Author: katy.steinkamp@yahoo.com

Hello Florida!!!!! My Granddaughter, Lindsey, got me back on line. I’ll get back to you as soon as my life quiets down. Right now I want to spend time with my wonderful family.

OK. We moved to Elkton, Florida…just outside of St. Augustine. We have been adjusting from the desert to the jungle. I grew up around here and I had forgotten how this time of the year it storms nearly every single day… Lightning and thunder for about an hour or so…and my precious dog Georgia is terrified for the whole hour. My same wonderful granddaughter turned me on to CBD for anxious scaredy dogs. I’m testing it tonight. I hope it works! I’ll let you know.

Aside from the storms, we are beginning to feel more comfortable with our new community, We only have about 40 more boxes to unpack and Lord only knows what we will do with what’s in them. Our house is full already!!! I have moved enough in my lifetime to know feeling overwhelmed is to be expected but moving after 30 years in our desert home is REALLY overwhelming. My husband tells me often that “the boxes aren’t going anywhere so what’s the rush?”

My birthday is tomorrow and I am grateful for another year on this crazy globe we call earth. While I realize the earth is filled with challenges, I took a car ride today down through St. Augustine to Viliano Beach and the ocean on A1A and it was beautiful. There is a street just before the bridge to Viliano in St. Augustine that I believe is breathtaking. There is a lot of beauty all around us of we just go looking for it.

I must admit I was shocked at the number of houses on top of the dunes. So many it is hard to find the beach. When I was a young girl growing up here it wasn’t like that. I don’t believe today there is a single house worth less than a million dollars – I swear I believe a million dollars is like a thousand when I was a kid. There are lots of millionaires in Viliano building houses on the sand, even on Porpoise Point, where the first good hurricane will wash away. Back in the day there were small houses on stilts just off the dunes and they were built knowing they would likely be blown away with the storms. The houses now are huge and block out the view of the magnificent Atlantic Ocean.

Ah well….I really don’t like it…but nobody asked me for my opinion. And I really love the ocean and I can find a “walk through” and get on the beach and enjoy the awesome beauty.

I think I am getting more comfortable with my move from Vegas to St. Augustine. I think I will always miss my dear friends in Nevada. I’ll talk to you more often. I’ve been very lax with keeping my blog going. Things are calming down.

I am a woman. I was born a woman. I spent a good part of my life celebrating women. I am a feminist. I love a man and he has supported me throughout my fight to support women’s rights. I am no longer going to remain quiet about the trans- gender men unfairly inserting their trans status into woman’s rights.
It is as if the world is once again trying to erase women’s rights to be woman. Title 9 was the commitment of making sure funds were fair for women’s sports. It simply is unfair to allow a man with an Y chromosome to engage in women’s sports.. Trans can fight to have a sport specifically for trans. They can do as women did and advocate for sports for all trans . The fact that a person with a Y chromosome can enter the sport- almost sure to beat persons BORN female is just unfair and wrong!. I am sick of women’s rights being usurped by men!
I call on other feminists and women who are upset by the unfairness of all of this to speak out loud and clear. My advice to the women of today is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias!

I just glanced at the clock and realized I have spent two hours trying to sign in to an event on my computer. First I was told by my computer ( we’ll call it “crazy” just for fun) that I needed a password (**####) to access my event that I couldn’t get on the computer until I was allowed to get on the crazy computer. Then I saw the word “error” in tiny print in the upper right corner of the screen. So I clicked on that and was told I was not on the internet. I then checked all the reasons I WAS on the internet I started all over again.

I checked “systems” and the wi-fi was on and running well. After 30 minutes I discovered only my gmail account was the problem, or at least that’s what crazy computer said to me. I then turned too my yahoo account and tried to sign-in on the event… no luck. So I spent the next 30 minutes-at least- trying to call COX and find out that was going on with my business account. Ten minutes to find cox phone number – 15 minutes to listen and respond to a message informing me that the person I had called was out of the office until next monday… I turned to my phone and tried to get the event page and low- and

behold !! I got it! First thing was to sign in with my google account. I did that to the best of my ability…which at this moment was not running at full speed…frustrated. Google kept sending me back to the little “error” picture at the top of the google page. GURRRRR! Which kept referring me to the internet.

