Staying Cool

Sisters

A very happy birthday to my sister!
(even if she doesn't read my blog)

Cinza and Her Kitten

Beautiful Cats

This is the prettiest of the strays. She is the little girl I had spayed a few weeks ago. If you look closely you can see the notch they took off of her left ear to indicate she has been fixed.
I have to take pictures from inside the patio door so the quality isn't great but you can still see what a beautiful seal point siamese kitten she is. Her mother is a tiger cat with white paws so she isn't a real siamese kitten but she and her brother could pass.


Here are the 2 siamese kittens when they were younger. The boy is a little fluffier than the girl. I haven't taken him in to be neutered yet.



The 2 siamese kittens are waiting for the gray kitty I call Cinza to finish eating before they will eat. Cinza has been fixed too.

UPDATE: I had the beautiful little boy siamese kitten neutered on Saturday.

Our Summer "Orphan"

My sister and I used to joke about the summer our grandmother got an orphan for us. I'm sure it wasn't a joke to little girl who stayed with us for a week or so one summer while we were visiting our grandparents in Bryan. Her name was Pamela and she came from the Texas Baptist Children's Home in Round Rock, Texas and she wasn't really an orphan. Her family was probably in crisis and left the children at TBCH while they tried to resolve what ever issues they were having. I'm not sure why, but the TBCH must have farmed out some of the children to families thinking it would be nice for the children to have a vacation. I doubt if they could get away with something like that now without a home study but back then it was enough if you attended a Baptist church. Judging from the picture, Pamela was around my age and I remember having a good time playing with her.The main thing I remember though was when her parents came by to pick her up. She was so happy to see them that she started crying. Really, really crying. I didn't understand this at the time but looking back it's easy to imagine how frightened she must have been, first to be dropped off at an orphanage and then to be separated from her siblings when she was shipped off to a strange home for a few weeks. I think about her from time to time and wonder what happened to her and to her family. I'm so glad I found this picture of the 3 of us.

Feral Cats

After trying for months I finally managed to get all of the female feral cats at my apartment complex spayed. I took the tiger kitty in yesterday to SNAP and she is recovering at home right now. I'm planning to trap the male Friday or Saturday and take him in on Saturday morning. There are also 2 kittens who are still a little too young so I'll wait a month or so for them.
SNAP is a great non-profit that does low cost spaying and neutering. I wouldn't have been able to do this for the 6 strays without their help. My vet wanted to charge me $623 for one female. SNAP charges $50. They also have a wellness clinic and several mobile spay/neuter vans in Houston and San Antonio. Here is a link to their site: http://www.snapus.org/

Cousins

Here is a picture of me and my sister with our cousins Russell Dan, Eileen, and Beverly Herring. It was taken in front of our house on Drummond. A few years later I would be the flower girl at Eileen's wedding to Jerry Paul Cobb.


Here I am again with my mother. I love her bangs and long dangly earrings.

Cotton Farmer

A little known fact about me:
When I was 7 years old I was a successful cotton farmer. In the summer of 1960 while visiting my Aunt Vada and Uncle Robert in Raymondville, Texas, my uncle, who worked in a cotton gin, brought some cotton home to show me. I asked him if I could have the seeds to plant and even though all the adults told me I would never be able to grow cotton in my back yard in Houston, I persisted and grew the beautiful cotton plant seen in this picture.
My uncle also got me interested in coin collecting. Every night he would bring home a few rolls of pennies and we would look through them for wheat pennies. Back then they weren't so scarce so it wasn't unusual to find 3 or 4 in a roll of 50. I still to this day have a nice collection of pennies and always keep wheat pennies when I find one.

