Sisters

"A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life."  ~ Isadora James

Please allow me a moment to put into words my feelings about sisters and their relationships. Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows that I have a younger sister named Lisa that is my very dearest and best friend.

But this morning I witnessed the love of two other sisters, my mother Tomasa and her sister Casimira. My mom is Tia Casi's baby sister, just as Lisa is my baby sister.
My mom has been having car troubles and this morning she had to come into Bakersfield to have blood work done. She told me she would drive the 25 miles into Bakersfield with me since I commute every day to work anyway. She said her sister Casi would pick her up from the lab and they would spend the day together and I could pick my mom up after I got off work at 5.

When I got to the lab I was worried about just leaving my mom because it was pretty cold this morning and I didn't want her waiting outside in the cold...alone. Luckily the lab had opened at 7am so she could wait inside. I asked mom what time her sister was coming for her and she said around 9:30 or 10am. I hesitated to leave my mom because that's a long time for her to be alone...but as my mom walked towards the building I saw from the corner of my eye a woman that could have been my mothers twin. The same short, gray, curly hair, the same long lean frame, the same purposeful walk and the same strong, beautiful hands my mom has clutching a purse....it was my Tia Casi (tia is spanish for aunt).

I rolled down my window to call out to my mom so she could turn to see her sister and I saw my mom's eyes light up to see her sister and to know that she wasn't alone. My Tia came up to my car window to say "Good Morning" and I thanked her for coming to sit with my mom and make sure she wasn't alone.

And I went to work with a happy heart knowing my mom wasn't alone. Just as I drove out of the parking lot...my very own sweet sister calls me as she does every morning and I told her about what our Tia had done. There is nothing like a sister's love.

The aftermath, not of Ike but of Shariat

No, I'm not talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, I'm talking about Hurricane Shariat...Dr. Shariat to be precise! He really kicked my butt and left me reeling.

Ferocious Hurricane Shariat ripped off the old scars on my throat on Thursday, September 11th and scrambled to remove the right side of my thyroid. Shariat bore down on the right side after raging just a few weeks earlier on the left side and leaving a devastating scar. "This last assault was quite severe," said Alicia resident of the throat area devastated by Shariat. "There is a lot of pain and nausea. The throat and nerves and muscle in the surrounding area are being damaged and my energy level is coming down."

OK, so just a little exaggeration about my surgery using a current event, Hurricane Ike. The devastation Ike left is very serious, but then again so is the devastation of my 2nd surgery as witnessed by the two photos that follow. I warn you the photo's you are about to view may be extremely disturbing and viewer discretion is advise :-)

Not really. I mean they're not beautiful, but they're not THAT bad. Judge for yourself. If you're thinking when you view these photos that it looks painful...that's because it IS!

As bad as these photos look, this scar will not even be noticeable unless you are looking for it and know the person has had this type of surgery.

I'm not going to go into detail anymore about the surgery, recovery, etc. Suffice it to say that it wasn't fun and it's not anything I ever want to go through again, but other than maybe posting some pictures later of my healing I just want to get over it and go on with my life!

I've had a lot of support during all of this and I just want to say thank you to everyone that was there for me and with me during the surgery, my daughter April, my sister Lisa, my mom Tomasa, my dad Federico, my brother Fred, my brother-in-law Sean, my aunt & godmother Casimera, my brother Jaime, and my son Jim. I want to thank my many visitors, both in the hospital and at home, my sister-in-law Connie, my niece Sarena, my nieces Alicia and Beatriz and Melissa, my nephew Freddie, my sister-in-law Norma, my friend Angelica, and my nephew Isaac. Thanks also to my many relatives who prayed for me and put me on prayer lists in their church and sent cards and flowers. Special thanks to Tia Ninfa for the beautiful card and the oracion and photo of Nuestra Senora de la Salud.

A special thank you to my wonderful mommy who just drove up like clockwork to fix me breakfast and just take care of me. There are no words to describe how wonderful, loving and self-less my mother is. I love you mom!

The Pink Room

September of 2007 I bought a new house, well an older house, but new to me. The house was built in 1952, so it's just slightly older than me.

I'm posting pictures from one particular room in this house. When we first saw the house, Lisa and I instantly started calling it the "Pink Room" for obvious reasons once you see the pictures.

I'm doing this post under the label "Labor of Love" because the woman who lived and raised her family in this house before I bought it was an amazing woman.

I didn't know her personally as she has passed on and I bought the home from her children, but everyday I notice something new and special that makes me realize just how much she loved her home and her family, this room especially shows that.