I switched to Yahoo and the internet worked well so I pulled up the event and GOT IT! Glory-be! So it is a Eventbright event and I immediately began to worry about how I could do this again on Sunday to actually attend the event! Yikes.

I both love and hate technology. I love it when I am fresh and everything works well. I hate it when the tech gods are out to get me! We’ll see what happens Sunday. I’ll keep you in touch.

Obviously divorce is difficult and more often than not extremely painful. Even more so when children are involved. If the divorce case ends up in the family court system it is likely to become a three ring circus with no clowns, with the probable exception of one or both parties seeking the divorce. When the divorce is filed during the holiday season an extra log of wood is thrown in the fire.

There are also some intelligent people who suffer through the entire process with intelligence and kindness. Too often however one or the other or both exes gets a wounded ego and the battles begin. The process then becomes about THEM, and their lawyers and not what is in the best interest of the children. All kindness and decent communication becomes relagated to the back 40 and ugliness becomes their main focus. The ex becomes the enemy and the ones who suffer the most are the children.

There is an entire group of individuals who become involved intimately in the family stress. The courts also often refer “high conflict divorce” to outside therapists, family therapy groups, experts in financial investigators, drug counselors, etc… All of these referrals charge a pretty penny for their services and often the outcome from the referral is minimal. And of course, as you probably already know, the divorce lawyer stands to make a fortune and unfortunately some keep the ugliness going longer because of the money. All of the possible referrals are making good money off the “high conflict divorce”. There is nothing wrong with making a decent and even good living working with this population. There is a lot of hard work with two people who once loved and now HATE.

Family Court was founded to lessen the conflict of divorce and to take steps to keep from hurting the children. It wasn’t taken into account that children of divorce will, most of the time, make a very painful choice about who is responsible and will then be less willing to relate to the other parent. If the other parent is angry he/she will complain about the parent in front of the children thus often alienating the child against the alienator. What a painful mess the entire experience becomes!

There are no solutions we can control. We can not force adults to grow up and act like caring, kind parents. We do know that divorce is going to continue to be a reality in our world. We need to find a way to love each other enough to let go like an adult when the marriage is over. We know a larage number of adults who manage to split their relationship with kindness and empathy and caring and without destroying the children. That doesn’t mean they don’t have pain and anguish over the end of what started as love and they are now unable to keep the marriage alive. They just are not vindictive, narcissistic, angry and hateful. They just let go of their ex and embrace with respect their children and their ex. What a kind world that would be. Adults dealing with emotional integrity in a positive manner.

i grew up in a small town in the south. Very small. People left their keys in their cars and their doors unlocked. Our town was so small we could walk to our friends homes by ourselves when we were very young. I think I was 9 and my older sister was 10 when we went to the local movie one afternoon. By the time the movie was over it was dark and we walked the four blocks home. I was a little afraid of the dark, and my sister he was even more afraid so we walk down the middle of the street to get home. There was never much traffic so we were not in danger. It’s likely we were singing and skipping our way home. Went out of the dark a German Shepherd dog again barking at us. My sister stayed still and I ran on the way home with the dog chasing me right at my heels. I was terrified and the minute I got home I jumped up on the porch and slammed the gate shut. From that point on I was afraid of dogs, especially big dogs with deep barks. I know it’s odd because we always had a dog. We were a family with five children and we had parakeets and dogs. But they weren’t large dogs, and besides I knew them. although I mostly ignored them. I was distracted by the craziness in my house, so a little doggie didn’t bother me much.

