions. One year it poured rain – a real gully washer. But it didn’t affect the turnout since most of us had come from out of town specifically to attend this event. Was it cancelled when the crowd of more than fifty couldn’t spread out in the large yard? Nope! Aunt Marlene and Uncle Gordon opened up their home and we all swarmed in. Eating and drinking. Visiting. Laughing. We took family pictures in the living room. I’m sure that sofa was never the same after being piled on by all the separate tribes who made up the reunion. Through it all, Aunt Marlene was the picture of serenity. Smiling.

Later she passed reunion coordination on to me, sharing all her mailing lists and recommendations. She and Uncle Gordon still hosted, but at the winery where there was room to set up without destroying her furniture.

When illness slowly robbed Aunt Marlene of her words, she still found effective ways to communicate with those pretty eyes and that wonderful smile. Even though words were harder to come by, her spirit was undiminished. She was willing to go on adventures like flying to New Jersey for a son’s housewarming party and always seemed happy to be in the midst of the chaos of family gatherings.

We’re never prepared to lose the people we love, even when they continue to steadily creep closer to leaving us. Earlier this week, after sharing time with all five of her children and with her loving husband at her side, my Aunt Marlene left us. I’m sure that she is smiling that beautiful smile as she looks down on us today. Thank you for showing us how much you loved us by sharing that smile for so long.

This is the time of year when you can’t open you mailbox without finding at least one catalog of some kind. Usually many more than one. Some from places you’ve never ordered a single thing from.

I usually scan through them before relegating them to the ever growing recycling pile. I occasionally find a t-shirt with something on it that’s clever or stupid or riotously funny. Not that I would ever buy it to wear out of the house. Why advertise to perfect strangers what you think is clever or they think is stupid?

A couple of weeks ago there was a little plaque with this verse on it:

Friends are like angels, you don’t have to see them to know they are there!

That is certainly true in 2020. No traveling to see friends (or family) in other states or other countries. I can’t even see my friends who live in the same town as often as I would like. Some of them I haven’t seen at all because the risk is too great for their health or the place we usually have lunch isn’t taking the precautions seriously. One of them, I visit through a window to protect them from the dreaded plague, although they got it anyway but thankfully, recovered.

To adjust to all this I’m making more efforts to stay in touch other ways.

Emails of happy thoughts and shared prayers or just checking in.

Notes of encouragement and sympathy or cards by postal mail.

And sometimes by picking up Mr. Bell’s invention to hear that special voice or unique laughter that can only come from my friend.

None of it replaces a full two arm hug before a face to face lunch in one of your favorite places that has managed to survive.

Or meeting friends in a full football stadium or hockey rink or baseball park hours from your home to cheer on you favorite team.

Or getting to finally take a friend up on their long standing offer to cross the border to visit their home in the hills on a lake with a view out the backdoor that could be a picture postcard.

I know my unseen angels exist because I believe they are actively engaged full time in battling the evil in the world right now. How much worse would it be if they were not?

I know my unseen friends are there because we’re making plans for next year, for their next birthday, for my next birthday, for the reunion, the next sports season, for when life as we know it can be finally returns.

I’m praying for that time when hope becomes reality.

For when our angels prevail.

For when friends are once again seen whenever and wherever we want.

In person!

Thank you to my angels for blessing me with friends to help me through this!

One thing is not affected by Covid-19. The calendar continues to change months right on schedule despite the ugliness of the world we live in today. And regardless of the frightening prospects of what the next several weeks will bring. (Please do NOT post any political comments.)

At our house the change in the calendar brings a smidgen of “normal” cheer to our kitchen. The end of October means the boo towels are out!

Several years ago, my friend Millie gave me towels and candy dishes for all the major holidays. My husband dubbed the Halloween towels the boo towels for obvious reasons. They are an indicator that fall is truly here. While this year won’t have the same activities as usual, we have the boo towels and, of course, the pure sugar candy pumpkins that I love!

