Veteran's Day at Applebees

Today was Veteran's Day. Applebee's Restaurants offered a free meal to all vets. We went to our local Applebee's in North Fort Myers around 2:30, thinking it would not be too busy and we could split the difference between lunch and dinner. You should have seen the crowd waiting inside, outside and everywhere we looked, but since we are old and don't have a heck of a lot of pressing engagements, we put our name on the list and waited in the car for twenty minutes or so while listening to talk radio. Then, we waited inside for another fifteen minutes and were about to be seated when a couple of young men (by young, I mean somewhere between 28 and 45 years old) asked how long to be seated. They were not together and were about to leave when my husband (U.S. Navy during the Korean War) asked them if they would like to sit with us, since we were about to be seated. Both Morgan with wife Lisa (Afghanistan) and Brian (twenty years with duty everywhere) jumped at the chance to join a couple of old fogies with immediate seating. We had a wonderful time eating with young vets and hearing about their lives now that they are out of service and into the world of work, families and life. The service had given them marvelous values ... I would have been proud to have them as my kids. When we had finished our late lunch, we exchanged names and phone numbers and I truly hope to see these vets again. Thank you Applebee's for a great meal and for the opportunity to renew my faith in a younger generation. Our service men and women are spectacular human beings. I wish our government respected them enough to get in or get out of Afghanistan before the death toll rises while in a holding pattern. To Morgan, Lisa and Brian.... thanks for a lovely afternoon.

Where did the Summer Go?

When you approach the end of life, time is a most precious commod-ity. Since we drive back and forth between Ohio and Florida, I waste entirely too much time in the comings and goings. We arrived back in Ohio in the middle of May and settled in for a summer of seeing all the assorted and sundry doctors who make it possible for us to stay alive through five of six months in Florida. Now it is time to reverse the process and the docs are getting serious about tests and prescriptions. I saw the ophthalmologist on Tuesday for a vision check. I only wear glasses for reading, but eventually you do need a checkup. So, I am scheduled for a cataract surgery with lens implant next Tuesday. It will only hold us up for about three weeks, but sheesh! You would think that they could give you appointments in June or July, so they can mess with whatever parts they are interested in messing with before Medicare stops paying them.
I digress. It was my intention to make eleven king sized quilts before I die, so my children and grandchildren will remember me when I am long gone. A super quilt teacher once told me, "Quilts are meant to keep people you love warm". Now, that is cool. I had four quilts pieced and ready to go to a professional quilter, when I came home and one huge quilt that had been hanging around for a long time. It originally was intended for my older brother and after it was pieced, sandwiched and mostly hand quilted (that makes it valuable)....he died! I put it away and it was hard to get it going again, plus the border was almost impossible to mark until someone told me to use masking tape for the cross hatching. By the time I finished it and attached the binding, my fingers were bloody. One of the biggest problems for quilters is the inability to say no when a particularly beautiful fabric calls your name like the Sirens who call the young sailors with their illusions. Well, the quilt at the top called to me this summer and I couldn't stop until I had gathered many half yards of Batiks, sliced them apart and then sewed them back together. I have enough for my children finally, but I also have fabric going to Florida for three or four more. I am hopeless!
Between the doctors, quilts and Ancestry.com, I have not posted one word for many a day. I read my favorites and love the bloggers, so I think I will start working on my blog again. Here's hoping that you haven't forgotten me.

Shovel Ready?

I have spent the summer in a blue funk... watching T.V. and watching Congress pass legislation without reading the bills or knowing what a mess the outcome would be. I feel so helpless and unimportant. They are on vacation now, so the danger of America circling the drain is avoided for another month. I found this quote today....

"If you can't convince them, confuse them."

- President Harry S. Truman

Looks like old Harry knew the score way back then!

I don't know about you...but, I AM NOT SHOVEL READY, YET!

Where is Your Treasure?

Just had to tell you what I heard in church this morning.

A rich banker died and met St. Peter at The Pearly Gates, dragging a large, heavy suitcase behind him.
St. Peter says, "Go right on in, but you don't need the bag."
The banker says, "Oh, I have to bring the bag!"
St. Peter says, "What's in the bag that's so important?"
The banker opens the bag and it is full of gold bars!
St. Peter says, "You brought PAVEMENT?"

A Little Girl Talk

You just have to go see this short video. I'd put it up here, but I am technically challenged. Anyway, I loved it and I just love babies!

http://www.snotr.com/video/2630


Okay, now that being said, I have another thought to share with y'all. "My Honey" and I went to the professional quilter to have a bunch of quilt tops quilted. I had been fairly prolific while in Florida during the winter and will never have enough time in this world to get them quilted, so over the river and through the woods to Lisa's house we went.
Along the winding Maumee River Road was a beautiful parcel of land that had been occupied as The Children's Services Board for many, many years. The social workers handled difficult family problems, orphans and housed children who were too physically handicapped to be cared for in their own homes. Our little granddaughter, Courtney, lived there for about a year while awaiting a bed in The Sunshine Home. She had been born missing most of her brain and was expected to live about two years. My daughter and son-in-law cared for her at home for five years through seizures, vomiting nightly while being fed by the machine, surgeries and hospitalizations. Friends and family learned to do infant CPR, handle Apnea machines, G-tube feedings and many other nursing procedures, so our daughter and her husband could both work to pay her medical bills. They lived with us for about eighteen months to save money for a house and gain another nurse to help with Courtney. We even learned to change her G-tube at home....I would pull out the old one, the baby would cry and hold her breath...then pass out and my daughter would pop in the new one. Life was not easy. To our knowledge, she could not see or hear, roll over or sit up. She had to be fed with an eye dropper until they put in the G-tube and then she was fed by a machine for the next nine years until God took her home. The people in this ICU took marvelous care of her in the old fashioned brick buildings. The acreage was a beautiful place to visit along the river. Then the city became typical hogs and decided that they needed that property to build condos and make money for their bloated coffers. So in a snap of their fingers, this beautiful setting for the handicapped children, the orphans and the parents of troubled teens... the city usurped the property and it was bulldozed for the almighty buck progress. To heck with the children!
Toledo is now in a downward spiral as an automotive adjunct to Detroit and that property along the river is sitting there with a few big, fat cat houses, but most is going begging for want of rich folks to purchase lots with a fantastic view. Somehow, it really bothers me when an institution that did so much good has been taken over and forgotten.... except for the occasional grandmother, who happens along the road and remembers how wonderful it was for her little granddaughter.

June 1, 2009---Addendum
Today, Courtney would have been twenty-five. We put a tiny pot of pink roses on her grave. No child ever lives in vain. We learned a great deal about love and the value of life from her.

Mother's Day Once Again

This is a rerun of my Mother's Day Post from 2007. I still feel exactly the same way about my children, so here we go again! We are packing to go home to Ohio and I have not been well, so even the blog gets short shrift. Sorry, but I love all my fellow bloggers.....