Jump forward to me in my 60’s visiting my son and daughter-in-law and my baby burrito, Jakes. They lived in San Francisco and i was there for Jakes Baptism, My son had a beautiful golden retriever named Fred! Fred was amazing and i fell head-over-heels in love.
i should back up and tell you about a cockapoo…”Frisco”…we had for the entire youth of my son. He was a gift from my in-laws for my son. i fed, groomed, took Frisco to the vet’s when needed and he lived to be 15. I liked him fine and my son loved him a lot! I was around a number of dogs and i liked them fine. My son really LOVED Fred.

Jump forward to today… I am on my third love affair with a glorious Sheepadoodle named Georgia. Prior to her we loved a black lab named Woof and before him a wonderful golden named Elmo. Georgia is unique as she leaps when she is happy- which is always.

Dogs, without a doubt, make our lives richer and happier. I do believe without them our life would be oh so much less happy and fulfilling!

Happy New Year my friends! Please God make this year brighter!

I am tired. I’ve seen 80 Christmases in my life. Remember Christmas when it wasn’t so frantic? I miss those times. I sang alto in my church choir almost every Christmas till I was 15 and joined the adult choir to sing the Hallelujah Chorus and it was powerful and moving. I’ve never heard any music more beautiful. I loved singing in the choir. My sister Dianne sang alto in the choir too, and as long as I could be right next to her I could stay on key otherwise it was hit or miss.

Church for me used to be about the singing. The hymnal was right in front of my knees and I could hardly wait for the singing part. I grew up Southern Baptist and we ate a lot of covered dish suppers and sang a heck of a lot of songs from that hymnal and I loved them all. I don’t know when I quit singing, but I wish I hadn’t. My grandfather would sit on the end of the church pew and when we children…there were 5 of us…got restless he would reach over and thump us on the head. He carried “Life Savers” in his pocket for rewards when we behaved. Our reward for being “good” was we would all pack in the car when church was over and sing our favorites all the way to my Aunt Dotties house for a fabulous lunch of birds eye chicken pot pies. What a treat! Our family had orange groves near Leesburg and Aunt Dottie and Uncle Bruce lived smack in the middle of the groves. What a fabulous family we had. All the aunts and uncles and cousins. We kids were unaware of the problems of the adults till much later. When I think of those childhood times my heart sings. We churned butter, rode horses, ate tons of oranges, grapefruit, and ate wonderful home-churned ice cream.

Back to Christmas. My husband has given up on airplanes. “Too crazy” he states in his “I am sure of my decision and there is nothing to be gained by continuing the conversation” voice. Consequently, December 21, after checking my bag, I boarded American Airlines flight 271 to Jacksonville Florida after a brief layover in Dallas. My brother, sister and wonderful neice, Jennifer welcomed me with arms wide open. The airport was full to overflowing with travelers anxious and in a hurry and the pick-up line of cars was almost impossible to navigate…but I recognized, across a sea of cars and people, my precious Jennifer waving madly and jumping up and down! We laughed and hollerd on the hour drive to Palatka. It was lovely to see them and my heart was singing to be home. That night I hugged another darling niece, Crissy and her two beautiful daughers, Logan and Mia. We watched the sun go down on the St. Johns River and made our way to sleep.

Our plan for the next day was to spend the morning at Marshall’s and find some Christmas gifts for everyone. We spent about 3 hours racing through the store. With a little suggestion from my beloved sister Rosie, I headed to the huge rack of Christmas pajamas and ended up with pj’s for them all. It was so fun. We then headed out to pick up a fourth of a chord of wood. Watching the girls toss that firewood on the trailer was fun. The whole experience was fun. After all that work we headed to a Mexican restaurant located in the exact square feet City Drug Store occupied when I was a child. My fathers original store. The one where I grew up working behind the prescription counter in the 1950’s. I worked as a soda jerk too, and I can still make a deadly Banana split.

