LOST ANYBODY LATELY?

     All of us have had experience with losing someone. Someone who isn't where they are supposed to be. 

    I had such an  experience this week and by last evening we were frantic.

    I had emailed my son and daughter about my medical situation. I do this when I want them to get exactly the same message.

   My son replied in a couple of hours. Nothing from my daughter. Next day , nothing from my daughter but more from son and daughter- in- law. So I started emailing and messaging my daughter but no reply. 

  Third day no reply from daughter. I began to get very worried and stressed. My daughter lives in Chicago. I live in Alberta, Canada which is a long way from Chicago. 

   So last night we were super frantic. We could imagine all kinds of dreadful things that could have happened. About 9:30 last night when I was checking messenger after many times that day, I noticed that she was on line. Relief! 

   I was able to talk to her. Since her husband was off this week they more or less went off line so she had never seen all my emails. They both like gardening so had been outside. Of course,  she was surprised that we were that worried and made many apologies. 

  Usually we think of children being lost. In this case  a person wasn't really lost. We just couldn't make contact.

   We did have a good sleep last night.  

MELT DOWN

      The micro manager loses things once in a while and she gets very upset. She has a humungous black purse which probably has more than 123 items in it. So what usually happens is that she puts something in the purse  when we are out shopping or doing business and then she can't find it. She gets very excited and thinks back to where she had the said item last. There's a lot of frantic digging in the black monster . Usually sooner or later she comes across the item she's looking for. I don't think she has actually lost anything but she spends a lot of time looking for things. 

    Now Friday , I had my opportunity for a melt down. I had to call at five different places to do business. 

    First, I had to call at a bank. Since I rarely enter this bank, as the micro manager does all banking, they asked me for identification. They wanted my driver's license. I'm very careful with that piece of identification. They took it and gave it back and I put it back in my wallet. 

    When I got to business number 4 , another bank, I was asked for identification and I couldn't find my license. I frantically went through my wallet again as it should have been obvious. No luck. By this time I was tearing everything apart. 

    Even though I knew I had put my license back in the first bank , I went back to the first bank. They had not found it.

    Well go to the next business. By this time I had cooled down a bit and decided to become sane and look in my wallet again. I checked in the pocket where I keep my license. I could feel something different between two other pieces of paper. There was my plastic driver's license. 

    Now this was a very upsetting incident which doesn't usually happen to me. If it's a small item I don't worry..

   So how about you. What do you fear losing most? What happens to you when you lose something?

I Got Lost Again

     Over my life time I've been lost a time or two. I'm not counting being as in trying to find a location int the country or city. I'm talking about really not knowing where you were.

     There four occasions of being lost that stand out in my memory. Two of them were when I was a small child and two as an adult.

    As a small child I wandered off the farmyard twice and a search had to be made. Once was in early  January. I was about 3 and my Mom put me out in the yard to play. When she checked , I was gone . She had two younger children in the house and couldn't leave. She phoned the neighbors and they started a search. My Dad found me as he was coming home from town. I think I got a good reminder of not to wander away when Dad picked me up on the road and another when he set me down in the yard.

       The second time a lady was babysitting and I wandered off the yard. Again she had little kids and couldn't leave the house. The hired farm hand found me. Apparently I had decided to walk home.

      At about age 25 I got lost in the Arctic. Four of us had flown into an uninhabited Island to hunt geese. Check it out...Richardson Island. I walked a long way around to get closer to the game, made my kill, dressed the animal and left it to come back the next day . I thought I knew the way back. I crossed the first ridge an things didn't look familiar. A second ridge. A third ridge. Now I was starting to panic. It was getting toward sunset. Finally, I found the shore and got back to camp. To say the least, I was relieved.

     The last Time I was lost was last night. I didn't know anything about it until I got home. I tend to be a little careless about communication with the Micro Manager. She was downstairs watching TV and thought she heard me leave for my walk but thought it was early for my walk. She came up an hour later and I wasn't in the house. She was ready to call neighbors to look for me. She discovered the keys and car were gone but couldn't remember where I was going. Finally she checked the calendar and then knew where I was.

       So I was lost for a while last night just like when I was a little kid and wandered away from the farmyard.

I FOUND A SURPRISE ON HIAWATHA HOUSE

        I follow Mr Pudding on Yorkshire Pudding. Lately Mr Pudding has been reflecting on how much repetition is on his blog. He said that there's a link at the top left hand side of the page and you could easily find old blogs .

        Well, I just had to try it. I put in schools since I was a teacher for 37 years and had written about schools. bingo. I found all the posts on schools. First, too many of them started out with"I was a teacher for 37 years" 

       One post caught my eye. It contained a poem I had written and I'd forgotten all about it. It was a poem meant to go along with the placing of a marker for the school building that had been closed long ago.

       Now, I went to the school for nine years and this blog takes it's name from the school. 

       So here's the poem I'd forgotten about. The names are of the people who lived in the area 

HIAWATHA GROUND

Quiet earth lay covered by prairie grass and buckbrush ,

Meadowlarks,crows and hunting coyotes occasionally passed by,
Briefly visited by many spring blooms ,
And ancient quiet people who scanned the willows for big brown bulks ,
Of many life sustaining energies.

Dustyhorn, Bitternose, Whitefeather, Asqpace...

Suddenly, settlers appear to till the land
And put down roots of settlement
Which spawned wire fences , trails ,roads
And dwellings to house their families
And patient beasts of burden.
King, Clark, Minnings, Paul...

Then their children required an education
So a school house was  patiently planned
By careful applications to the powers of the land
Who controlled the many details of
Official school district formation.
Hawes, Weurfel, Winks, Rathwell...

So with patient effort acceptance was gained
To build a school with gifted labor
Borrowed money and volunteers who
Undertook the time consuming supervision
Which produced a shining building for the children.
Ingelton, Bushell, Taylor, Wildeman...

Years of care to run the school
Find and pay a teacher
Repair the roof and walls
Fill out the required forms and reports
For the privilege of keeping kids in school.
Barber, Johnson, Langille, Stevenson...

Quiet Christians gathered there
In the name of the Lord to sing
And pray and study God's word
Which supported their souls
And daily trials and tribulations.
Mehaffey, Ronald , Kline, Muir...

Years ground by with depression
Drought ,war and changes slowly
Came to settlers and their way of life
As some moved on to other grounds
To find an easier success.
Manke, Brust, Kabernick, Leggott...

The silent end quickly appeared
When only six lonely scholars filled the desks
And sad decisions were made
To close the Hiawatha learning center
Which had faithfully served quiet locals
Epp, Kreiger, Enns, Freisen...

Now, the ground sleeps deeply once again
Visited by passing hawks and goldfinch
Covered by annual snows
While the joyous shouts of children
And devoted settlers are no longer heard .

Red tailed hawks, ground squirrels, butterflies...