Happy Mother's Day to Mom, the original seat belt!

Today is Mother's Day and this is the card I got from Numero Uno child. It really cracks me up, because I spent their formative years throwing my arms across the chest of the child sitting next to me on the front bench seat of the car to prevent their being thrown through the windshield. Lord knows how they managed to live through no car seats and certainly no seat belts. One absolute rule was that they couldn't sit too near any door, because who knew whether or not the lock would hold and one could possibly fall from the car during a turn and get run over by the back wheels. However did I manage to get them safely through infancy, school, college and to the altar without killing anyone?
I think motherhood started for me when I was about ten or eleven and our neighbor had a baby boy. I was allowed to play with him on a blanket in their backyard while my Mom chatted with the new mother.
I fell in love with the smell, feel, touch, the enchanting smiles and the cuddly little body of any baby. Little girls are pre-programmed to desire babies in their lives. Shortly after marrying at seventeen, my mind turned to thoughts of having my very own baby to cuddle and smell and love. Luckily, God knew that we were not ready financially for parenthood. He made me wait until I was twenty-one, before He felt I could be trusted with an infant of my own. I couldn't believe it when after all those months and years of trying, I finally knew I was pregnant.
Every since that very first day, when I knew there was a baby coming to our home, I have been the most blessed of all creation --- a mother. If there is to be a special day --- it should be a day for rejoicing in the fact that God has seen fit to give us children to raise and love and then set free.

This is a picture of me with my first child when she was two years and six weeks old. My second child was only six weeks old and I was six weeks away from getting pregnant with my third. How ironic that after almost four years without children, we had three in less than three years. Motherhood has been a joy every step of the way and I am still thanking God for the children he sent my way almost fifty years ago. I love you Lesley, Matthew and Stacey and the ten children you have brought into my life in the last twenty-seven years. The pastor praised moms in church this morning, but it is we who should be thanking God for the privilege He has given to us. I cannot imagine a life without my children. To quote Ben Folds, " I Am the Luckiest!"

The Big Bail Out!

"Bail Em Out!??? Heck, back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch Brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now, we are trusting the economy of our country, our banking system, our insurance companies, the automobile industry and whatever other thing they decide to grab to the same nit-wits, who couldn't make money running a whore house and selling whiskey! Wake up America....we are in terrible trouble and getting in deeper each day!"

Word Definitions for Women

(1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add in a clause here - This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot' - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome' that will bring on a 'whatever').

(8) Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying ---- YOU!

(9) Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to # 3.

Newfangled Stuff

I keep reading wonderful blogs and wondering why I never have anything to post here in my oven. Then I realized that

some people write about what is going on in their everyday lives. Most of my life is behind me and I am clutching the few remaining days in a bony hand while in the land of sunshine with several lifelong friends. Today, I was opening a can of Dole Crushed Pineapple and got to thinking about the newfangled pop tab openers on top. Sure, they are great for doing away with the can opener, but I approach each can with trepidation when I think of the tenacity with which that razor sharp edge hangs onto the can awaiting one last tug to either open the can or cut off my fingers. Uh.... "Honey, could you help me with this can?" He laughed at me, but I reminded him of a tuna can from 1959. The lid was opened with an old fashioned can opener, leaving about 1/4 inch attached to the can....then discarded into the trash basket.

I was pregnant with my second child and my firstborn (light of my life) was toddling about in the

kitchen when she decided to investigate the trash basket. That tuna can with it's razor sharp edge pushed down into the can was very tempting to a nosy little girl and before I could blink an eye, her tiny fingers were in the can and lacerated easily as she pulled them out. We made a mad dash to the doctor's office (it was in the evening and he met us there....times were different then)and he proceeded to stitch up tiny fingers while her Daddy held her down on the exam table. I wasn't allowed to do such difficult work, due to my delicate condition. If you ever doubted that your dad loves you, Lesley....remember this story. It wasn't very many minutes before he was sitting in my chair with his head between his knees and I was draped over my tiny daughter while the doctor finished the repair. This is the man who has delivered foals in our barn and assisted the vet with major surgeries, but could not stand to have his baby daughter cry her sweet baby breath into his face.

I don't know which is worse.... the old fashioned can with the temptation to leave the lid partially attached or the

newfangled lid with it's dangerously sharp edges in the hands of an old fashioned lady with her partially attached head?

That's it for today, but it was fun to remember with "My Honey" what it was like fifty years ago, before newfangled stuff.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Lately, I've been ruminating on some of the blogs I read that are written by medical people. There are nurses, doctors, pharmacists, EMT's, ER techs, secretaries and probably housekeeping, for all I know. For some reason, the majority of sites that I have visited have writers who are pretty snarky and sometimes amazingly clever in their turn of a phrase. One particular pharmacist has a palpable hate for "golden oldies", and he seems to have it in for anyone who receives Social Security. Do we all throw the switch on our intellect the day we turn in our key to the executive washroom? There could be reasons why his customers don't understand every ramification of Medicare Part D, since the whole thing was written to deliberately obfuscate the whole plan. Couldn't Congress have written the damn plan in language not requiring an Doctorate of Jurisprudence to decode it?

For the last two and a half months , I have been suddenly stricken with a confusing set of symptoms. It started in mid-December with GERD (gastric reflux). But, my mind told me that it was impossible, since I had been the recipient of an esophageal fundoplication about nine years ago. This is a nifty surgery where the doctor wraps the top of your stomach around the bottom of your esophagus to keep your stomach from sliding up into your thoracic cavity through a Paraesophageal Hernia. It worked great....for many years and then started feeling like I had slipped a cog somewhere in my middle. This was complicated by another miracle of modern medicine known as a stent in my celiac artery. This major artery goes from your aorta to your liver and provides your innards with oxygen to keep digestion going. So, "my Honey" and I headed up the road to Punta Gorda and The Peace River Hospital on Dec. 26th. Tests were run and medicine prescribed (Prevacid and Carafate), which I started taking faithfully right away. Within another week, I was miserable with horrendous indigestion and we rolled on up the road to the ER again. This time, another doctor took a look at my old EKG and my newly minted EKG and said, "I think it is your heart, not your esophagus!" He then threw me into a room and called a cardiologist who sent me by ambulance to a bigger hospital and did a cardiac cath with two stents. Being a very alert and GREAT cardiac doc, he used Cobalt Chromium stents, so gastro doctors could do whatever they needed, after I had taken Plavix and Aspirin for a month. So, Honey and I drove even further up the road to northwestern Ohio and I saw my family doc, my northern heart doc and a gastroenterologist. The Endo doctor did an EGD as soon as my month was up and I discontinued the drugs that could make me bleed. The results are in and I was right.... my fundoplication has loosened up and I had developed gastric erosion in my lower esophagus, but it was in the process of healing from the twice daily Prevacid. He also ordered Carafate Suspension and we immediately discovered that this medicine was the reason that the pain had been so bad in my esophagus...I am allergic to it!