Rick called me during lunch to tell me he had fallen in the street as he went to get the mail and was in the hospital with bad abrasions on his face and body – he had landed flat on his face on the concrete! They were going to keep him overnight to give him an MRI. He wanted me to stay in Florida and of course I was in shock. My son changed my flight ticket and with both fear and disappointment I made my way back to Las Vegas on the day before Christmas Eve. The airports were absolutely insane! Frantic people were everywhere. When we landed in Vegas I quickly learned American Airlines had lost my luggage and my husband was released from the hospital and was home with our precious puppy, Georgia. Thanks to our wonderful neighbors and Rick’s best friend I was so glad to be home to take care of my sweetie. Christmas Eve and Christmas day we rested and recovered from all the craziness and went about the business of healing my dear, sweet husband from his terrible fall! My luggage was delivered to my door Christmas Day.

Whew!

18 children and two adults were murdered in Texas. Everyone on the television, all the pundits are lost in a circle of their own words trying to explain the presence of evil in our culture. I’m sick of it. Everyone’s looking for an easy answer. It’s the guns- no it’s mental health -no it’s neglect -no it’s the fault of the evil people who are creating the act! There are no easy answers but there’s lots of responsibility that’s not being taken seriously. We live in a world right now is filled with righteous indignation rage and anger. Our political pundents are constantly at each other’s necks accusing them of terrible things and calling them names because they don’t like what they said. We stopped allowing for freedom of speech a long time ago, and it’s only gotten worse. People are angry everywhere you look, furious and filled with rage. The 18-year-old who committed this act didn’t stand a chance. He was doing what the culture taught him. If someone doesn’t agree with you it makes you angry and you can hurt him for what he is saying and doing. They see it every day on television the world has become a place that is not safe and we have all lost our sense of trust and love for our neighbors . We sell automatic weapons to 18 year old children who can’t decide what they want for dinner much less what to do with there rage.

Oh yes, we can put more police in the schools. We can put bullet proof glass around the entrance and exits. Students must show their IDs before they can enter a school? What is that going to teach our children except that there’s so much violence in the world that we have to isolate them to protect them from that violence. We are stealing the developmental necessity of socializing and developing their limits and boundaries.

And it gets worse. Random stabbings in the streets. Beatings out in the open on the streets.Violence everywhere. Political rage from the extreme liberals and extreme conservatives. Crazy people in charge of our country! Everyone is suffering from terrible anxiety.

And I still believe we can save ourselves and our wonderful country, it won’t be easy but it will be worth it!

Stop looking for easy solutions. There are none. And it will take time to fix the mess we have become. Start by voting for candidates who will help us let go of the extreme ends of both parties. vote for the liberal republicans and conservative liberals…that vote will bring us back to the middle and bipartisan Senate and House! Then we can get to work on-fixing this craziness. It’s the beginning of a long,hard journey towards sanity. Let’s at least begin to clean it up! There are no simple answers.

The Queen of Hearts

Well here we are again for another fabulous, frantic Holiday Season. Beginning the day after Halloween we are privy to holiday songs and the television and radio full of advertisements for the SALE OF THE YEAR. We go all out for Thanksgiving with a fantastic feast. I don’t know about you, but I burden the Thanksgiving table with everything my family and I love. This year I decided to omit the Butterball and try my butcher’s bird, all natural, no additives, farm grown. Turns out she was a tough old bird and stringy. Next year it’s back to Butterball. The sides are my favorite part of the meal. Corn pudding, mashed potatoes, string beans with almond slivers, waldorf salad, dressing, and, of course gravy…lots and lots of gravy. My fabulous daughter-in-law taught me the ultimate dessert for this feast…crushed Oreo pie crust filled with peppermint ice cream and fudge sauce poured generously over the whole kaboodle! Then, like the rest of the world, except for the clean-up crew, we collapse on the sofa and chairs and nap.

We spend a lot of time over the holidays being greatful for all the family…especially those who are in need of extra prayers. When you look at the world around us today its hard not to feel guilty with our abundance when so many people around the world are hungry, cold and homeless. I don’t know why so many parts of the world are at war with each other, trying to take over other countries. The pictures from Afganistan, a total disaster of our “help”, made me weep. And tear my hair out with anger towards our country’s politicians. I feel a sweep coming for the Congress in the next election. The desperation of the people trying to find a way out reminded me of Viet Nam, broke my heart and infuriated me! I could think of nothing else.

