Harmony Hill: March 2012

Welcome to Harmony Hill

Hello
I’m Isabella Endicotti, but everyone just calls me Bella Nonna.
Let me tell you about Harmony Hill. It’s a little piece of Heaven tucked away from the rest of world. My great grandfather, Lorenzo Auditore, purchased it over one hundred years ago.
He and his two brothers had left Italy and traveled the United States looking for a better life. His two older brothers stay in America for five years before deciding to go back to Italy, but my great grandfather stayed and traveled all over the United States. He would take odd jobs where ever he could get them. One day while working for Northland Orchards he found a slice of Heaven, as he always referred to it. He knew that this was where he was destined to spend the rest of his life. My great grandfather worked night and day until he had earned enough money to purchase it.
While working out in the mid-west he met, fell in love and married my great grandmother, Harmony Lacroix.
My great grandfather took his new bride and her brother and sister-in-law home to live in Harmony Hill. They built a cozy little house and got to work planting fruit trees, nut trees and a huge garden. Soon they had earned enough money to open a general store in the center of town.
Times were tough in the early 1900’s, so my great grandfather came up a great plan. He would contact some of the people he had worked with while trying to earn the money to buy Harmony Hill.
He had worked on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and became great friends with Ingvar Gustafsson, the nephew of the owner. He knew Mr. Gustafsson would not be inheriting any part of the dairy farm, so my great grandfather offer him a piece of land at the bottom of Harmony Hill near the large lake my great grandfather named Serenity Spring. Mr. Gustafsson’s uncle had given him two dairy cows as a wedding present which helped him start his new life in Harmony Hill. In return for the land, Mr. Gustafsson supplied my great grandparents with milk and other dairy products.
While working at a construction site my great grandfather met two master carpenters, Mr. Cleavon Johnson and Mr. James Washington. He offered them the same deal as Mr. Gustafsson.
Mr. and Mrs. Schneider were about to lose their farm and all of their livestock when my great grandfather got in contact with them. They were more than happy to accept the deal.
With a bit of luck, a lot of love and hard work my grandparents were able to buy Northland Orchards. The Gustafsson family was able to buy the land that Gustafsson’s Family Dairy now sits on. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Washington started their own construction company. Most of the homes here were built by Johnson & Washington Construction. Schneider Meat products are sold in most of the grocery store around here.
Over the years my great grandparent had many traveling workers. Most stayed for a short spell, but a few had such a great love for the land that my great grandparents gave them small portions of their land with the understanding that they would share their goods and services with the other residence.
As the families grew, so did Harmony Hill. Nowhere, to my knowledge, will you find a more eclectic loving group of people. Each family has its own unique family customs and traditions, but we all share the same family value.
Hard to believe, well get comfortable and I’ll tell you a little about the goings on around here.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Enough Is Enough

Hi Bella Nonna, sorry I missed your birthday. I have been so depressed lately… time just got away from me. I hope it was a happy one.

Oh Alisa sweetheart, I’m so sorry to hear that you are feeling blue. What is the problem; is it something I might be able to help you with?

I don’t know Bella Nonna… it is really nothing, I guess. It is just you know…

Life… it has a way of creeping up on you Alisa and before you know it you are lost in a sea of blue funk.

Come into the kitchen and sit at the table. I will make a pot of tea and we can chat. Maybe find you a life raft or something to help you navigate your blue ocean… sorry about the puns; old age I guess.

I love you Bella Nonna. You always have just what I need… a little tea and sympathy with a generous helping of wisdom and cheesecake.

How did you know I had cheesecake? You don’t have to answer that… when don’t I have cheesecake!

We are all set Alisa, what has gotten you so depressed?

I guess I have what the Life Coaches call the middle child or the forgotten child syndrome. I am feeling kinda misunderstood, invisible and unhappy.

Hmmm… this calls for some of my birthday brownies. You pour us some more tea and I will be right back with the brownies.

Bella Nonna you amaze me… you have goodies stashed all over your kitchen!

Well I… yes, yes I do! But these brownies are special…

BELLA NONNA I didn’t know you…

These are not special brownies you little ding bunny… these are brownies that are special to me. Get your head out of California… marijuana is legal there… see a girl can be savvy about the stuff and never tried it. You are way too old for the just say no! talk.

Okay where was I before you accused me of baking with wacky weed?

I was pouring tea and you were getting your… brownies.

Alisa, I bake a small batch of brownies every year for my birthday to remind me of a life lesson I learned on my 40^th birthday.

Just like you I paid attention to all the excuses the experts allowed me to use for not living my authentic life. All of my unfulfilled dreams were not my fault… I was a middle child… I had no choice. Luck for me I didn’t realize I was unhappy and misunderstood with oodles of unfulfilled dreams until I was forty.

The night of my 40^th birthday I sat alone in the moonlight eating all of my birthday brownies… because all of the loving and caring people in my life had forgotten my birthday and didn’t deserve any … I decided to go on a personal journey to discover me.

According to the experts I spent my life prior to forty in La La Land doing for others and not for myself. Whoa…I should be really unhappy I thought and WHAM... instant depression.

I spent the next ten years trying to catch up on all the unhappiness I missed out on while living my, unbeknownst to me, miserable unfulfilled materially deprived life. I filled up three notebooks with all the advice the experts offered to help me solve my horrible dilemma. I had page after page of advice on mindfulness, choosing reality over fantasy and how to consciously vibrate at a high positive frequency rather than a low negative one. I have filled up Love Tanks, crashed through Blocks, kept a journal my dreams, contemplated life’s schemes and relanguaged and rewritten my life experiences.

I searched and searched for the answer; unfortunately I didn’t know the question. But that was okay because I developed what some psychologists call ‘monkey brain’ and with all the chatter going on inside my brain I umm… What was I saying? Oh yeah, if you’re happy and you know it don’t go looking for answers to someone else’s questions. I did and all I got for my trouble was writer’s cramp… and a lot of kindling for the family picnic’s bonfire.

Harmony Hill

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Friday, March 30, 2012

Joke of the Day

What do you call an old teddy bear?

Teddy Grossa Felt

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Weekly Words Of Wisdom

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Enough Is Enough