End of Summer

My summer is coming to an end soon as Fondren Library will start regular hours this weekend. I've enjoyed my Sundays off and have finished a lot of projects I have wanted to do for a long time. My biggest accomplishment was a huge photo organization project. I'm happy to report that every single picture in my house is now organized in an album and all the newspaper clippings and mementos are in acid free envelopes in a binder. Since my blog is now mostly about family this really helps when I am looking for a particular picture.
I also organized my books and got rid of quite a few. Same with clothes. I'm hoping this will make my next move a little easier. I'm still looking for a condo to buy but haven't really found anything I love in my price range. I'm also considering moving to Austin in a few years but don't know how practical that is job wise.
My diet is finally on track. I went to a Dr. a few weeks ago and found out my thyroid wasn't functioning as well as it should. I've now been on some pills for a little over 2 weeks and have finally started losing weight. I'm sure I could lose more if I could start walking again with the dogs but with triple digit temperatures it's too hot right now even in the mornings.
I've given up coffee and almost all sugar. I still get a little caffeine and sugar in my Mango Acai White Tea (Honest Tea) that I have for lunch. My diet consists mostly of fresh fruits, fresh pressed vegetable juice, and tofu or beans. I'm 99% vegan and may never be 100% because I would like to be able to have an occasional cookie or maybe a little cheese on something when I eat out. Probably no more than once a month though. I'm also addicted to Annie's Organic Honey Wheat Pretzel Bunnies and honey isn't vegan. I try not to buy these too often and always end up sharing with the dogs because they love them too.
The pups are doing well and I'm trying to trap all the stray cats in the complex and have them spayed or neutered at SNAP (Spay Neuter Assistance Program). So far I have had one female cat done, the slate gray kitty I call Cinza. I believe there is a picture of her on my blog. She had been pregnant a few months ago but never got real big so I assumed she had miscarried when she showed up one day not pregnant. Last night an older kitten who obviously belongs to her showed so I guess she had him/her well hidden. Fortunately the kittens will go in the trap willingly for food. The tiger mother cat is the one I'm having trouble tricking into the trap.
I've stopped watching the news because it's too depressing. I now watch all the cooking shows and HGTV shows plus some shows on Bravo. I love Rocco's Dinner Party on Bravo, Chopped on The Food Network, Design Star on HGTV, and Food Network Star. I guess I'm getting old. This reminds me of my father watching the Weather Channel. I used to tease him about this. Now I've become him.
Houston is HOT. Water mains are bursting all over the city and it takes the city weeks to fix them. One just broke on my street on Sunday. Water rationing begins next week I think and we have all been asked to limit electrical use between 4 and 7 pm to avoid rolling blackouts. I usually turn the thermostat up to 80 when I get home so the AC doesn't come on and then turn it back down before I go to bed. The apartment doesn't get nearly as hot as my old house and my electric bill was only $107 this month. Pretty low considering what other people are paying.
I hope we get some rain soon and some relief from the heat.
Back to work.

Scoby

Arthur L. Huebner was born on December 1, 1890 and married my grandmother Sarah Effie on December 31, 1922. His nickname was Dutch but I always called him Scoby. I have no idea where that name came from but that has always been his name to me. If you were an Aggie in the 1950's or 60's, possibly earlier than that, you probably had your hair cut by Scoby. He worked as a barber right across the street from A & M. I remember going there a few times and seeing all the Aggies with their very short haircuts, a requirement at the time I believe.
Scoby was a wonderful man from a very colorful Shiner, Texas family and a really terrific grandfather. He was also a good stepfather to my father and probably provided some much needed stability for him at the time.

These two pictures below were taken during the Bryan, Texas Centennial Celebration in the 1960's. The men were required to grow beards and the men and women were required to wear period costumes when they went downtown. I loved Scoby's beard and asked him to save the whiskers for me when he shaved them. I kept them for many years in an envelope in my jewelry chest.
Ninie and Scoby.


Here he is in front of his barber shop.


Scoby with my father.

At the end of every school year at Mark Twain Elementary, there was a Western/Texas themed festival where everybody wore cowboy, cowgirl, or Indian costumes. Even though Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were my heroes I always loved Indians so my mother made this beautiful turquoise squaw girl dress for me to wear.

Here is another picture in color of the same dress.


