remembering the victims

on Thursday, January 26th at 6:30 p.m. we decided to honor victims of the holocaust. we attended a candle vigil commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day at Garden of Remembrance and Tolerance the northwest corner of Houston and Pacific Streets in the West End. we didn't know what to expect all we cared about was being present to tell ourselves that we have not forgotten. it was sad to hear some of the stories and the facts. even though i have heard them before it's sad to visualize many families killed in front of their loved ones and children so innocently killed for just being born a jew. have you ever had the chance to visit the Dallas Holocaust Museum? me and heather have and it was just so ..... at the end we watched a video of stories told by survivors and all i could think is why did they have to wait so long for help. two years ago we were visisting my sister in houston and i made it my priority to take her to the Houston Holocaust Museum. she hasn't to date told me how she felt about that visit. there we so many generations lost. so on this thursday i was happy to have been on that corner with many to remember the many lives lost. if you haven't visited the Dallas Holocaust Museum you should. i will tell you right now it's not for the weak. if you want to take your children check first. when we did visit they didn't think it was apropriate for children under 8 but that was a couple of years ago. they have a new exhibit right now we plan to see it. The exhibition will include a visual display of a portion of the 1.5 million pennies collected by Dallas school children over the past six years. Each penny represents one child murdered during the Holocaust."Every Child Has a Name" The more people who attend, the more victims we can remember. we live in a world with so much hate but this was far more than hate.

homeless

last year i've heard about volunteering to help feed the homeless. thought about doing it but every time i would see someone on the corner of the street ask for money it just didn't make me want to help. i kept saying why should i have to work to provide for me and my small family. i may not have a fabulous job but i go to work everyday because i know tomorrow will come and i will need a roof over my head, food on my plate, and other necesities that follow. i have to think not about me but my partner and our many four legged babies. so i would get upset and just say no if i can work you can work. i mentioned volunteering to a friend of mine that had extra time on her hands this year and she loved it. she loved it so much that she started getting others involved like me. so i gave it a try. i have to say that i liked it haven't fallen in love with it but 50/50. i was trying to find all the good out of the bad to do this. i honestly don't know how she does it every weekend. i told myself that i will do it at least once a month. who knows maybe more than once a month. i still find more bad then good. one example : the day i met the author of the book i had read at a library in irving tx. i noticed a woman come to the session not to participate in the event but to eat and drink what they had offered that day for the author. what i'm trying to say is that she had spent the whole day at the library instead of trying to do something positive with her life. afterwards she met with another man that had also stayed at the library. i mean what do they do when it closses? where do they go? i also noticed that the library had put locks (master locks) on the toilet paper so that they wouldn't get stolen. how can i feel good about a good deed when all they want to do is wait for others to give them money and food. then i saw a picture going around on the web of a man holding his dog on the street. he held him with such love because they were both homeless and he wanted to cover his dog from the cold. that set me back to maybe this is why i should feel good helping.  i've always been the first to help out be any situation but on this topic i'm going to need some extra thinking to do. so for now it's just once a month till i either feel extra good doing it or it dies out.

meeting an author

have you ever done anything random? well i decided to start the year with a challenge. heather loves books so i am forced not really i willingly join her when she goes to the library so i suck it up and try to find something to do while she does her library buisness. i mainly look around and what i found on this perticular visit was that they were going to have an author come to the library to discuss her books so i said to my self hummmmmmmmm maybe i can do this for just randomness. so i had heather help me find a book that the author wrote and was in luck and found one of her three books already published. hey, i know i am old but me and the library are not friends so i will need help finding books. i checked it out. have had it for almost two weeks and will meet the author in two days. have to read 108 pages in two days. talk about a challenge. i'm running on time. trying to read it on my breaks, lunches, and before bed. will i finish i don't know but i will try. this could have been my second book ever read within the last 3 months. my second book ever read in my life. goosebumps don't count. why did i choose to do this? i don't even know about the author or have i ever heard of her. i mainly wanted a challenge to be able to read a book in two weeks and actually meeting the author is just a bonus.  the book is titled "ALPHA DOG" a novel by Jennifer Ziegler. i will be meeting her saturday and i just hope that my random act would have been worth it. oh did i mention the book is not that bad. it started off slow but it is starting to pick up.

