Observations in October - #31Things - Transportation

I've always loved to be behind the wheel of a car.  This is me screeching my wheels out of our driveway, honking the horn saying "Get out of my way!"  The sidewalk was my open road and I had an aunt who lived at the corner of the block so I would "drive" down to her house all the time. 



















When I was a senior in high school, I graduated to motorized vehicles, my first car was a white Plymouth Valiant.  I called him Prince.  It was so cool because it had push button gears.  My dad went with me to pick him out, but I paid for him with my library earnings.  I was so proud! 

After Prince I had a Silver Gremlin.  I went to the dealer and bought it all by myself.  I thought I made a great deal because they gave me as much for the Valiant as I had paid for it!  I called the Gremlin the "Silver Bullet."  I really liked that car but I traded him in for a sexy Triumph TR7.  I was in love with the look of this car and felt so good behind the wheel but I think it was more car than I could handle as I had a lot of trouble with it from the very start.  Don't I look good standing next to it though?  I loved riding with the sunroof open.  I don't remember giving it a name.  Probably should have been called "Troublemaker."   

I got married around that time and we sold my baby because it was costing us a lot in repairs.  We got a nondescript used brown Mustang and that lasted a few years.  When our daughter was born we bought our first brand new car together, a Honda Accord.  That was the best little car and we had that for 10 years.  When we sold it to my nephew, he had it for another long period.  I think it ended up getting maybe 300,000 miles on it!  

Our next car was a Mercury Sable wagon and we had that car for a VERY short time.  It took us on the "Vacation from Hell" which is definitely a blog post of its own.

We then got a Mercury Villager and that was a good mini-van which made it through the kids school years very nicely.  There was plenty of room to take some of the class on field trips and take the golf team that my son was on to their matches.  

After the Villager my husband let me do a really dumb thing and we bought a Dodge Journey.  It was another used vehicle and I saw it online at a local dealership.  It had been on the lot for a while so I figured we could get a good deal on it.  I wanted it because it had some really neat features but mostly because it was a Journey and it made me think of the band.  It was a terrible car.  Again, there were problems with it right from the start and there was even a factory recall on it for something to do with the electrical system.  Periodically it just wouldn't start.  No warning, just no starting.  

Finally I got sick of dealing with it and admitted to my husband that I made a mistake by not getting one of the Hondas that we had test driven at the same time we test drove the Journey.  

We took a trip up to where our daughter was going to school at Sonoma State and went to look at new Honda CRVs because the sales tax rate is cheaper up there than where we live.  After four hours of dealership negotiations (I hate that part) we leased a white Honda CRV.  I love it.  I call it Moonglow.  

It has a sunroof and I can connect my phone for hands free talking and iTunes listening.  This year we had the option to turn it in and lease a new one or buy it but we decided to lease it one more year.  Then we'll see if we keep it or get a newer one.  

While I love driving, I also love flying.  We don't do it much because it is expensive but we live very close to the airport so I see the planes all the time.















We also live close to the train station and take the train to the Giants games.  It really is easier than trying to deal with parking up by the stadium.  At one time the train was at ground level but they raised it to help with traffic control.  When it was on the ground the Holiday Train used to stop at our station and it was an entertaining thing to do with the kids.  Santa and Mrs. Claus are on the train with Rudolph and the elves.  The train stops at certain stations and there is a car full of Christmas carolers.  Santa gets off the train and hands out candy to the kids.  There is a Toys For Tots donation station set up and people can donate toys for underprivileged children.  Since they raised the tracks, the train doesn't stop at our station anymore but I can still see it from our house:

 
What's your favorite mode of transportation?  Have a favorite car story?  Like trains? 

Observations in October - 2018 Conversation

We are talking conversation today in our 31 Things adventure. 

Since I work from home my conversations are mostly with my husband who is retired and home all day or as comments that I leave on other people's blog posts.  Conversations with my kids are mostly via text and I really like using the emojis.  I'm the one in blue:

I love the one where it shows the hand in front of the face and the wave.  

I keep telling the kids we have to make one that is a hug.  I don't like the one with the two hands so I use this one 🔄

Conversations via text or computer though are not really the best forms.  There are times when the intent of the statements get twisted or misunderstood because you can't hear the tone of the voice.  Or the time it takes between texts if one person is busy or not near their phone or computer.    

There are some conversations that I am sorry I never had.  I wish I had thought to have deeper conversations with my grandmother while she was alive.  I would love to hear more stories of her growing up.  While she was alive I was either too young or too busy with my own kids to take the time to ask her questions like what it was really like to raise five children or what my grandfather was like since he died before I was born. 

I never knew my dad's parents either and she might have been able to tell me what they were like since they were peers.  My dad is the handsome young man on the right.   

My mom is 95 and she is the only one left of all her brothers and sisters and my aunts and uncles on my dad's side.  I do have conversations with her sometimes about the "olden days" and try to remember to write things down so that I can pass the stories on to my kids.

