We will Miss you Lexy.

A couple days ago, we noticed our kitty Lexy was not acting like her self. She wasn't in pain, but was very lazy. That's not normally like her. She hid for the first time in a long time. It took us twenty minutes to find her under a bed. There is a lot of stuff being stored under there. She was almost twenty years old. My sister and I both got kittens when I was 11. Lucy was "mine" but I loved them both equally. Lucy and Lexy lived with me. When Lucy died it was heartbreaking.

Lexy passed away on April 19th sometime in the early morning.  She died peacefully. We are all heartbroken and so sad. She has been in our family for a long time. Noah is heartbroken.  I hated having to tell him. I didn't tell him before school, he didn't ask or I would have.  I knew it would be hard for him to go to school knowing. They were throwing water balloons at the principal for doing their homework over spring break.  When Noah came home he noticed that the litter box was gone. He asked where it was. I sat him down and broke the bad news to him. I held him while we both cried. He said I am glad that Lexy gets to go to heaven and she gets to see Lucy but I am so sad because I miss her and I won't get to see her again.  It is weird not having any pets after 19 years. It becomes routine and you love them so much. 

Both Lucy and Lexy are and were extremely loved. They were good and sweet cats that lived long lives.  We miss them terribly.

Now to pick up the pieces of our broken hearts.....

Teens are Drinking Hand Sanitizer to get Drunk

I was just watching the news. I have heard of teenagers, huffing paint, doing whip-its, which is with whipped cream cans, sniffing rubber cement, inhaling duster among other things while are all extremely dangerous. Now teenagers are drinking hand sanitizer.  I think that is disgusting. Hand Sanitizer is mostly ethanol alcohol so I guess they drink it to get drunk. It ends up having a really high proof, since the proof is the alcohol volume percentage times two. I think that is so sad, that kids feel that they need to get drunk so bad that they are drinking hand sanitizer.  Are they going to start making it hard to purchase? Of course a teen can walk in to the store and buy a bottle of hand sanitizer and the cashier will think nothing of it. Now, I am not sure why anyone would wanna drink it, have you smelled it? I have accidentally tasted hand sanitizer from using it and then eating and it is nasty.  It makes me so sad that kids will find any way they can to get high, or drunk without understanding the consequences.

I am not sure who gets the idea of doing these things. I know I grew up with Mr. Yuk and I know you aren’t supposed to drink things that aren’t drinks. I grew up knowing that there are poisons out there that will harm me and I learned not to drink things that are just handed to me. You don’t know what harm they can do. You don’t know if you will die.  You never know. Today, Noah and I were pretending his lamb was sick, so I gave him some imaginary medicine to give to her, well he ate it. I took the opportunity to tell him how you never take anyone else’s medicine; you only take medicine given to you by mommy or a doctor.  We have been talking about it a lot because he keeps asking for higher doses of Tylenol when he has a fever.

When I was 17, I met this girl who huffed rubber cement when she was 14 with her best friend. They went on a hayride that night, came back to one of the girls houses and huffed rubber cement and went to sleep, in the morning her best friend was dead. This is a very true and very sad story. No high or getting drunk is worth dying for or causing serious bodily harm.

Please talk to your children about the dangers of drinking hand sanitizer.

Gramps

17 years ago today, My Grandpa Jim passed away. He was a great man. He was the man that I always looked up to. He was a retired diesel mechanic who would still go to work when someone needed him. His finger nails were stained black from the diesel oil from working on the 18 wheelers. He always had a smile on his face. He would go out of his way to help others. He would instantly make friends with anyone who was sitting next to him on the bench at the mall while grandma and I shopped. He was amazing. He would always bring me Mc Donald’s when I was staying at their house which was very often. I loved spending time with him and we even had our own Cabbage Patch Kids Clubhouse which was his tool shed. My sister and I had fun tying him up while our mom and grandma went shopping. Once my grandpa saw that a shingle was loose on the roof and he had climbed up a ladder and was standing on the roof. He scared my mom by doing that.

My Grandpa Jim was a fighter. He broke his neck and lived to tell the tale. I knew any time I would wake up in early morning I would find him playing solitaire and drinking coffee. My grandpa was famous for his hat collection. His favorite hat was his Electronic Butterfly hat that my aunt and uncle had given him from their business. He loved to take pictures and go out west to California. He loved to travel and go on adventures. He also loved to watch ball games. He was a huge Purdue fan. I used to lie in between the kitchen and family room and watch TV and my grandpa used to pretend to step on me. I was a skinny kid and he would call me Skinny Minnie. I remember a time that I had ate a Lifesaver and I was choking on it. He took me outside and threw me over his shoulder and patted me on the back until the Lifesaver came out. He was my Lifesaver that day. He was truly the best gentleman and many people were blessed to have him in their lives.

I still remember the day he died. I remember when we got the call to go to the hospital right away, since they won’t tell you over the phone. It was an hour drive. It was a very long hour. I remember I cried the whole way there. I remember going in to the hospital and finding out he was gone. I remember sitting in the room and staring at the box of tissue. A family friend’s daughter was a nurse at the hospital. I knew her parents because they lived across the street from my grandparents and her sister was my grandma’s hair stylist and she cut my hair sometimes. I remember I drank a little can of Shasta. I cried and cried that day. They told us that he was laughing one minute and joking with the nurses and the next minute he was gone. There were so many people at his funeral. He was buried with the one thing that was most fitting for him… his wrench.

I think about him all the time. We talk about him often. I hate putting things together and when I can’t figure them out I am sure my grandpa is laughing at me and thinking it is so simple. I wish both my grandparents could have met Noah. Noah’s middle name is James after him. Noah does a lot of things that would make my grandpa smile. Noah has that same urge to fix things and figure out how they work. Noah is definitely his great grandfather’s great grandson.

I am sure my Grandpa Jim is looking down on us and whenever Noah is doing something with wheels or trying to figure out how something works he smiles and says that’s my boy.