Janet's Blog

  Now When I took the grandkids camping at Lake Minatare last week, three-year-old Lucy wore her favorite shirt, the one I bought her a year ago for her second birthday. I'm glad to know she likes the shirt, but even her older sister has been trying to tell her it's way too small. In addition, it has faded to a sickly off-white, and the kitty is barely there anymore. Since I had ordered the shirt from Amazon, I pulled out my phone, clicked on the "Buy Again" feature, and found that the shirt was still available, much to Meagan's surprise. So I reordered it in a bigger size, and that was that.  The shirt arrived a couple of days later. Lucy put it on immediately, and Meagan snapped a quick photo of an excited girl with her new, still favorite shirt, which is big enough to last for at least another year. As I thought about Lucy and her favorite shirt, I remembered another little girl with another favorite shirt. Lucy's mom, Meagan, was four years old when she wo...

I don't feel old. Yet, the signs are there. My hair is gray. I have eight, almost nine, grandchildren. Sometimes I forget people's names, or why I walked into a certain room. I have a few wrinkles here and there, and too many aches and pains. Even so, I don't feel old because I still get around pretty well; I walk three miles or so every day. Sometimes I stop to sit on a convenient bench for a few minutes, just to rest, but then I get up and continue on my way. However, my need for rest must have been concerning to one other walker this summer, because he stopped to ask me if I was okay, just because I was sitting down for a minute. I assured him I was fine, and he continued on his way. And, lest you worry, too, I really was fine. The sad part about getting older is that you stay young on the inside, but nobody can tell any more. In a few weeks, we will be commemorating that fateful day when the World Trade Center was destroyed and the Pentagon was badly damaged when severa...

A few weeks ago, Bill and I headed to a family reunion in Norfolk with daughter, Victoria, and son, Levi, in the back seat. On a Friday morning, we angled our way up to Alliance from Gering, then caught Highway 2 across the sandhills. I like to call it "no man's land," because the whole region, though beautiful, is very sparsely populated. When we drive to Norfolk, it takes us about six hours of driving time, plus another hour or so for necessary stops, to go the 373 miles from here to there. It's important to note that I feel like regular stops are much more necessary than Bill does, but he usually humors me. The problem is that there aren't too many places to stop along the way, so we have to plan carefully for mealtime stops. There is a 200 mile stretch where the biggest town might have 200 people on a good day. Most communities have at least one gas station with an abundance of snacks and various kinds of drinks, but none of that is on my doctor-prescribed, lo...

All around me, it seems like so many people are hurting. This isn't too unusual. It's just the way life is sometimes. We can go for several weeks or months when everyone around us seems to be doing just fine. But then, BOOM! All of a sudden, everything seems to be going wrong for so many people we know. Right now, I know several people who are fighting cancer, and several more who have been hospitalized with rare and not-so-rare maladies. Some have broken bones that are healing--slowly.  Many people in my area have hail-damaged cars and homes, or even whole fields--and livelihoods--destroyed by hail or drought, or both. Not too far away, ranchers are struggling to recover from devastating wildfires. I've watched happy marriages dissolve into divorce. Babies have been born with lifelong challenges. Older adults are plagued with various ailments, including gut-wrenching dementia. Children and young adults have been killed in car accidents. Sudden death, at any age, is devasta...

Our recent rains have produced some green grass at last. Thank you, God! I was walking on the path that borders the east edge of Scottsbluff National Monument, just at dusk. It was a beautiful evening for a walk, still hot, but somewhat cooler since the sun had dropped behind the Monument. A soft, southeast breeze kept me comfortable as I moved briskly along the path. My first glimpse of the carnival, in the distance. As I headed south, back towards my car, I spotted a light, flashing in the distance. At first, I wasn't sure what I was seeing. The blinking light reminded me of a police car's light bar, but it was the wrong color. As I walked along, I began to notice other lights twinkling on the far side of the alfalfa field--hot pink and green, blue and yellow. Then, it dawned on me: it was the Oregon Trail Days carnival, set up at Red Rocks on the southeastern edge of town. I haven't been to a carnival in years, not since our kids were quite small. As an adult, I find car...

When I was a little girl living in Norfolk, Nebraska, I used to meet Aunt Marilyn in the park that was situated just over the Elkhorn River bridge, about halfway between her house and mine. Marilyn is just four years older than I am, so we were raised more like cousins than aunt and niece. We loved to play in that park; we especially loved the wide slide. So when Marilyn told me, not too long ago, that the playground had been demolished to make way for a new and better park, I was a little skeptical. While we were in Norfolk recently for a family reunion, I asked Bill to drive by the park so I could take a look. The change was so dramatic that Bill and I walked all over the new park. It had been turned into a river walk! When Marilyn and I played in the park so long ago, we weren't really aware that the park bordered the river, because it wasn't at all accessible to the park. But now! A new, wide biking and hiking path borders the river, even crossing the river with a new foot ...