Okay, I took a long time to explain what is eating at me....not my gut, my brain. We drove back to Florida and the Ohio doctor had ordered Prevacid (twice a day) at my Ohio pharmacy. I called them this morning. With my Part D coverage of Medicare, a one month supply of Prevacid, twice a day (60 pills), is $38.00 and change. Since that seemed reasonable, I asked them about my husband's Rx for Prevacid (it works great, but OTC Prilosec is cheaper) and a three month supply of Prevacid, once a day (90 pills), is $116.00! Something just is not right here! If I get a three month's supply (180 pills), it will cost me $114.00....isn't that $2.00 cheaper for twice as many pills? Now, Mr. Hot Dog Pharmacist....Explain to the Golden Oldies how the insurance companies do the math! We are talking belly pain here, not narcotic addiction. Someday very soon, you will be old and eating your words---- I wish I could be here to see what you have to say when you are the one being screwed.

Something very strange is happening in our country. The many bills being passed by congress are placing diametric opposition between the ages. A close friend's granddaughter married two years ago in her early twenties. She and her equally young husband built a four bedroom, three bathroom home with a huge walk through shower, swimming pool on a water site. This was at the top of the housing bubble. He recently applied to the government for mortgage relief, because the young wife had a temporary medical problem and was given a $100,000.00 break on the mortgage. He has told "Grampa" that the old folks are living too long and depleting "his" Social Security. Do you see a pattern here? Our young people are spouting the equivalent of hate speech toward senior citizens....could the government be fomenting this breech between the ages? Soon, Uncle Sam will be floating us out into the ocean on a burning canoe, while the twenty somethings wave gaily from shore and the angry pharmacist leads the choir. So long for a while, that's all the songs for a while!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all the folks in bloggityville! I have always let my darling husband off the hook for this holiday, because I feel that it is a plague on the backs of men everywhere. Why are they expected to spring for a "Pajama Gram", teddy bear or long stem roses? What makes this a special day for women only? The TV ads make me feel so sorry for the guys. I think all Valentine gifts should be something that can be enjoyed by two....like, uh, perhaps a great dinner out, a fine bottle of wine or a great box of chocolates. I think my aversion to the gift part is because I have always mentally reserved the day for my memories of my Dad. When we were young, Dad would come home with a big box of Fanny Farmer Chocolates for my Mom and little boxes for his three girls. After we married, our boxes got bigger and our daughters were the recipients of the little red heart boxes. Each year he made the trip to the candy store and then drove about town passing out the boxes that said, "Dad loves me! " This was a man of unique intelligence, who was the epitome of the absent-minded professor. I don't think he actually knew when Christmas or Easter was due, but he knew about Valentine's Day and I would never give that memory away to any one else. I love my husband every day, so he doesn't have to shell out the big bucks for any card company holiday. Today, we met our kids at the local Panera's for lunch (something I really love...the kids, not Panera's...well, I do like it). My daughter-in -law told me about a little ritual that is carried out in their home. Many years ago, my son came home on Valentine's Day with a big bouquet of flowers for her, but as he walked into the house, their little girl said, "Oh, Daddy... you brought me flowers!" He bowed and presented them to her with a wink to his wife. Ever since that time, he has brought Lacey flowers on Valentine's Day. It is so like my Dad with his candy ritual, that I could cry. This is something that is beyond the commercial bit and gets right to the heart of things. But, then....who wouldn't adore this child? She was six when I took her to "Glamour Shots" and we had a wonderful day. She will be eighteen soon, but I'm not into publishing pictures that would identify her to the public at large. She is a beauty and is very well guarded by three older brothers.

If God were going to give me seven grandsons and only one granddaughter .... I got the right one!

Most of the people who are kind enough to visit my blog know that we spend the winter in Florida. As the years pile up around us like wrinkles under our chins and our health becomes more precarious, we seem to be unable to handle the six month stretch in paradise and we end up making a trip north to visit our doctors. So, we are home for a month (I hope is is only a month) and I will have a gastroscopy on Tuesday. Hopefully, we will head back to Ft. Myers by next week, since we are freezing our behinds off. This picture is what greeted us this morning for Valentine's Day. Believe it or not, this is a walk in the park compared to the two inches of ice we drove through in Kentucky and the eleven inches of snow that was on our deck when we arrived in Ohio. When the thaw started last week, 200 or so ice fishermen were caught out on the ice in Lake Erie near Toledo and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard as the eighteen inch ice developed a huge crack between them and the shore. They had fishing shacks, snowmobiles and all sorts of equipment out there when the ice decided to break away from shore. One man fell through the ice on his snow mobile and died of a heart attack. I don't think I could make it for two seconds in forty degree water. The snow had all melted by this week and we had over two inches of rain the middle of the week. Ohio is certainly not boring and I love the changes of season, but I hope the next season I see will be the flowering of the shrubs and trees in May!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Some days you feel like a nut, some days you don't!

For the last couple of weeks, I have felt like t he face on the right. (Blah or worse.) Unfortunately, I am in Florida and my doctors are in Ohio. We have been unable to find a doctor in Fort Myers, who actually wants to take care of "snowbirds". Last year, we discovered that we could drive up I-41, otherwise known as Tamiami Trail and there find a group of wonderful doctors, known as Port Charlotte Urgent Care. We stopped there the day after Christmas and were sent to The Peace River Hospital. It was something as simple as indigestion, but by this age, I have had an esophageal fundoplication (the top of your stomach is wrapped around the bottom of your esophagus to keep your stomach from sliding up into your chest cavity). Also, I had a celiac stent placed in the artery that goes from your aorta to your liver. These two things tend to confuse the issue with ordinary doctors. The hospital sent me to a nice Arabic doctor who ordered CAT scans of my chest and my abdominal cavity . Then, he promptly left town for several days. By last Saturday night, I was rolling in agony and went back up the road to the hospital and the ER doc decided that my EKG had radical changes since the 26th and he plopped my butt directly into a hospital bed and called a cardiologist. This guy was a doll with a no nonsense attitude and he transported me to a Regional Hospital where they are equipped to handle heart problems. I actually got my first ride in an ambulance. He did a cardiac cath on Monday with two stents and sent me home to recover. Now, we come to the crux of my problems....why the heck do I have indigestion? The endoscopy surgeon hasn't shown up in my life (he is entertaining out of town company), the admitting doctor followed my medicine list directly from my computer history *( he doesn't know me from Adam or Eve) and the cardiologist has placed two stents in my heart preventing anyone else from doing any procedures that would help my indigestion.

One other piece of info.... I got home on Tuesday and people we are acquainted with from home came by and bought our place here in Ft. Myers, so I suppose I'll go home and see my "real" doctors. In the meantime.... if you are a medical blogger... please stop by and tell me what the heck I should do....short of dying. My birthday was Wednesday and I would like to go out and celebrate with something a bit tastier than Jello or applesauce!