I had a heart attack in August of this year. It was not fun, but we are dealing with it. I’m not sure the high stress of the world didn’t contribute to the attack. Since then I have A-fib and when it appears I have to go to the hospital where the doctors stop and restart my heart. It’s called a cardiac conversion and when they are done I feel like a horse has kicked me in the chest for about a week. Then it’s back to what passes for”normal” for a 79 year old woman with congestive heart failure. It makes me wonder about the time I have left to complete all the things on my to do list. The main goal I have to work on is to be as kind and thoughtful towards others; to not judge others by their appearance or values that differ from mine. Everyone is a child of God and deserves my best effort to be kind. I say hello to people who pass me by and I compliment the exhausted mother in front of me who is wearing a spunky red hat!

I want to be so much better at kindness. It’s my goal for the Holidays and ever after. Since none of us know when our lives will be over, why not fill it with as much human kindness we can muster. I would love to be called the Queen of Hearts.

Have a wonderful holiday season and the best of the new year. Let’s work on this kindness thing.

EASTER ANYONE?

Easter Sunday from the top of the Old Fort in St. Augustine Florida. A preacher with a diphthong swag is addressing the crowd of hardy souls who thought it a good idea to get up in the dark to get to the Old Fort and watch the sun come up over the Atlantic Ocean. I am mesmerized by the preacher who speaks with his strange cadence. He sounds phonetically fascinating as he speaks … I- uh come to you today-uh to tell-uh you- uh that we can rejoice-uh because Jesus is with-uh us and forgives us for our sins-uh.” And when this preacher healed the sick he would place his hand on the sinners forhead and holler “HEAL-UH”. He would call out the devil that was loose inside the sinners. It was quite a show for a 12 year old girl child who lived within a block of a foot-washing Baptist church near St Augustine. The preacher at this Easter Sunrise services was a circuit preacher who made the rounds of fundamentalist churches in the south in the 50’s trying to baptise large numbers of sinners who had committed sins such as playing cards, dancing, gambling or those most serious Ten Commandments. He was busy year -round saving souls. It wasn’t all that unusual to hear the sinners speaking in a sort of babble.

I believe the greatest part of this Easter morning sunrise service was the singing. The entire congregation would join in voices singing wonderful hymns to gloryfy God. I once had a friend inform me that if ever I was in danger I should sing hymns at the top of my voice because God won’t take you if you are singing his praises. Sure enough, years later I was stuck on a ski lift for about 45 minutes in a blustery snow storm. I informed the friend with me that we might try singing hymns. We did and we lived through it. Coincidence? Hmmmm?

I love all the surroundings of Easter and I know I was privileged – an accident of birth. The sunrise services, the singing, the dressing in your Easter finery. The Easter baskets full of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies. I’m not much of a church-goer, and I am more of a spiritual person with all the chaos and madness of todays world. But I will tell you that it wouldn’t hurt us all to start singing hymns, and being kind, and stop politicizing everything and get to believing that Easter morning would be a good metaphor for starting over and rising from the past and being a positive force in this crazy world right now. Let’s find our way back to loving. Let’s create a wonderful feast for Easter Sunday and invite the world to partake of our blessings . Reminds me of a line from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we could all be as happy as kings.”

I have eight masks hanging on the blinker lever in my car. I have four more in my purse that were lovingly created by my wonderful niece -in-law in Poulsbo. I have a “bigfoot” mask and a golden girls mask. Remember that video game back in the 80’s where the little guy went running around the screen eating dots till he blew up…She made me one of those…a munchkin? No! That’s not right and my brain won’t send me the right name…right now. In the middle of the night it will come to me.

I wanted to ask her to send me and American Flag mask, but then I heard on NPR that it was not appropriate to wear an American Flag. It seems you can wear a complete American Flag but not a PIECE of the American Flag. You can wear an American Flag pin on your lapel but not a piece of the flag on your face. It was a moot point after I heard that because I always get my ” live-by” rules from National Public Radio, and if I break the rules I feel ashamed, like I am bad.

