Where is everyone

Kind of feel like I am talking to myself. Is January non-blogging month?

Written by my grandson, Tai-age 8

Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 8:19pm
'One Drop of Snow'

You wait and wait until one comes down.
Hopefully, it will be followed by more and more!
Maybe it will lay a beautiful white blanket over the town
Gifted by the angles up above.

The rain pitters and patters. The temperature is under 35!
Come on, Snow! Come on!
You wait and wait in your bed under your pillow.
You lay under your fuzzy warm blanket and drink your hot tea.

You got yourself all prepared with a warm coat, followed with your cuddly snow boots. You got gloves and everything.
But, still that snow won't come down!
You wait patiently, silently hoping it will come.
But, no! It does not come.

Then I cry to to the sky 'Please now. Please come down, I say!'
Then one white thick cold stuck together thing comes down....
And, look...it's here! Finally!

I slip on everything I have lined up: First, come the sweats and then the coat and hat.
Then I slip on my boots, followed with my gloves....
And I walk out the door
As the blanket of snow slowly covers the street."

When you come the fork in the road,take it-Yogi Berra

by Robert Frost




Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;



Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,



And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.



I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Another Sad Wallace Saga-So Long Tabor's

So long to an old friend.

Every Friday my brother and I would do up to Tabors and buy a Hardy Boy book. We at one time owned every Hardy Boys' book ever written. I bought my first stereo from Mr. Tabor, I had a paper route, and he let me buy it on credit at the age of thirteen. I paid it off early, and from then on, Mr. Tabor and I became friends. I will miss this Wallace landmark.

Back In The Civilized Cacophony

Two weeks have passed, and we are back in the flow of life, or at least we feel like we are. We enjoyed our time being back"home", but there was a certain relief as we unloaded at our tiny apartment in Coeur D'Alene.

Choices, ah, choices, choices in groceries, choices in contact solution, choices in restaurants, choices about choices.OK, CDA is not exactly Seattle, but it seems good to us for awhile.

It is amazing how out of place I felt the first few days here(living in the Valley will do that to you),but now, it feels like home again.Traffic is good. Choices are good. Glad to be back in the cacophony of "civilization".

A Little English Problem

Go with me back in time to the  year 2000, Seems like a decade ago. Whoops, I guess it has been a decade.
Actually, it was about 1999, even two decades ago. My staff was 99% Hispanic, and they were a very wonderful group of girls. I never had harder workers as a whole than they were. I loved their enthusiasm and zest for life. The majority of them were from El Salvador. Christmas was particularly a festive time because they celebrated with an unbridled joy. They told me that gift giving had not been a part of their culture in El Salvador, but they celebrated with great joy with the focus and family and friends.

Yes, they were wonderful,and they became like my family. I was very much single at the time, and they took great care to bring me special dishes from their homeland to make sure that I "was eating". The only problem was that most of them had not mastered English, and sometimes I was lost in dealing with them.My Spanish was limited to hello, how are you, and good night. Oh, I also learned to say"towels" in Spanish, a necessary word in hotels. But, my girls sure tried, and one of them, Sonia, was very intelligent , and had taken  English in high school in El Salvador. Sonia was also my day time front desk clerk. She was actually trained as a para-legal in El Salvador, but had come to America and had accepted a job as a housekeeper, and then had moved to the front desk. She was a delightful young lady, a whole four feet ten inches tall.

In our computer system, we had a feature that allowed us to track guests who for one reason or another were "undesirable" for future stays. There was a space to list the name and the reason for not being allowed to stay again at the Emerald Inn. The most common reason was that drugs had been found in the room, or they were unruly.

We had a guest that came in about every three months. This "lady", and I use the term loosely, for she was very obviously a transsexual. I never paid much attention to "her", and she didn't appear to cause problems.

I was going through the undesirable list one day when I came across the "ladies" name. Sonia had entered her name, and the reason. When  saw the reason, I started laughing my head off. This is how it read.

"------ cannot stay again, she had "pup" in the bed. OK, what on earth did that mean. When Sonia came in I asked her about her unusual entry. So, the guest had a pup in her bed.So what? Well, Sonia had learned phonetic English, and her answer sent me into waves of laughter. Sonia told me that the guest had "poop" in her bed. I questioned her further, and asked , "poop?",and Sonia said yes, poop. Then said "PUP, poop", as if I were devoid of any understanding of the word.

Maybe that is why Phonics is not taught anymore.