Endless Summer

We are among the lucky ones, who have missed all the snow and ice in our hometown in Ohio. While it hasn't been as hot as usual in Ft. Myers, Florida, it has been nice and the skies have been blue with fleecy white clouds. We have been here for two and a half months and "the husband" wanted to drive home to see the kids, but the weather has not let up for enough hours for us to make the drive. We can make it in nineteen hours, but the older we get.... the harder the drive becomes. I have not blogged for three weeks, because I have been working on quilts in an effort to compile a stack for my children and grandchildren. Also, some are just for the fun of it. I have fabric in waiting for a couple of queen/king quilts, but am punishing myself by waiting until I have cleared the decks of "in the works projects". I just finished quilting (by hand) a top that was pieced by my husband's grandmother in the 1940's. The fabrics were from feed sacks and are not particularly pretty and the workmanship was not the greatest, but it will be wonderful to leave to my daughter, who is also an avid quilt addict. Not too bad, now that it is done. It took more than a month of quilting every night while we watched T.V. and my fingers had multiple holes from the needles pricking them as I felt the underside of the quilt to know when the stitch was through and ready to return to the top. How can we ever think this is fun?

The next one is a little wall quilt for the porch here in Florida. It was such fun piecing it, but I haven't quilted it, yet. The fabrics are all sort of crazy , but then...so am I....Works for me! I had a quilting teacher who said, "Quilts are meant to keep people you love warm". Isn't that a lovely thought? So, why do I waste time on silly little wall hangings? Probably, because I can't resist the fabrics that are such fun to play with today. I feel sorry that Grandma never had such choices when she was young.

The quilt top on the right is huge and is finally ready to be quilted. I think I will take it to a long-arm professional quilter, because it is so big and I am tired of looking at the pieces. The fabrics are made in places like Java, Bali, Indonesia and Africa and are called Batiks. Their quality is unbelievable. I spent hours basting the curves together to make certain the circles and points all met at the right places. I am so ready to get on to something different. There are yards and yards of stuff awaiting me in the closet. I don't tell my hubby how much I have invested in fabric and he doesn't tell me about his golf expenses.

This small quilt (about a twin size) is just a pattern that caught my eye in one of my many books. It is a child's quilt and the fabrics are all fun kid stuff. Each colored block has three different fabrics with mice , balls and all sorts of toys. I bought the fabric one week and whacked the fabric apart and put it back together again in a few days. One of these days, one of my grandchildren will have a child and I will be ready. Meanwhile, it is time for Christmas, so the sewing machine must be put aside for a while. The general rule is...."Piece in the summer and quilt in the winter", but Florida is endless Summer!

Why Some Men Have Dogs, Not Wives

1. The later you are, the more excited your dogs are to see you.

2. Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.

3. Dogs like it if you leave a lot of things on the floor.

4. A dog's parents never visit.

5. Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.

6. You never have to wait for a dog; they're ready to go 24 hours a day.

7. Dogs find you amusing when you're drunk.

8. Dogs like to go hunting and fishing.

9. A dog will not wake you up at night to ask, ?If I died, would you get another dog??


10. If a dog has babies, you can put an ad in the paper and give them away.

11. A dog will let you put a studded collar on it without calling you a pervert.

12. If a dog smells another dog on you, they don't get mad. They just think it's interesting.

13. Dogs like to ride in the back of a pickup truck.

And last, but not least:

14. If a dog leaves, it won't take half of your stuff.

American Soldiers Do More Than Shoot

John Gebhardt in Iraq

John Gebhardt's wife, Mindy, said that this little girl's entire family was executed. The insurgents intended to execute the little girl also, and shot her in the head...but they failed to kill her. She was cared for in John's hospital and is healing up, but continues to cry and moan. The nurses said John is the only one who seems to calm her down, so John has spent the last four nights holding her while they both slept in that chair. The girl is coming along with her healing.
He is a real Star of the war, and represents what America is trying to do.
This, my friends, is worth sharing. You'll never see things like this in the news. The American public needs to see pictures like this and needs to realize that what we're doing over there is making a difference. Even if it is just one little girl at a time.

Barstool Economics

Suppose that every day, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all 10 comes to $100.00.If they pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• The first 4 men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

• The 5th would pay $1.00.

• The 6th would pay $3.00.

• The 7th would pay $7.00.

• The 8th would pay $12.00.

• The 9th would pay $18.00.

• The 10th man (the richest) would pay $59.00.

So, that's what they decided to do. The 10 men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve."Since you are all such good customers, he said, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.00."Drinks for the 10 now cost only $80.00.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first 4 men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.But, what about the other 6 men (the paying customers)?How could they divide the $20.00 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?They realized that $20.00 divided by 6 is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the 5th man and the 6th man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested... to be fair, to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

• The 5th man, like the first 4, now paid nothing (100% savings).

• The 6th now paid $2.00 instead of $3.00 (33% savings).

• The 7th now paid $5.00 instead of $7.00 (28% savings).

• The 8th now paid $9.00 instead of $12.00 (25% savings).

• The 9th now paid $14.00 instead of $18.00 (22% savings).

• The 10th now paid $49.00 instead of $59.00 (16% savings).

Each of the 6 was better off than before. And the first 4 continued to drink for free. But once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20.00," declared the 6th man. He pointed to the 10th man, "But he got $10.00!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the 5th man. "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got 10 times more than I!"

"That's true!!" shouted the 7th man. "Why should he get $10.00 back, when I only got $2.00? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first 4 men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The 9 men surrounded the 10th and beat him up.

The next night, the 10th man didn't show up for drinks, so the 9 sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between them for even half of the bill! (The 10th man was originally paying $59.00 of $100.00, then $49.00 of $80.00).

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

• -David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.

• Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

Somedays, we need some fun!

One day, a man came home and was greeted by his wife dressed in a very Sexy nightie. 'Tie me up,' she purred, 'and you can do anything you want.' So he tied her up and went golfing.

*****************************************

A woman came home, screeching her car into the driveway, and ran into the house. She slammed the door and shouted at the top of her lungs, 'Honey, pack your bags. I won the lottery!' The husband said, 'Oh my God! What should I pack, beach stuff or mountain stuff?' 'Doesn't matter,' she said. 'Just get out.'

********************************************

Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is a husband.

*************************************

A Polish immigrant went to the DMV to apply for a driver's license. First, of course, he had to take an eye sight test The optician showed him a card with the letters 'C Z W I X N O S T A C Z.' 'Can you read this?' the optician asked. 'Read it?' the Polish guy replied, 'I know the guy.' ***********************************************

Mother Superior called all the nuns together and said to them, 'I must tell you all something. We have a case of gonorrhea in the convent.' 'Thank God,' said an elderly nun at the back. 'I'm so tired of chardonay. ********************************************

A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband.Suddenly, her husband burst into the kitchen. 'Careful,' he said, 'CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my gosh! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my gosh! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful. CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the! salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!' The wife stared at him. 'What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?' The husband calmly replied, 'I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving.' ***************************************************************

Fifty-one years ago, Herman James, a North Carolina mountain man, was drafted by the Army. On his first day in basic training, the Army issued him a comb. That afternoon the Army barber sheared off all his hair. On his second day, the Army issued Herman a toothbrush. That afternoon the Army dentist yanked seven of his teeth. On the third day, the Army issued him a jock strap. The Army has been looking for Herman for 51 years.