No, see, the real problem is I grew up in the South in the 60’s and I suffer mightily from white people guilt. If there is a drop of right or wrong I will automatically take responsibility for the bad stuff. I was born white. Now understand please that I don’t recall having been offered a choice in all of this .. . Nobody gets to choose the color of their skin.

I always thought color was prettier than white. There was a family of albino’s in my home town. I thought they were interesting and I didn’t understand because I thought their skin was kind of pink. Nobody ever mentions pink people, but I promise you they exist. That makes me think of Flamingo’s. Reminds me that nature is just packed with colorful beings… Peacocks, parrots, zebras, wildebeests, green ducks, white whales….Nature has representations for every color in the crayons box and then some. And aside from the ugly gooey duck, which understand is just my opinion and I am kind to gooey ducks I just don’t personally think they are pretty. That is where I draw my line… not from color but from the line between Kindness and Meanness. I was kind to the only albino I knew and eventually he was just a friend of mine..

Meaness is always ugly and it it isn’t perspectival…it’s truth. Love triumps over meanness every single time. If I personally knew a gooey duck I would likely get way past thinking they were ugly. Haven’t you ever had the experience of thinking someone was really cute and then they open their mouth and say something ugly or mean and the cute just slides down into the dirt.

Today I went to the grocery store with a purpose…get some pork chops for dinner. I was in a hurry and I found a Mary Kline parking space…up close to the doors of the store. I put the car in park, locked the door and grabbed a basket and headed to the back of the store, snatched up two pork chops and remembered i needed eggs, so I headed to the other end of the store and grabbed a dozen, and remembered I needed Kleenex and grabbed two big boxes of six because my nose always runs when I’m wearing a mask……….. Suddenly my gut tightened and I realized my nose wasn’t running and my face was totally naked. No Mask! Guilt swept over me like a full blown hot flash. I began to sweat. A man at the end of the aisle put his foot out and stopped my cart. He began to tap the end of my cart then he pointed to the large arrow on the floor painted there by the store to help us all keep social distance and not contaminate each other…… I was going the opposite way from the arrow. I mumbled some lame excuse and when he looked up at me to correct my corrupt behavior he noticed my face was naked. No Mask. At that point I pushed my cart past him as he hurled

ugly words at me. I headed straight for the self-check out. I threw the groceries in the back of my car, jumped in the driver’s seat and locked the doors. My heart was racing and I was soaking wet with shame. I sat for a moment and practiced a little yoga… in through the nose out thru the mouth… breathing. Calmed myself down a bit. I noticed a new pack of masks in the passanger’s seat. I tore open the package and pulled out a few and put one on. I opened my door and calmly walked back towards the grocery store where I had seen the man leaving with his groceries. I presented my brand new masks to him suggesting I thought he might need an extra mask or two in case he ever forgets to wear his. I suggested he have a very nice day and I walked swiftly back to my car and left. He couldn’t see it but I smiled at him.

My anxiety was gone and I began to snuggle back into my body that never intends to hurt or be mean to anyone, understanding that intent matters … and so does perception. Kindness is the walk towards healing. Kindness IS a choice. We can’t rewrite history, but we can get back to love. Come on people, we got some work to do! We need the masks for others.

We have an extremely complicated history when it comes to the relationships between caucasians and people of color. Some horrible things went down between them. Specifically between blacks/African Americans and whites /Caucasians. There are no easy answers for dealing with these issues. One thing is sure, however, we need less righteous arrogance between us . More serious conversation intended to resolve the gulf between us…instead of sarcasm empathic listening and every single suggestion deserves serious consideration. If we can get to where we think of people as people and not colors we can do it. Oh sure, there will still be some nitwits unwilling to even try for resolution. Eventually those with less

love capacity just slide into the dirt and die.

Make it your INTENT to let the arrogant, finger pointing, angry and righteousness just slide right down into the dirt. Listen to others with a heart looking for reasonable answers …not an idiot looking for a fight.