The Good Old Days

My back went out on me and my desktop computer froze for two days. Life is a bit challenging for me :-) when I could not sit long and no computer to work on my photos... When I was gradually able to get back to normal, sunny days are behind (and ahead), just not today. Life is a Beach, well-said, whoever started this statement.

I have tons of pictures in the library. However, when I have no clue what to write, I would just roll up and down, and come up nothing.  I am not a regular Facebook visitor. If I do get online, 5-10 minutes are all what I spent there. I know I must have missed out lots of friend's postings, but how would I ever catch up when new postings are rolling in by minutes or even seconds?

Today, a friend's posting titled "The good old days" inspired me to think of my good old days and prompted me to grab couple of picture frames to have some fun.

30 years ago

The girls in the frame of the music box are my two babies who came to America when they were only 9 and 5. Laura only learned 24 alphabets and Shirley was in a kindergarten for a few months. I was a busy working woman in Taiwan, Laura literally self-taught herself English alphabets by roaming in my office and asked around from office girls. From single knowledge of 24 letters to become a 4th grader, it was a dramatic jump in a foreign country, but she made it through successfully. Believe or not, she was elected to be in a writing contest at her 5th grade, merely the second year here. When she graduated from high school, she was honored on Register Guard (a local newspaper) as one of the top 8 students in that graduation year.

I took Shirley to work one day. She had to go to restroom while I was expecting a client's phone call. I took here there and rushed back to my office. By the time when I finally finished my call, I heard a door knock. Shirley was brought in by the building manager with tears in her eyes. She could not speak a word of English then and the manger figured she must relate to me. When I took her to school the first time, she cried for the whole week. It was quite intimidating for her to be around all 'strangers' who speak a language that she knew nothing about.  However, she immediately became her teacher's pet. Her middle school teacher even cried when we were leaving California for Oregon.

If I want to point out one pride in my life. These two girls are my pride. I have never been a typical home mother. My world was my business and my office, but they grow up trouble free and turn out to be the way they are (parents all think their kids are the best, no need for me to say here).  If I begin to count my blessings, this is Number One.

20 years ago

If you only have to marry once, you are the lucky one. A failed marriage can cause significant trauma in life. However, hope floats, it rises above all, in high or down time. In retrospective, I realized how God has led me to Northwest... I am a Christian and should not talk about fortune telling. But this one is a bit freaky and I am sharing it just for entertainment sake. An educated fortune teller (also a friend) told me that I should live in the place surrounded by trees, "more trees and taller trees are better", she said. 

I knew nothing about Oregon and have never thought about to come here, but now I am living here. How do you explain that? I thoroughly believe that He sent me here because the honest and honorable man He has set aside for me lives here.

 less than 5 years ago

Grand girl became two years old yesterday. She is our second grandchild. The baby boy in the frame is our first grandchild. He was 6 months old then. It was definitely a life changing experience to become a grandmother. That 5 years old girl is now the mother of three adorable children. How can I not feeling aches and pains?  My goal is to keep up with my mental and cope with my physical as I age 'gracefully'.

To me, good old days are the time period to be remembered, bitter or sweet. 

I used this opportunity to play with textures, compositions and such. I seem to like the last image the best, I purposely put the (picture) frame among the (window) frames. The texture I used is actually a texture that I created myself. OMG. I am so addicted to textures...