Joe Lives in Flyover Country

I live in flyover country, just across the Maumee River from Toledo, Ohio. A really nice guy, named Joe Wuzelbacher lives on the other side of the expressway in Holland, Ohio. Senator Barack Obama just happened to be in his neighborhood recently, when Joe was out tossing a football with his son. The candidate solicited a question from Joe and asked if he had any concerns. Joe replied that he was a plumber with thoughts of buying the small business from his employer in the future and what would happen to him, if his good luck should allow him to buy the business, hire a few more employees and start making more money. Would the government (under the Obama regime) take his profits away from him? Obama replied that certainly Joe must want people under him to have the same privileges by "spreading the wealth around". Now, if you have worked sixty hours this week, invested in four plumbing trucks for your plumbers to drive, hired a bookkeeper to keep Uncle Sam from sending you to the slammer for non payment of income taxes, hired an office girl to tend the phones when customers call for plumbing services and provided the office supplies and furniture..... would you think it is fair to take ....say $1000.00 and split it with the family down the street who has a plasma TV, I-Pod, Wii, kids with Nikes, a husband who smokes and drinks, but doesn't work? That's spreading the wealth around... it's also called Socialism. I've watched the news all week as different networks have hounded this poor man, his family and his neighbors. He has been vetted about his private life, but is just a private citizen and is not running for any public office. There have been about one hundred different reporters and television trucks in his neighborhood. It was said that he has no plumber's license.... in Ohio, you can be a journeyman plumber, but the license belongs to the owner of the business. Joe doesn't own the business....he is just a hard working plumber, who is trying to decide if he would ever want to work extra hard to own a business, since Obama would take his profits away and give them to non-producing slugs. They are saying that Joe owes back taxes. Why would any reputable reporter snoop into a private citizen's records? All the grief they have given to "Joe the Plumber" is an effort to diminish the importance of the question he asked Senator Obama. Why would he want to work harder, invest his life in a small business, if after all the effort.....Big Brother would come along and redistribute his hard earned money around like candy on Halloween?

A Lesson in Finance

Once upon a time, in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.
The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.
The man bought hundreds at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.
The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers, and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further, and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.
The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50!
However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf. While the man was away the assistant told the villagers, 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each, and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again, and once again there were monkeys everywhere. Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.
I always thought the stock market was monkey business!

What is a BILLION?

How many zeros in a billion?
This is too true to be funny. The next time you hear a politician use the Word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the politicians' spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,But one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were Living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes,
at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain...
let's take a look at New Orleans ...
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D)
Is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
To rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number...
What does it mean?

A. Well... If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child)
You each get $516,528.Or...

B. Or... If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or... If you are a family of four...
Your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D. C. HELLO!

Are all your calculators broken??

Accounts Receivable Tax, Building Permit Tax, CDL License Tax, Cigarette Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Dog License Tax, Federal Income Tax, Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA), Fishing License Tax, Food License Tax, Fuel Permit Tax, Gasoline Tax, Hunting License Tax, Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax, IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax), IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)!, Liquor Tax, Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax Property Tax, Real Estate Tax Service charge taxes, Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax (Truckers), Sales Taxes, Recreational Vehicle Tax, School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA), Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax, Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax, Telephone State and Local Tax, Telephone Usage Charge Tax, Utility Tax Vehicle License Registration Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Workers Compensation Tax,

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world...
And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?
Can you spell 'politicians!'?

And I still have to Press '1'For English.
What the heck happened?????

All I'm left with is small change!

Time Flies --- Get the fly swatter!

September 11, 2001 The End of Innocence

This is a rerun of the post I did last year for the contest Cathy ran over at Cathy's Place. I managed to win first prize (by twisting every arm I knew among the bloggers). This year I have a grandson who flies over the middle east and translates Arabic messages for the Air Force. Pray for our men and women who are investing so much for our country. The terrorists have not given up their desire to bring us to our knees. We must show them that we are still the America who helps all over the world and does not quit when the going gets rough.


It was shortly before nine, that Tuesday morning, when the phone began to jangle on my bedside table. Okay, so I was lolling about on my bed like Cleopatra on her barge. It was a time of life when there were no pressing reasons to leave the soft comfort of my quintessential retreat. I languidly answered and heard the excited voice of my youngest daughter. "A plane just flew into one of the Twin Towers in New York! Turn on your TV!" The horror unfolding before our eyes short-circuited the link between reality and belief. The child within wanted to deny that this could be happening even though our eyes watched the undeniable on the screen. How could such an accident happen? Stacey and I talked as we watched separately, yet bonded together in mutual sorrow for those who would never again talk with a loved one or cuddle deeply in their comfortable beds with a spouse, lover or child. People leapt from windows without hope of living, but in fear of dying from the flames left behind. American Airlines Flight 11 had ended at 8:46 am. As we watched and talked, we saw United Airlines Flight 175 hit the second tower at 9:03 --- the age of innocence ended as we realized there are people in the world who want us dead. American Flight 77 tore into the Pentagon Building at 9:37 and United Flight 93 plummeted into the ground in Pennsylvania at 10:06. This all occurred in one hour and twenty minutes, but would change the world as we know it forever. We cried together and finally hung up the phones, only to remain transfixed before the TVs. The words Muslim, elQuaida and terrorists began to filter into the reporters jargon and I searched my mind for what little knowledge I had of their activities. Americans have attended their churches faithfully for hundreds of years and have heard the Biblical stories of the ancestors of Jesus; not thinking of the ramifications of the Old Testament lineage of Abraham and Sarah. Many people know only of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection. You know --- Christmas and Easter people. The faith of Abraham filtered down from King David to God's only son, Jesus, through many generations of Hebrews. When Abraham was eighty-six years old, he took (at Sarah's behest) Sarah's handmaiden (slave), Hagar. She bore a son, Ishmael. They thought this would fulfill God's promise of a son for Abraham in his old age, but no! God had promised a son through Abraham's legal wife, Sarah. It was accomplished when Abraham was one hundred years old and the child was named Isaac. Isaac's descendants are the Jewish Nation, of whom Jesus is one descendant .... the "new covenant" with God, from which the Christians spring. Ishmael and Hagar were cast out into the desert to become the Arab Nation. God promised Hagar that her son, Ishmael, would head many nations. This, from The Living Bible; God appeared to Hagar in Genesis 17:10-12, saying , "This son of yours will be a wild one --- free and untamed as a wild ass! He will be against everyone, and everyone will feel the same towards him. But, he will live near the rest of his kin." So, we know that the Arabs and the Jews are half-brothers, but surely the Arab Nation resents the inheritance of slavery as opposed to legitimate offspring of their forefather. The stage set over two thousand years ago endures between the Jews, Christians and the Arabs in lands all over the world to this day. The Barbary Pirates of the seventeenth century were Muslims, determined to acquire enough money to spread the word of the Qur'an telling the World of Allah through his prophet, Muhammad. Their Allah is the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians and Muhammad is their prophet, whom they consider to be the equivalent of our Jesus. However, Jews await the coming Messiah and Christians believe in the Trinity of God. . Early century Muslims were just as dedicated to their mission as they are today. Muslims have never rested in their zeal to rid the world of infidels, because they truly feel it is ordained by Allah that the world be ruled by their God. We must never cease to be vigilant, because the world, as we have know it, will never be the same. Our lives are frail as breath ... we gasp at the prospect of future attacks. What does God think of mankind's perversion of His love in His name? God have mercy. Was 9/11 the end of innocence or the beginning of the end?

