Have you ever thought of yourself as a tight rope walker.   High above the ground with only the tiniest of cables to support your body.   You look down and see the crowds of onlookers watching you.   Some of them  cheer for your success others watch for the bad fall should you step the wrong way.     You try to keep your eye on your prize on the other side of the expanse, but you can not help worry about what if you lose your concentration and fall to the ground below.   You feel the rope bounce in the breeze of those who would see you fail.   Those few solid friends you can truly count on try to allay your fears and give you strength and the concentration to make it to your objective.   Your muscles tense and ache as you balance on the thin cord.  

     Many days my life is just like this balancing between falling into the deepest darkest caverns of your own mind, and achieving my greatest desire.   Like the winds that bounce the rope and make it hard to stay standing on them the winds of people's chrism and hate.   All you really want is to once again be standing on firm ground with those you love there to greet you.

   There are other kinds of winds besides those made by God's hand.   I have mentioned the winds of change before and the breezes they blow through our lives.   Some are warm and welcoming like a warm zephyr on a sunny spring day, blowing through a field of wild flowers in a grassy meadow.    Others are like the frigid north wind blowing in with and artic breeze in a blizzard, that buries everything in its wake.   It makes everything you see dark gloomy and grey.   You may wonder if you will ever see the sun again.    Then there are the whirling spinning winds that uproot everything in its path like a tornado cutting through a small town like it is not even there, never seeing the lives it ruins.

     I myself always dread the winds of change.   I hate any change in my life.   I keep remembering a line from Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.  The muskrat says I am a very poor and humble man I never have spirit to run out in the middle of a room.   That is how I feel very timid not wanting in the middle of the winds of change.   There comes times in our lives when we must submit to the winds of change, for without change there can be no growth, and without growth there is certain death.

     Some of you will be puzzled by my thoughts, and others will understand exactly what I mean.  Those of us that have been buried by the huge sand dunes caused by some of the winds of change will know what I am talking about, but the thing to remember is you can move a mountain of sand if you do it one grain at a time.   My biggest problem is I have always tried to move huge boulders  bigger then myself.

   We have been having some really weird weather lately.   In a 3 day period of time we have had buckets of rain, hail, a rainbow between the buckets of rain and today bright sunlight with winds so cold it cuts through your winter coats.   I am wondering if the good lord is trying to tell us something, or if mother nature is just mad at everyone cutting down her trees.  

     I told someone the people that own the property I rent are afraid of anything green.   They chopped down like 10 trees and I do not even remember how many bushes in the past 20 years.   When 2 of the trees were took down I wanted to cry.   One of them was shade for the picnic tables near the playground on the ball field.  The other was a huge beautiful massive shade tree across the ball field.   I would wager to guess that tree was probably at least a hundred years old if not older.   It has wide spread branches covered in lush leaves.   Every summer that tree made a nice place for the kids to sit and rest when they were done playing on the playground  which by the way stands in full sunlight all day long.   I got to tell you it had to be a man that decided how to lay this playground out.  It has a very large sliding board ( that I myself have been down a couple times when I was cleaning and waxing it).   The guys that put the playground in thought it would be a good idea to turn this long metal slide facing the evening sun.   That means from noon till sometimes as late as 7 pm the business side of this slide is laying in full on sun light.   Does anyone have a clue how hot that thing gets by about 2 pm?    And they wonder why the kids do not play on it much.   We were trying to give the kids something to do not burn their legs off.   I think they should build a canapé over top that slide.   It would not have to be anything special just 4 pillars and a roof to block the sun off the slide part.   Although I am not 100%  sure that would be the best idea either with no sun hitting it at all it could get quite cold on a breezy day.   The best thing all around would have if they faced it the other way so that the morning sun would have hit the slide part and the later in the day it got the more shade would be cased on it by the slide itself. 

     The planners of these things never go out and take a look at the area BEFORE they come up with the plans.   Just like the plan they had to put a high rise for sr citizens on the other side of the ball field right in the line of the setting sun.   I was at the planning meeting and I said to the guy, Are you nuts?   He was like why?   I said come with me and I took him to a window that faced where he wanted to put the high rise.   I said to him look at that.   I said the place you want to put this high rise is directly in the line of the setting sun.   He was like so?   I was like do you realize if you put that high rise there all these smaller houses you plan to put to the east of that dang thing are not going to get any evening or late afternoon sun at all which will make their heating bills higher in the winter?   How is that fair to them?     I suggested instead that he put his high-rise in either the southern or northern portions of the property so as to block some of the winds that blow so wickedly across the development and allow all the sun light to fall where it is supposed to.   He said he would take some notes on it and talk to the developers.   Well the high rise did not go up there the new plan is to put it in the south west portion of the property.   IF THEY EVER DO. LOL

     I am loving all the sun I just wish the winds were not so cold and harsh.   Which again brings us back to the cutting down of trees around here.   Every time they cut down another tree the winds get worse.   I am just glad it is not snow. lol

   First I would like to take a minute to wish everyone a HAPPY EASTER.   The sun is shining what could be better for a family holiday ?   Family can be a great thing, but there are those times when not so much.   I was thinking earlier about something that happened when I was 7 years old.  

     I had wanted a game called HANDS DOWN.   It was played with cards and this thing you hit a prattle on and it would flip down your number in the center of the game if you were the last person down you had to draw a card form the other player hand.   The player with no cards at the end of the game won.   It had this thing called a sad joker in the cards and if you were caught with that in the end of the game you lost.  

     I loved this game I first played it at school the year before.   I wanted it so much, but we were poor so it took me a year to save enough pennies to get it. I got it for Christmas the next year.   I was so happy in those days we only got one toy usually and all our other presents were clothes.   I was like that kid in A CHRISTMAS STORY.  You all remember how much he wanted the bee bee gun, and how happy he was when hr got it?   That was me that Christmas, but my joy was short lived.    I had not even had the game a week when my little brother who was 4 years younger then me wanted to play.   He could not even count yet and had no business playing that game, but mom made me play it with him.   Never failed every time he got that sad joker in his hands he did not even wait till the game was over to see if he still had it he crumpled every card in his hands at that time.   I cried and begged mom to not make me play with him cause he was ruining my game, but it was not good mom thought she was teaching me to share.   However by her not correcting my brother for destroying my game she was really teaching him he could get away with tearing up someone else things and have to pay no price for it.   In less then a week he had every card in that game wrinkled and bent and looking old and bad.   It broke my heart I wanted that game so much and she allowed him to ruin it.     PARENTS SHOULD NEVER FORCE A CHILD TO ALLOW A YOUNGER CHILD TO DISTROY AN OLDER CHILDS TOY.

     It did not take me long to figure out a way to keep him from ruining my things.   Anything I really loved I never played with around him again.    Even to this day if I really like something I own or that is given to me you may never see it again.   If I kept my best toys put away and did not play with them myself mom could not force me to allow him to play with them.  I figured out just recently I still do that things I value I store away like a squirrel getting ready for winter.   If it is not played with it will remain nice looking.   This prevents people from ruining things you love.