By Shannon Williams
As I was trying to decide what to write about this week, I had a bunch of little items that are not related at all, but I wanted to share and I think you might be tired of stories about what I did, LOL, but there will be a little bit of that, but mostly just random things I wanted to share! I learned about 30% vinegar recently. I never knew it existed and WOW is it a powerful cleaner. My older sister just moved into her new house and there were some bad water stains in the bathtub. Her realtor told her to go to the hardware store and get 30% vinegar and see how it worked. Well it worked and made the tub and shower look good as new. It was news to my niece and sister in law and we all said we would try it. They got theirs at Lowes or Home Depot, but I looked it up and found it on Amazon and along it came to my house. It does clean very well, but the smell is pretty strong. I looked up more information about this cleaner and The Farmers Alamac called it “horticulture” or industrial vinegar which is anything that typically contains between 20 % and 30% acetic acid. Everyday vinegar is about 5%. I also discovered in my research that one should not use vinegar on Stone such as granite or quartz, a mistake that I was making, as I like to clean most of my kitchen with vinegar.

Years ago, my mother was a big fan of “Hints from Heloise”, it was in our local newspaper and she would cut out ones she liked and put them on the refrigerator. I learned so many things from all the clippings on the refrigerator all those years growing up. You can still find it on the web or her books but the days of finding it in your newspaper are long gone.

Speaking of newspapers and my mother…. Mom turned 95 this past week. We (all five of her children) gathered in Lubbock to visit with her. While mother is in the throes of dementia, she still knows who we are most of the time and told us very clearly she did not want a birthday party or a fuss. She had told us there was no reason for all of us to come, even though we had not been together all at once since 2016. When we told her our plan was to all go to church (Catholic Mass) with her, she changed her tune and told us the best gift would be for her to go to church with all her children. She was so cute, we took up a whole pew and she was at the end in her wheelchair, she would lean over and look down the pew and the biggest smile would come across her face, she knew that those were her children and they were with her and it made her day. Of course, later on, she wanted to know when we were going to church and why no one came to see her on her birthday! The memory of her smile was worth the trip for us all.

At 95, she does not have a lot in her life, but one thing she loves is her newspaper and will let you know if it has not come in the mornings. We often see her reading it upside down, but we just let her. She wants to spend her mornings sitting in her chair with a cup of hot tea and a newspaper in her hand. Well, the newspaper in Lubbock is stopping home delivery and will only mail your newspaper to you! They are moving towards only doing an e-newspaper. Now Mom wants to hold her paper and likes to get it in the morning. Her mail does not come till the afternoon, and it takes two days to get the newspaper. We were not so worried about the date of the paper, but what to do about not getting it till the afternoon, was an issue. Mom lives in a care home which only has 15 residents’, so they have worked a plan not give the one that is mailed to her till the next morning. We had to repeat a few days of newspapers to get it to work, but so far so good and Mom is unaware of the change. Now the customer service lady I talked to (ok, I yelled at) will not forgot my call anytime soon. She kept telling me that mom could read it on-line! Mom never got the hang of cell phones and said years ago, she had lived without computers and had no plan of learning them. There are very few things she likes but her morning newspaper and hot tea are big on the list. We are so grateful for the staff of the care home to help figure out a way to make it all happen.

One of my favorite things to do is to watch CBS Sunday morning, and I too enjoy my cup of hot tea for this weekly ritual. This Sunday, there was a story about a book by David Brooks, who has written a book aimed at changing human behavior,. It is called “How to know a person: The Art of Seeing others Deeply and being Deeply seen”. One of his statements that really hit home was, “We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating.” Wow!! The book comes out on October 24 and I have my copy already ordered, so look for more on this book.

My last random thought is about Halloween. Sometimes, you find just what you need to hear on Facebook… I loved this post. “Halloween a day when we get it right. Strangers come to us, beautiful, ugly, odd or scary, and we accept them all without question, compliment them, treat them kindly and give them good things. Why don’t we live like that?” It is from a pastor by the name of Steve Garnass-Holmes and it really hits home.

So, there are some very random thoughts for you to ponder or try out!

[SW: Oct-17-2023]