Medical Blogs

There came a time when I had to get an education... just in case my husband died or left me (God forbid) with three children and no real marketable skills. We had married when I was seventeen and had the kids in my early twenties. It was a given during the fifties and sixties that wives stayed pregnant and barefoot. But, when it dawned upon me that I couldn't manage the house payments on my own, off I went to nursing school (I was forty). We had one in college and two in high school, but I never wanted them to do housework in addition to their school studies, extra curricular activities and their jobs in a restaurant. In the end, all three paid for their advanced education and we provided them with room, board, laundry, all personal needs, a car and tons of love.
After I had the education, I went to work in a hospital for twenty years. First on a general med-surg floor with a smattering of peds for seven years, then on to the cardiac floor for four years and finally to maternity/nursery for nine years. I am an absolute fool for anything medical, so when computers finally entered my life I was thrilled to find all sorts of medical bloggers. I avidly approached each new blog and snickered at their rants about weird patients or drug seeking goofballs. Then, I read The Angry Pharmacist and his feelings about old people (oldfartitis...April, 2008) and realized that not all medical people are dedicated to helping the sick and infirm. In his ranting and raving, I saw genuine meanness with a small attempt to be super smart and chic. I love folks who come over here and read my blog and make comments. I love reading their blogs (my favorites are on the blog roll on the left) and making comments. We are a community and feel as though we know each other. I care when people have a problem and anxiously read their work to follow the latest outcome of a problem post. For example, Matty at Running on Empty has been writing a daily account of her grandson's battle with childhood leukemia and bone marrow transplant. This is real medical stuff coming from the heart of a real loving person. She writes of his daily struggle in his blog...Young Warrior, because he is too sick to do anything. Matty and Tayten have been at the mercy of medical types for over five months with two months to go. Working in a hospital is difficult and sometimes it hurts your soul to see the heartbreak there, so when nurses and doctors get a chance to have a laugh and let off some steam... they might step over the line and joke at some of the weirder patients that come across their path. So, I read and thought some blogs were really clever and I admit I laughed at some of their antics. But, then I started noticing that if someone disagreed with their point of view or challenged their dedication to the healing and compassionate standards in the comments sections, the commenter was torn to shreds. Nurse K from Crass Pollination, an ER Blog was one of my favorites and she is truly popular and witty in the blog world, but the further I read, the sharper the point gets on the end of her scalpel. While her views of ER are probably true to life, they are pretty snarkey. I asked a question in the comment section and was rebuffed to the extent that I am afraid to ever comment again. One thing I have discovered is that after finding a blog you like, you can follow endlessly to other blogs from one to another. It would be wonderful if these medical people could change their style just a bit... to educating and entertaining the public without the cruelty and lack of compassion.
I would offer you one bit of information.... be careful when you are answering questions from a medical professional and you get the feeling that they are forming a false idea of what you are saying. If one nurse, doctor, pharmacist or whatever writes a disparaging remark in your chart.... that little bit of information gets passed from shift to shift or person to person and your medical record or care is compromized. Way back when I had my second child, I was gingerly sitting on the edge of a chair to feed him his bottle, because I couldn't actually sit down. He started choking and gagging and I dropped to my knees on the floor and sat him on the bed to have access to him while he did a little projectile vomiting. I jerked on the emergency light and a nurse trotted in and took the little guy back to the nursery for real nursing care. Later that day, my doctor came into my room and asked me, "What's this I hear about you sitting on the floor to feed the baby?" So, from one busy nurse who had misunderstood the situation... I was suddenly some kind of kook or perhaps starting "post partum depression". This is what is happening in the medical blogs and they are supporting each other with such lack of savoir faire.

I've Been at the Machine

I've been reading Molly's blog over at The Molly Bawn Chronicles and she made me feel guilty. She is a very prolific quilter and here I am....older than dirt and wasting the little bit of time left to me by playing on the computer, instead of cranking out quilts for my kids and grands. So, I started to clean up some of my backlog (there are lots of quilts in my head and heart) and now I have a couple ready to be quilted. This one has been riding back and forth to Florida for a couple of years. There are eighty blocks altogether, which means 1360 pieces of fabric that needed to be attached to each other. Finally pieced! Those are my hubby's tootsies peeking out at the bottom. Thank you, honey! He is my official quilt holder. Does that make him a model?
This week, I also finish piecing a baby girl quilt, which involved a lot of teeny, tiny applique stitches. I had been doing all the hand work while I watched T.V. Since I was raised before television, but listening to the radio.... I always need to have something to do while "watching" T.V. (actually, I listen more than watch), so applique is a real answer. It's really better than reading, because I keep getting the plot of the book confused with the story on T.V. Knitting works, too, but is not as much fun as having bunches of wonderful fabric in my hands. This one is a "grandmother's fan with white lace gathered along the top of the heart. I have made this one before, but it pays to be ahead with baby quilts....someone is always having a baby!

When we first got home from Florida in June, I finished putting my embroidered boy quilt together. I have finally learned to use some of the features of my expensive Bernina. I cheated and sent this quilt out to a professional long arm quilter, so I would have time to put a few more tops together.

I'm thinking that I quilt better than I take photos, but you get the idea. The quilt store is fifty minutes away and I can't wait to go there again....they have some really nifty wall hanging patterns that I need to make for my Florida home. There was a machine quilting class last Friday and while it was fun, I am not ready to wreck one of my masterpieces with my klutzy machine quilting, yet. (How much does gas cost to go ninety miles? ... this store is worth every penny.)

