Rohling Studios

My Play List!!!! Kate Smith and "God Bless America"

I think I did it!  I added a play list to my sidebar....but you can't see the whole playlist...has anyone figured out how to remedy this problem yet???  I love music!....AND...This is probably the wackiest list of music you will ever listen to!  I love such a wide variety of music!  When I was three years old we got our first television.  My mother turned it on and the first thing I saw was "The Kate Smith Show".  In a small black and white box a large woman was singing a song called, "When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain".  It is my first memory of music.  I backed away and sat far across the room on the steps with my blanket and didn't move till the show ended when she sang "God Bless America".  I didn't know who God was.  I didn't know what I was watching but...I knew I liked this lady who sang.  She finished with saying....“Thanks for listening".  I thought she meant me.  I remember shuffling off to the kitchen to tell my mother (who had her ear connected to the telephone) what had just happened.  I don't know if this memory is a composite of the many times I watched Kate Smith sing or if it is a real memory.  It still seems so clear.... If you ask me to sing today...I would sing like Ethyl Merman and Kate Smith not because I can sing or carry a tune but because it makes me happy to sing like they did.  So, in memory of Kate Smith the last song on my Play List is "God Bless America".  It is not there because I am selling God....or America.  It is there because I really loved Kate Smith.

P.S. I really secretly love Kid Rock too...but I CAN NOT sing like he can!

Bodyworlds

  Friends asked me to go along with them to the Milwaukee Public Museum to see Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS: The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies.  It is said to be the most highly attended touring exhibition in the world.  I was concerned about how I would feel about it all.  I remember going to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and seeing the old exhibits of the human body when I was a child.  Then it bothered me.  Since that time, my art drawing courses, my anatomy courses, and various science courses have made me see the body as more of an amazing miracle.  I looked at this simply as a course in anatomy.  At one point I had nursing students standing next to me and we were talking about a brain we were viewing.  I was surprised that in some cases I knew as much  as they did. The brain was the most fascinating to me.  If I was young I might rethink things and have gone into surgery. It was interesting to see how my bionic parts have been inserted in a body. When I looked at a stomach with ulcers I thought, "Ohhhhh...No WONDER that hurt!"  The smoker's lungs made me glad that I never smoked and made me wonder more about second hand smoke.  It was a very thought provoking exhibit.  I learned a great deal more than I did in the Gray's Anatomy text book...or , perhaps I wouldn't have appreciated this in the way I did if I had not had all my other experiences first. 

Spring is here!

   We reached sixty degrees this weekend and...we had sunlight ALL weekend.  My snow had just finished melting.  Unfortunately after a whole winter my yard looked like a minefield!  I have two dogs.  I don't have anyone who would care to do that kind of dirty work for me and I wouldn't blame them either.  So I went out Saturday morning and thought I would just clean up a small portion of it.  I actually felt pretty good...so I did about one quarter of it.  Sunday morning I got out of bed to see the sun shining again...I went straight to my work and by 4 o'clock I had finished and burned 50 wheelbarrows of sticks, leaves, dried grass etc.  By that time I was determined to finish it all...at 7 p.m. it  totaled out at 58 wheel barrows!  I realize it is probably not the best that I burned it all but I am bionic you know and need bionic knees as well.  It would be almost impossible for me to try to stuff what would have been over 100 bags of yard waste.  This morning the first thing I did was to look out at the back yard.  It looks soooo nice...I can't wait for the leaves and little things to start poking their heads out of the dirt!  Come onnnnnnnn Spring! ...and OH!  I discovered  new product at our local liquor store (The Bank of Liquors....isn't that a great name!)  I had gone in there for my Diet Coke and this looked like something I had to try!  I must admit I had two of them over Sat and Sunday... little motivation...but they are sooooooo good!  It's like having a Bloody Mary with a beer chaser in a can!  LOL!

So that's a little plug for them.  I just read the weather report...we are supposed to get snow later this week!  I can NOT believe it!

Everytime It Rains..It Rains Pennies From Heaven

I did these about twelve years ago...people either love them or hate them....This one is about putting on a happy face even though you are sad and about the masks we wear.  Today it has a different meaning.  Today I decided to post it because I am trying to smile through the fact that my yard is a mess after this record setting year of snow.  Every time the dogs need to go out I want to cry.  Last night I had to clean them up as best I could before I took them upstairs to bathe both of them.....NOT an easy chore.  Any other time my lab LOVES the water...I put out a pool for her in the summer and she digs in it until it is empty of every drop of water...even her water dish is a source of play....and if I go to a lake....forget it.......she's in the water all the time...BUT...let me get them into the bathtub for a bath she starts to whine, fights getting into the tub and shakes like a leaf throughout her whole process....GO FIGURE!  It IS an ORDEAL!  Generally she doesn't get as dirty as my little black and white, closer to the ground,  mischief seeker.  Last night he got into the fire pit.  Rolling in it and such...mmm hmmm!  Dirt is one thing...ashes are another...wet ashes ground down to his pink little skin are horrendous!  Schmered black ooakie stuff all the way from his toes to his eyes transforms him into a beast...Suddenly I have this stinky black and grey bundle of joy because he is so proud of the fun he had standing there and all I want to do is sit down and take deep cleansing breaths to prepare myself for the ordeal ahead of me.  It sounds easy...get the dogs clean enough to get them upstairs...bathe them...wash the walls they managed to brush against on the way up, wash the carpet and the floor.  And then go to bed with the smell of wet stinky dogs.  HELP!  I need Ty...I need a home makeover...I need a home that is all on one floor with a back door that has a laundry room and mud room with a walk in shower set up.   My bionic hips and back can't keep up with the stairs!  (All this goes through my mind while I am taking my cleansing breaths before I even let the dogs in.)  I need to see my house crumble to the ground and be magically transformed into a wonderful foster home for kids and dogs.  I would make cookies again, take kids to the museum and laugh at all their cuteness.  Their little exhausted dirty bodies could go directly to the shower from the yard and then they would smell so good and look so cute in their jammies with their faithfull puppies by their side.   Yep...I have to go to a happy place at times like these.  One more deep breath before I get all the towels I will need.

One more...very deeeeeeeeep cleansing breath!....And the cleanup is over.  Wheew!  Oh summer...please come fast!  And (Ty...my neighbors are very nice people...they would help you...I know they would :-)  ).