There are also the people I wrote about in the book I submitted for the Sketchbook Project.  I'd love to have some conversations with them!  

Anybody you wish you could have a conversation with?  Like using emojis?  Let's converse!

  

Ali Edwards has a course on her site called 31 Things.  That is what I have chosen to use as my starting point for blogging this month.

Observations in October - 2018 - Jewelry

I am going to be spending the month of October doing a project I've been meaning to do for a while now.  It is called 31 Things and it is offered as an online class by Ali Edwards.  Last year I did the One Little Word class with her where each month she gave us a project to do based around our word of the year.  It was very interesting to try to bring my word (which was Believe) into my life in different ways.

31 Things is similar but this time she gives us a different prompt each day for 31 days and we are to explore those in depth.  She suggests making an album which of course I am going to do but it is going to be slightly different than the one she suggests, which is a 12 x 12 album with two words on each page.  I'm using a smaller journal type book and putting a picture on one page and doing some writing on the other.  For each word she will give us questions to think about in relation to that word.  I'm hoping to be able to post each day here too.

The first word is "Jewelry" and here are my thoughts on that:  Always silver, white gold or platinum.  I think the diamonds sparkle more in those settings.  Even if there are no diamonds, I still like the silver shine. 

The most important piece of jewelry to me is my wedding ring.  I clearly remember the day my husband proposed.  He didn't have a ring to put on my finger because he knew that it would be something I would wear every day and he wanted me to like it.  We went shopping together and I chose the ring I did because when you look at it from the side, to me it looks like a castle on top of a winding hill. 

When we had been married about 10 years, I thought it might be nice to have an anniversary band to go with the wedding ring so we got this one:

I don't have a picture of them together, but even though the stones are of a different cut, they stacked well and I wore them every day for another 20 years.  In 2015 I happened to look down at the palm of my hand and noticed that the rings looked funny.  I had trouble taking them off and when I did, this is what I saw:

I have no idea how that happened.  My hand itself was not injured.  Obviously I had to take the rings to a jeweler to have them repaired.  First time I would be without my rings in 30+ years!  My hand felt naked.

I wore this ring so I wouldn't notice the empty space as much. 

It seemed to take forever for them to get the rings back to me and the anniversary ring was never quite the same as the stones could not be put back into the proper alignment.  It bothered me to wear it and since we were now at 30+ years of marriage my husband said I could pick out something  different.  I got a ring wrap or enhancer and my wedding set fit nicely inside it.  This is what it looks like now:

I'm expecting it to last another 30 years as the back is soldered together to make it stronger.  

Another piece of jewelry I wear quite a bit is this locket.  In it I add a quote or saying for my word of the year.  The picture is from last year when my word was "Believe."  This year is "Create" and the saying is "Create the life you want to live."  I am really trying hard to do that, little by little.  When I have the necklace on, it seems to strengthen my resolve. 

This silver ring is probably the other piece I wear most often.  It came with a bag of marbles and I can change it up to match whatever I'm wearing.  So versatile and definitely a conversation piece.  I get a lot of comments on it since it is pretty large.  People are amazed when I pop out the marble.  Some of the marbles change color depending on how the light hits them.     

Since I work from home, I don't generally get all dressed up with a lot of jewelry but in addition to my wedding ring, every day I wear a necklace and some bracelets.  It is kind of a tradition that every year at Christmas I pick out a little bauble that I like and give a picture of it to my husband and that's what he gets for me.  They are usually not extremely expensive but most of the time it has a special meaning like the Journey necklace which symbolizes the way the journey of love goes (starts out small and keeps growing), 

 

I switch the necklaces out every few months, but I always have one on.

My constant bracelets are an "Open Hearts" charm, an aquamarine stone bracelet and a bracelet our daughter gave me one year that I was supposed to add charms to.  I have the charms but never added them.  Maybe that's something I'll do this year. 

One more story about rings...When I was 4 or 5 I had my tonsils taken out and it required an overnight stay in the hospital.  Even though I was not a baby, I remember being put in a crib-like bed.  When my mom was there with me I remember her putting her hand through the slats in the side and I played with her wedding ring.  Fast forward to about six or seven years ago, after my dad had passed away, my mom was distributing things to us girls.  She gave me her wedding set.  I wore it on my right hand and noticed that the band had cracked a bit.  Instead of taking it off right away and putting it in a safe place, I wore it one more time.  I don't remember feeling it fall off but when I went to bed that night I noticed it was not on my finger.  I was so upset.  I didn't know how to tell my mother.  She and my dad had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary shortly before he died.  My mom was so calm about it.  I was crying as I told her and she just said, "Don't worry honey.  It's just a thing.  I gave it up when I gave it to you and I still have the memories of your dad and I.  I don't need the ring to remember him."  I still feel bad and pray sometimes to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, to help me find it.   

So, there is a pretty in depth coverage of my relationship with jewelry.  Got any jewelry stories to tell me?  Love to hear them!