The Spirit of Christmas has struck. The tree is up and decorated, many of my gifts purchased and almost wrapped. The list is shorter and actually do-able!!  I even thought about mailing cards. The kids are always the motivator for me to get Seasonal, and usually I fake it, and barely make it! This year as been a little different..... I am retrospective, introspective, alternating between tears of joy and tears of sorrow as memories play in HD .  I have gone through some old photos, trying to organize them, and have felt such awe and gratitude for the life I have been given..... the good and bad, happy and sad.....

The Night The Boys From Nashville Came to Town

In a dusty little town in Idaho

The seasons roll by and by real slow

A place where all the days all seem the same,

But the folks are always friendly and they call you by your name.

There’s an old saloon that sits across the tracks
A quiet spot where you can go eat or relax.
It comes alive on Friday night with drinking and dancing,
There’s some lying and fighting, and even  romancing.

Local friends and neighbors gather there
To wash down the road dust and to let down their hair.
They all dress up and drive to town
On Friday night when the sun goes down.
Put a quarter in the jukebox....circle 'round.

The buckaroos all line up at the bar
Drinkin ’theirdraft beer from an old canning jar.
Town folks come to sip and sit at tables together
And talk about the kids and cars, and wonder 'bout the weather.

A big old truck showed up one afternoon
And stopped and parked in front of that old saloon
It didn’t take long ‘til word got around to get washed up and come on down,
Some Nashville boys had come into our town.

The people came in from near and far
And filled up every seat  in that little bar.
The neon moon was shining bright when Nashville music filled the night
Faces glowed and whiskey flowed. and everything felt right.

They sang, we danced and sang along
The flat tops rang the whole night long.
Sociable glasses  raised up high to thank those boys when they said good-bye.
Please come back soon,..... they said they'd try.

Chorus:

It was the night the boys from Nashville came to town
Singing songs and telling stories as folks all gathered ‘round
Hands were clapping, toes were tapping , they played ‘em all so sweet.
Country music filled the barroom and spilled into the street.
We will always remember dressin’ up and getting’ down,

The night the boys from Nashville came to town.

JT©5/10

Thank God I'm a Country Girl

Living a rural lifestyle provides a simplicity and a grounding that would be impossible to achieve in the city. Even though I am immersed in technology;with my computer and iPhone, Twitter and Facebook at home, and fight with computerized medical records and digital radiology at work; living on our little "patch of green" up here in the hills can take me away from all the wifi voodoo that we have all become too dependent upon. Life here is a constant reminder that there are things that cannot be controlled by modern day electronic gizmos.

We are feeding horses and cows, waiting for calves to drop, cleaning up branches and pine cones from a windstorm, starting seeds in the greenhouse, and busy with other Spring chores. The chores never end, but they cycle with the seasons and the weather. The seasons and the weather control much of our activities here, especially in their extremes; like five feet of snow, or fifty mile per hour winds, or one hundred degree heat and a well going dry.

There's no app for that, or any of the activities and events that we wake up to every day. I am just fine with that, too. It reminds me every day that I have very little control over anything in life. It reminds me that I am but a speck in this big universe, but that other living things depend on me being responsible. I am brought closer to God when I am surrounded by the beauty of His creation. I am able to appreciate the life around me that is new and different every day. Geese overhead in the morning, as I sip my coffee while filling the stock water tanks. Quail and turkey that hatch and grow through the summer months. Moose, mamas and babies, that wander out of the woods , and an occasional big bull that has been known to jump the pasture fence and cause panic with the horses. There is a herd of elk that migrate through every few weeks, now with some new babies running along side. Coyote songs at night, with a wolf howl now and then, as well. Listening to them on a clear night while pointing out the constellations to the kids is a gift. iTunes can't hold a candle their music.

We have beautiful sunrises and sunsets that we actually see. We feel the wind or rain or cold, because we have to go out into it. We get dirty working in the soil in the garden, the dirt in the fields, or the manure in the barn. We sit by a fire in the fire pit with friends and family, warmed by the flames and the companionship, roasting marshmallows after a barbecue.

I go into the real world to work and shop, the world ruled by technology and gadgets and plastic cards. I hurry home. I do marvel at it all, and I think I'm pretty savvy with downloads and blogs and tweets and photoshopping, but if it all disappeared tomorrow, I'd do just fine. I'd have a pitchfork and a shovel, my horse and my saddle, the stars and coyote serenade.

This is a wonderful life.

Healthcare Reform Makes Me Sick!

I am tired of the debates and the rhetoric and the talk shows and the political posturing that has taken place around Health care reform. I am frustrated and angry. I watched another political program this morning with various elected officials arguing back and forth with their own ideas of what will work, and why the other guy's idea won't. They are all so far from reality!! I don't believe that any of the people we have elected to guide and guard our future have a clue about the REAL state of health care. They are blindly leading us down a road to destruction.
Dr. Starner -Jones was eloquent in his recently published letter to the White House stating that we have a "culture crisis" rather than a health care crisis. He is so right. Most of us who are actually working in health care would agree with his assessment. The is an attitude of entitlement, that the medical card awarded by the state, to provide a safety net to families that qualify, is a porch pass for freebies that Doctors and clinics can provide.
Dr Starner-Jones noted a patient with state funded medical insurance with an expensive car, tattoos, cell phone, and tobacco habit. His observations are not at all unusual. We see this, and worse, multiple times daily. Then, it is common for this patient to ask for prescriptions for over the counter medications like ibuprofen, because they don't have cash. It's hard to do when there is a five dollar pack of smokes and an iPhone hanging out of a seventy-five dollar purse. I believe that anything "free", is not respected as much as it could be. The system is abused and disrespected. Because a family has a medical card, a child is brought in the the Emergency Department with a "cough" that started today..... no fever, no vomiting, just cough. Then, three siblings are also registered into the ED, just "to be checked out". All the children are fine, one has a cold. No antibiotics needed. but Mom wants prescriptions for Tylenol and Motrin, and codeine cough medicine,as well as a note for her caseworker to document her (needless) trip to the ED as an excuse for not attending the job training or anger management or parenting class that she missed. Grand total: about $500.00 of "free" medical care. Not to mention the amount of time the encounter took in an already overcrowded ED. If there had been a co-pay of even $1.00, would we have seen these four kids? I doubt it.
I wish the government officials who are making the decisions that impact the system would involve those of us who actually have first hand knowledge of the problems and suggestions for fixes that may actually benefit all of us.
I feel strongly that there needs to be reform; lets identify the real problems and implement sensible solutions.