The first picture has the most amazing story. It's the floor in the pink room. The carpeting is like Joseph's Coat of Many Colors. Her daughters tell me that their mother took the original carpet that was in the room, I'm not sure what color that was, but she turned it upside down in the room so that the rough brown side was showing, then she collected various pieces of carpets and rugs and cut them into smaller pieces and then took all these pieces and glued them to the turned over original carpet, making this a "Carpet of Many Colors" (click on picture to enlarge).

My sister and I were amazed when we heard this story. That someone would go to so much obvious trouble. Cutting and arranging and gluing all these pieces of carpet to create this masterpiece! My own mother is a very crafty person and there's not one member of our family that doesn't own a quilt that she has made for them so we understand how much love is involved in such an undertaking.

Before I moved into the house, I decided that I would replace the carpet in the living room, my bedroom and in the pink room. Showing their own labor of love my dad and brother offered to pay for the carpeting. But when I showed my brother the pink room he voiced what my sister and my nieces and my mom had already said, "You can't replace this, this is an original, this is a work of art". So as you can see by the picture I kept the carpeting. It's shabby and many of the pieces of carpet are worn, but everytime I see it it reminds me of my own mom and the strength and love women have.

The following pictures are just pictures showing why we called it the pink room. It's the perfect little girl's room I would have loved to have as a little girl. I've decorated it with some of the many bear's I've collected through the years and some dolls that April has given me. I still have boxes and boxes of bears stored in the garage and as soon as the weather is better and I have some energy I plan to have a yard sale.

Isn't the pink room pretty? No one lives in it, it's kind of my guest room.




Usually there is a quilt my mom made with bears all over it, but I took it off to wash it and didn't put it back on, but talking about the quilts has given me an idea of taking pictures of everyone's quilts and doing a separate post on them.

The Sisterhood of Women

Ancient Chinese Proverb say:

A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to make a home.

What is it about women that makes them so special? Today I spent the day with my two favorite women, my sister Lisa and my mother Tome, and it was like spending the day at a spa, or meditating, I feel refreshed, happy, calm and blessed. And the strange thing is that I spent the day working like a dog.

We painted my sisters kitchen and we started early, by early I mean like around 9am for me, 7am for her.

We cleaned the walls, scrubbing them with de-greaser and soap that was hell on our hands. We taped up the kitchen cabinets and counters with newspaper and blue painters tape. We used primer on the walls and while this was drying we ran both our cars over to have the oil changed and the fuel injection system serviced. We also picked up some lunch not only for ourselves, but we picked up some pizza for her two boys.

We had a lovely lunch outside under her patio on her kitchen table. It was a breezy, cool day and perfect for spending time outside, but of course it didn't last and finally we went in to begin the real painting.

Side note: The night before we had gone to Walmart and my sis picked out the paint she wanted, she was going for a Tuscan Decor such as you see below:

Pretty huh? She wasn't going to do the faux painting on it this one has but she did want that kind of golden yellow color. The color she asked them to mix I think was called Citrus, it was by Dutch Boy. It seemed kind of yellow to me, but she wanted something different and I thought, "Well why not, if that's what she wants" (we're a white walls type of family).

So back to the story, the paint was nothing like what you see above, it was baby "caca" yellow and it was hideous. The minute she slapped it on the walls she knew it wasn't what she wanted and she was going to be miserable if we continued.

She called Walmart, and wonderful Walmart said they would take the paint back even though it was custom mixed...I love Walmart!

Now we're primed and pumped and ready to paint, but we have NO PAINT!
So we went to our local TrueValue Hardware store in Shafter and the nicest man named Ron helped us. We found a little old hispanic man in the store wearing a strawhat and my sis knew that was the paint color she wanted. We told Ron and he held paint swatches up to the old man's hat and matched it! Was he great or what? And the old man was very nice to let us do that to him.

So now with paint in hand we returned to her kitchen and began. Right away she knew this was the perfect color...and it was, it was just what she wanted, warm and rich and soothing. And the weird thing is the name of the paint color on the paint swatch was, get this....StrawHat!!! She wanted it the color of the man's hat and the color was called Straw Hat!!

Anyway, we painted and joked and complained about our kids, our jobs, etc, etc. And then our mommy got there and she pitched right in and helped paint and we chatted with her and we laughed and had a great time, before we knew it, the kitchen was painted, the corners and bottoms were done. We tore down the newspaper and she and my mom put up curtains and hung pictures back and it was BEAUTIFUL. I wish I had had my camera, maybe tomorrow I'll take some pictures.

So as I said in the beginning of this story, women are so special and I'm so blessed to have my sister and my mother, there was nothing I would have rather done today then spend the day with them!