This was a double Bargello quilt that I made for a nephew's baby while I was in Florida. The obvious movement of color on the larger pieces was okay, but the smaller half inch pieces ran the opposite direction. The reverse movement of color confused the heck out of me and I had no extra fabric to fix the thing, so I let it stand. Someone once told me that " Only Christ is perfect".... this is an example of never making a perfect quilt. God would be happy with me!
This brings me to this king size quilt that has faithfully traveled along with me to hither and yon for lo these last four years. I have quilted the main body (I love hand quilting the blank spaces...double click on the picture to see the quilting) and I stitched in the ditch around all the little squares and colored blocks, but have been unable to mark the dark borders. Nothing works! The water soluble pens don't show, chalk doesn't show, silver pencils don't show. I had just about given up completely, when the owner of the quilt shop in Bettsville said, "I guess you'll be using masking tape to follow the lines."!!!! Of course, I replied that I was doing that as a last resort. The light bulb didn't go off over my head ... it exploded. Looks like I'm finally going to finish that big sucker! My first quilt teacher told me, "Quilts are meant to keep people you love warm." And so it is!

Congressional Recess

!

I haven't figured out how to add videos, but please, please go to this site and check out how much work our Congress does for us. I'm going to have to look up the perks they get for working all these days! It's going to shock you.... with righteous indignation!

(Uncle Jay explains the congressional news)

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5a645e013b

The Pure Perks

-An annual salary of $158,000 for U.S. Senate & House of Representatives.

- The Vice President, top leaders in the House and Senate and the chief justice receive $198,600.

-Associate justices of the Supreme Court get $190,600

and the House majority and minority leaders receive $171,900.

- President Bush makes $400,000 in salary a year.

-Free life insurance and a generous retirement plan

- Free office space in Washington and in the home district.

- A staff allowance of $752,400 for each House member and from $400,000 to 2.4 million depending on the population of his or her state and its distance from the Capitol for each senator. Plus more for committee aids.

- An expense account for telephone, stationery, and other office costs.

- Thirty-two fully reimbursed round trips home per year.

- Travel allowance and free travel to foreign lands on Congressional inquires.

-Nearly unlimited franking privileges.

-Access to free Congressionally owned and operated video and film studios to record messages for constituents.

- Discounts in Capitol Hill tax-free shops and restaurants. (the bean soup is $1.40 a cup in the Senate Dining Room)

- $10.00 haircuts at the Congressional barbershop.

- Free reserved parking at Washington National Airport.

- Use of the House gym or Senate Baths for $100. a year.

- Free fresh cut flowers from the Botanic Gardens

- Free assistance in the preparation of income taxes

The Peaceful People

My firstborn and I went on a three day retreat from the hustle-bustle of modern society and traveled to Holmes County, Ohio. This is home to the largest Amish Settlement in the World. Notice this home has no electric or telephone lines, which the peaceful Amish people believe would bring bad influences into their homes. After many such visits, I agree with them that the outside world is messing with our hearts and souls. Each day more and more harmful thoughts and ideas creep into our lives and we become inured to them inch by inch, minute by minute.
Amish youth enjoy a period of "rumspringa" or "running around", which begins about sixteen and ends when the teen decides to commit to the church and be baptized into adult membership of the community. During rumspringa, the teens party with beer, cigarettes, drugs, wearing "English" clothing and makeup. This taste of wild American life allows them to make an informed decision to live the remainder of their lives for God under the rules of the Amish Ordnung without feelings of having missed out on some nebulous big-time experience. Ninety percent of the teens return to the church after this period of "running around"to marry and become full members of the Amish community. They raise their children in the church, speak only German in their homes and follow principles handed down for centuries. By staying faithful to the simple, plain life, these peaceful people eschew modern conveniences and work very hard. Their lives are productive and successful.
We drove from Northwest Ohio down to Bettsville, Ohio to visit our
favorite fabric shop. We tried to not spend too much money on our quilting addiction, but we have some great fabrics hiding in the sewing room. We failed miserably! Then, we picnicked beside the Tiffin River and leisurely drove on to Holmes County to The Inn at Honey Run. The rooms are very nice with quilts on every bed and hiking trails accessible by simply stepping out the window. Hummingbirds and tiny squirrels flit past the windows and the air is alive with the chirping of many different types of birds. The best part of our trip is driving the car off the main drag at dusk to ogle the Amish as they bring in the big teams of Belgium Draft Horses Horses for the night. Children play games and chase barefoot through the deepening shadows. Moms are out tending the flower gardens. The Amish dress plainly and wear no jewelry. The homes are plain and functional, but beauty comes into their lives in the form of flowers. Though they work very hard all day at chores, the evening is devoted to tending the flower gardens and quilting... no wonder we love the Amish!
This little gal is a living weed eater used for grass control on rolling hillsides and she gives milk, too. The whole area gives an aura of peace and tranquility, which is needed so much by the fast paced American life. When you need rejuvenation of spirit and a picker-upper to carry on in your life....head for the nearest Amish community and learn how to slow down and smell the new mown hay or pig poop. The oldest daughter does not have a feeling for the farm smells, but she loves the quiet. Soon, she will be back teaching a roomful of third graders, which is anything but quiet.

.

The Computer

I have a joke for you today....thought it would keep a smile in your week-end. It's a beautiful day in my neighborhood. Smile!

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine of feminine. 'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.' 'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.' A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'? Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, males and females, and asked them to decided for themselves whether 'computer'should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora"), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ('el computador') because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data, but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

Who do you think won?

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

One is the Democratic Party and one is the Republican Party. We are what the winner will poop out after the election! NEVER GIVE UP!

Zero Speed Tolerance

You had better obey the speed
limits when driving through
Ohio. With the advent of our new speed cameras, it appears that the state is serious about slowing traffic down and stopping deaths from auto accidents. It does give new meaning to the idea of coming to a "dead stop"! lol

I'm sorry if you didn't realize that this is a joke. Ohio has many wonderful Highway Patrol officers, most of them have never used their gun for any purpose. I know, my son-in-law has been in the Patrol for over twenty-five years and one grandson is waiting for a new class to begin, so he can join. Forgive me for being flip.

Summer Daze

I was snooping around over at Big Mama's place
on the net and discovered she was wilting under the hot Texas sun. Since she is looking for easy summer food, I thought I'd
stick up a quickie meal to keep her from turning into a puddle of sweat. She really has too many people counting on her for entertainment to allow any such catastrophe to happen. This was a variation on an old recipe that I got from a friend on the INTERNET.

Brown 2 or 3 pounds of Stew Meat in oil ... I use Crisco Canola Oil . (You can use an English cut roast beef, but it is easier to let the butcher do the work)
Stick the browned meat in a crock pot
Sprinkle with McCormick's Stew Mix (or any other company's stew mix...it comes in a packet like Taco Mix) and stir around to coat meat
Add enough boiling water to just cover meat
Cook on low for six hours or so, while you are at the pool
Thicken with a little Wondra Flour in cold water when you feel up to the effort
Cook some noodles or even a couple packages of Ramen Noodles without the sauce packets and serve the beef over the noodles...they only take about 5 minutes

I just cooked four English cut roast beefs for my kids' birthday dinner on Wednesday night and served it with mashed potatoes, sugar snap peas and green bean casserole with cheese sauce. When I cook a roast, I stir the Stew Mix into a little cold water to dissolve it and then add the boiling water. The twelve pounds of roasts took four hours in the oven on 300° and they ate all twelve pounds. I didn't mind using the oven, but I live in Ohio, not Texas.