I can’t predict with any certainty what the rest of the year will bring or where we will celebrate the holidays that follow. Or what 2021 will bring. I only know that where I can control things it will be true that the boo towels will be followed by turkey towels, Christmas ones, heart embroidered terry cloth, Easter egg clad towels and shamrocks. That much I am sure of.

I’m wishing you a smile today and praying for better days ahead!

James M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, said, “Those who bring Sunshine to the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.” He never met my Aunt Judy, but she would have invoked those words.

She became Aunt Judy in 1971 when she married my father’s almost thirty-one year old baby brother. Judy had what it took to settle him down back in his hometown after a life of flying helicopters and commercial airliners. It was a package deal that not only yielded a new Aunt but a new cousin, Dodd.

Usually she had a smile, unless someone was vexing her. Then she pursed her lips, rolled her eyes and said their name. Usually it was “JOOOHN!” But Daddy could get a rise out of her without trying too hard. Then it was “RUSSELLL!” She was easy to tease, but didn’t stay aggravated long.

Her artist’s soul showed itself in many ways. In her salon on the bottom floor of the tri-level house, she cut, curled and dyed lots of hair and was always experimenting with wigs and hairpieces.

Aunt Judy did everyone’s hair for my wedding party, except for my sister, Ann. She wouldn’t be put in curlers and under a dryer after helping at the bachelor party the night before. Aunt Judy gently washed Ann’s long hair, then cut it into a cute bob that looked lovely under the hat she wore down the aisle. Disaster averted much to this nervous bride’s relief.

For many years she was the chief photographer at our family reunions putting up picture boards and making collages of family fun for all to enjoy. She was a prolific talented painter of flowers, landscapes, children and grandchildren.

Judy gave freely of her time and talents. With John she grew her church’s Outreach Meal program over thirty times its original size to deliver meals to 1,000 at Thanksgiving and Christmas. My sisters and I were in town to help one Christmas. What an amazing production! She proudly took us around to introduce her nieces to the other workers, then put us to work!

You rarely saw her sit down without a little fur ball or two curled up in her lap. A little dog nuzzling up against her perfectly content.

Smiling. Creative. Generous. Talented. Loving. All those describe my Aunt Judy, but the word that comes to mind for me is Feisty. She was a lot like the little dogs she loved – affectionate, but ready to fight if necessary. She’s been in a battle for years that has taken every bit of her feistiness, every ounce of fight, and every ray of faith. This week she was called home to bask in the love and the joy she freely shared with us to so long. Sadly, due to COVID, I’ll be basking in memories of her rather than be there in person to celebrate her life. We love you Aunt Judy. Rest in well-deserved peace.

I have wished, hoped and prayed that by now we would only be remembering when COVID was a bad dream we had awakened from. I want to see fewer cases so I can go to visit family and friends in other states without risking their or my safety.

These days we get up each morning and check the number of new cases in the state and in our county. A local TV station shows the breakdown on their crawl. When the trend is down we are always thankful.

Then I usually weigh myself and write that number down before I make coffee.

Not that writing them down changes anything about either of those numbers. But I check them every day.

Earlier this week, I read that 70% of the people this medical website surveyed said the pandemic is causing them to make changes to be more healthy – to eat better, exercise more, drink less. Really? No one surveyed me.

I knew long before this strange year that the medical answer to improving almost every health issue is lose weight. Sometimes I have and sometimes I have not. But I haven’t the mental fortitude to forgo comfort foods (you know what they are) or a well made bourbon drink in the midst of this stressful mess.

Sometimes I do my exercises and more often, my yoga breathing, but if I don’t I am not going to add the stress of feeling guilty about it.

I’d really like to join Bill Murray’s Meatballs campers and begin chanting “It just doesn’t matter!” but I know it does.

The key is to remember that worrying about the virus or the number on the scale or your cholesterol does absolutely nothing to change them. You need to take action to create the change or chose not to. The only thing you should never do is to worry. It is a time sucking, gut wrenching waste of time and it keeps you from sleeping. And we all need to sleep!