stump

today we went to the ranch to do stuff like feed the animals hay and me and my pops cut trees as my mom gathered pine trees for my sisters yards. as one cuts them another replants them. what was funny to me is that as we cut the tree bark into smaller pieces my pops takes a break and sits and observes a figure on a big stump of tree that he has cut. all this time i'm thinking that this could make a good art piece or pieces for heather but just couldn't figure it out. my pops tells me "do you want this in your living room" im thinking has he somehow got in my mind? "i could cut it into a smaller piece and ya'll can put it in your living room" i'm like, this is coming from a man that i took to the dallas museum of art once a couple of years ago and was thinking of our artistic ways. i was thrilled to bring it home. as we get ready to leave my mom sees it and tells us "is this so that we can roll our tortillas on" i laughed looked at my pops with my crazy look and said to myself she wouldn't get it.

chalk madness

love my family and their crazy ways. one hot day as i got in the shower to be ready for what the day was going to bring, oh did i mention my family from out of town texas was visiting, i got a surprise. came outside my house to find that they had gotton a hold of trevors crayola chalk and had made my front porch their canvas. what i learned was hide the chalk or do not leave them unattened for to long. who am i kidding it was sooooooo cool i'm just glad that they didn't use permanent markers.

what our pops made on new years eve

love my pops especially because he thinks like me. as a family in whole we work in places that are very hard to celebrate holidays together.  my sisters all three of them work in the medical field and my mom works at the airport so we have to discuss when to celebrate birthdays and days like thanksgiving and christmas. so we pretty much set our own calendar for the holidays. so we came to celebrate christmas on new years eve 12/31/2011 at our parents house. my dad calls it the big house only because you always gather at your parents house. he was so thrilled to make a special treat for us. yes we had cow head for our special christmas on new years eve. he steemed it. i remember eating it in the past but that might have been over ten years ago and really wasn't looking forward to it but he was so proud of his dish. he cut it up and was now time to eat. out of all of us heather ate it first i will not tell you the expression she had on her face because it's hard to discribe but yeah it was her first. she couldn't finish it. i'm not going to lie i had a few bites i couldn't tell whether i liked it. i would eat it then say um good but then yeah not so good. my sisters did enjoy it though maybe i'm not as mexican as i thought.  my pops just kept telling me to have some more. gotta love him.

what you can do on a day that you take meds.

woke up feeling like i had to stay in bed. i had bought bread to make sandwiches to feed the homeless but had to cancel on making them i don't know if it would have been good for me to do them and make them sick. had friends come over and pick up the bread. thanks guys. it then hit me that tomorrow was going to be the last day to see THE BUDDIST CAVE TEMPLES OFXIANGTANGSHAN at the meadows museum so there we went. totally disappointed wasn't what i expected. i was expecting to see a 3d cave temple and it only was digitally seen in 3d. maybe i read it wrong but it still worked out because in the next gallery was the RIBERA: MARY MAGDALENE in a new context. that was worth seeing i learned that mary magdalene lived as a hermit in the desert after the crucifying of Jesus. living off of bread and the bible. could it have been love or the sadness that made her do this is the question? after spending almost two hours at the meadows we were hungry. maybe being sick makes you crave a burger or the love of one don't really know. we drove down the streets to find a burger joint instead of googleing on the internet for one. that's how we like to do it. it's more fun and worth the wait. we found the BURGER HOUSE. they are known for their fries. yeah right a burger house and known for their fries instead. maybe my taste buds were off but i might have to try it again to get a better taste of it. did like their set up. heading back home to make a stop in oak cliff to see for our third attempt LA VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE ART EXHIBIT. love to see my culture art work. there were so many good pieces and there are some that are my favorite. if you happen to be down jefferson check it out it's freeeeeeeee. so there you go we coughed here and there but somehow made it a good day. sickness don't bring me down.

seeing things

went to the nashure sculpture awhile ago to check out Tony Cragg's sculptures. the last day for this is sunday january 8, 2012 but the neat thing is that on saturday january 7, 2012 you can see it for free. i saw many but this one was the one that really caught my eye. how did he know where to put the hooks? dont trip you might be caught in an accident. where does he keep this sculpture? does he take it apart to store  it away?  if you have my answers tell me. if you have hemmoroids i wouldn't suggest sitting on that chair.