I remember this dress so well. My mother had made a dress out of the same fabric for herself and I loved it and wanted one just like hers. She made this jumper for me out of the left over fabric. I wish I had a picture of the two of us in our matching dresses.
My mother was a wonderful seamstress and I always got lots of compliments on the clothes she made for me.

Faircloth Family

I'm not sure who this family is or how they are related to Laura Jane Faircloth. On the back of the picture is "Mrs. H. E. Faircloth, Grand Saline, Tex."

Carnegie Public Library, Bryan, Texas

Here is a little information about the Carnegie Library mentioned in my earlier blog about my grandmother:

"The Carnegie Library was founded in 1902 with a $10,000 gift from nationally recognized philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The Carnegie served the community until 1969 when the city opened the Bryan Public Library. Today, the renovated library houses the Carnegie Center of Brazos Valley History. Bryan's is the oldest existing Carnegie Library in Texas."

For more history see: http://www.bcslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/carnegie_history.pdf

Ninie

I've been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately probably because of all the old photographs and mementos of her I've run across while organizing family photos. Even though I didn't appreciate her when I was a child, I owe so much to her. This quote sums up up our relationship so well:

"What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life. And most importantly, cookies."

When I was a child I spent several weeks with her every summer at her big house in Bryan, TX. Our days were spent sewing, swimming, and going to the Carnegie Library in downtown Bryan. This is the only time I can ever remember being taken to a library and I remember how exciting it was going to story hour and then choosing books to check out. Her house wasn't air-conditioned so when it was really hot in the afternoons I would lie down in a bed on the sleeping porch, a room with 26 windows, and read. I have always loved books and reading and this was the only time in my childhood when I actually had enough to read. My reading was sometimes interrupted by the sound of a train coming. Her house was right on the railroad tracks and I loved going outside and waving to the conductor and the man in the caboose and counting the number of cars.

My grandmother was a wonderful seamstress and, along with my mother, taught me to sew. We spent a lot of time in the fabric stores in Bryan and one time she let me pick out some fabric and showed me how to make a crop top. I remember it was lavender gingham and I made most of it myself.

I also took swimming lessons or went swimming almost every day. On the way back from the pool we would stop at Dairy Queen for lunch and sometimes in the evening we would go out again for ice cream or a Purple Cow. AND...there was never a time when I visited her when she didn't have homemade chocolate chip cookies in her cookie jar. It was the first thing I looked for when I got there. So many wonderful memories.

Here is a little bit more about her:

Sarah Effie Meads was born in Kurten Texas in 1895, the youngest of 8 children, to William Joseph Meads and Laura Jane Faircloth Meads. She married Henry Fain LeGrand and they had one child, my father, William Henry LeGrand, in 1916. She divorced HFL and married Arthur L. Huebner in 1922 (more about him in another blog). She was very active in Central Baptist Church and the Eastern Star.

When I moved back to Texas from New Orleans, I moved in with my father for a few months to take care of her. She had broken a hip and needed help with everything. Although this was a difficult time for all of us I'm glad I had the opportunity to repay her for all the love and kindness she had always shown me, and to get to know her as an adult. She recovered from her broken hip and was able to move back to her beloved home in Bryan where she lived until she died in 1986 at 90 years of age.

About her name:

Her name was Sarah Effie and before I was born everyone called her "Miss Effie." At some point I started calling her Ninie and that name stuck.

School Days

This is a picture of my mother and her classmates taken in 1927 in Robstown, TX. The two little girls in the matching striped sweaters are her twin cousins Eva and Iva Magee. My mother is sitting next to the twin holding the sign.


Here she is in 5th grade standing next to her teacher, also in Robstown.


This was taken in Falfurrias in 1932. My mother is in the 3rd row, 5th from the left. Notice the cute dog (class mascot?) in the front row.

It's quite posible my great grandmother was the inspiration for the Granny Clampett character in the Beverly Hillbillies.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

My mom with friends.