The Boy in Trees

A new T.V. show began a couple of years ago called "Men in Trees". I watched it and discovered that they literally meant the men were in the trees. You know, lumberjack types were overhead trimming the branches from the fir trees.

Sunday is Father's Day and I want to tell you about my Dad and the unusual life he led. The first thing that popped into my head was the tree thing, so.....

Dad was born December 3rd, 1898 in Jonesboro, Arkansas somewhere in the middle of eleven children. Being a very bright little boy, he finished elementary school at twelve and then quit. Quit? He left home and joined his father in the logging camps of Arkansas to help support the family. He was "A Boy in Trees" for four years, until the thirst for knowledge overcame him and he left for the big city. He stuck out his thumb and hitch hiked to Toledo, Ohio where he had cousins, who would allow him to live with them.

This is a picture of the youngest nine children (the two oldest girls were already married and gone). Notice the children are nicely dressed, but barefooted and dusty. Dad was the second boy from the top on the right side with suspenders. It must have been taken about nineteen ten, before he hitch hiked to Ohio.

Between sixteen and nineteen, he attended high school, played football and supported himself in assorted jobs. That was just the first step toward an education. After high school, he began college at the local university and worked for a small newspaper as a reporter, doing a little bit of everything. Also, he worked at the original Jeep production plant. After getting a degree in education and he started law courses by mail from the University of Chicago and night classes at The University of Toledo. He met my mom and they married somewhere in the middle of law school. The five children arrived starting in 1928, ending in 1936. Great timing--have a whole brood of children during the "Great Depression"! I suppose they had it much better than most people, because as a public employee --- he was paid in script. He had started teaching high school classes in English, Economics, Sociology, Auto Mechanics and World History the day the doors opened to a brand new school and he was coaching football at another high school for free. Because of the children, his law degree was delayed to the point that he could not afford to open an office and give up the safety of the teaching job. I know he had become a flaming liberal during his college years and yearned for a world where there was no poverty or inequality. He loved to teach about the problems of the world ... we were served history and English with every meal. It was a mistake to ask a question ... that led to a half hour of explaining the hows and whys of the subject. He was active in the union fight at the Autolite Company in Toledo during the depression. This fight made national news for it's bitter physical battles between union loyalists (imported thugs) and the company hierarchy (more hired thugs). About a year after I was born, his picture was all over the local papers and he was temporarily suspended from teaching for reported un-American activities. The problem was that he was now legally an attorney and was busily forming The Federation of Teachers locally. That was the first teacher's union to hit the scene. The fact that he was a card carrying Socialist didn't help a bit. I get the picture of a bunch of young men sitting about and dreaming of how they could make a Utopian society where all would have equal status. I wonder how they could have desired to elevate people who did little to help themselves to the level of those who had worked so hard to educate and sustain themselves? He was reinstated to his teaching job after a few months, but still believed that somehow life should be made easier for the downtrodden. Dad had his office at home and after dinner at night, there was a steady procession of people needing basic legal advice or just wanting to sit at the feet of the master of dreams. People came and went, but if they didn't ask how much for a legal service---- they never got a bill.I watched as he built our home with his own two hands, because he couldn't find anyone who would rent to a family with five kids after WWII. He cut down trees and put through two roads nearby for a share in selling the property. Funny, that sounds amazingly like capitalism at it's best --- diametrically opposed to his share and share alike philosophy. When he died at seventy-eight, this little Ozark boy held a Degree in Education and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence. He was a wonderful and caring man, who built a great life and a terrific family. His name was Clyde and he was "A Boy in Trees". For many years, students from the high school would stop and visit long after he retired. Students either loved or hated his teaching methods, but he did make them think.

It didn't matter to me that he was controversial, because he accomplished so much and I loved him so much.

Who Knew?

Just a little something to let you know there is something new under the sun! Either that or I am dumber than the average bear!

**************************************************
Who knew? Can't believe I never saw this before......... Well, I'm not telling everyone my age, as most of you already know...BUT...
I had to go into the kitchen and check this out for myself. Who ever looks at the end of your aluminum foil box? What a fantastic idea. Now, if someone would just make plastic wrap that didn't stick to itself. I've been using aluminum foil for more years than I care to remember. Great stuff, but sometimes it can be a pain. You know, like when you are in the middle of doing something and you try to pull some foil out and the roll comes out of the box. Then you have to put the roll back in the box and start over. The darn roll always comes out at the wrong time.
Well, I would like to share this with you. Yesterday, I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it and looked at the end of the box. And written on the end it said, "Press here to lock end". Right there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. How long has this little locking tab been there? I then looked at a generic brand of aluminum foil and it had one, too. I then looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too! I can't count the number of times the Saran wrap roll has jumped out when I was trying to cover something up. I hope I'm not the only person that didn't know about this.
I IMMEDIATELY WENT AND PUSHED IN ALL MY TABS...

HA! SURE DOES MAKE YOU FEEL STUPID DOESN'T IT...?

"Oldfartitis"

I read a blog the other day by a pharmacist, which was really a rant about old people. It stated that he would rather argue with a crazed crack head than a confused elderly person. The writer is truly gifted, but has missed the point that everyone gets old (if they live long enough) and fortunately drug seekers are not inevitable. The husband and I are old (seventy-six and seventy-two), but didn't really know it until a few days ago. While we were still helping people move into new houses, wallpapering their bathrooms, painting their living rooms, taking care of their children while they went on vacations, cooking meals for their families when they were sick and generally doing all the energetic activities --- we forgot to notice that we were no longer young. Seventy came and we were grateful to be alive and finally enjoy sitting down. Now, I find that we are no longer respected members of the community, but a blight on the backs of the hard working younger generation. I thought that Grandma and Grandpa Walton were revered for their wisdom and experience by John Boy and MaryEllen.
Check this sitehttp://www.theangrypharmacist.com/ and see if his description of "oldfartitis" doesn't offend you in the name of yourself or your parents. The husband has had an aortic valve replacement and a new knee and I have had my share of vascular roto-rooter jobs, but I didn't think that my children would rather we die instead of using any Medicare money. Kindly remember that Medicare was not our idea! Until the government got involved in medicine, we paid for our doctor bills and our medicines just like you do. We have paid the highest amount into Social Security all of our adult lives, but the government frittered it away in the general fund instead of investing it something that would grow exponentially as the population aged. The whole point of this post is to tell people who are angry at the fumbling, stumbling elderly among us ---- get over it---- your day is coming way faster than you ever thought it could. You will look back and wonder where life went and why there is no respect left for the people who gave you life.

Quilting Each Day Keeps the Psychiatrist Away

I truly believe that quilting is medicine for the soul. It is addictive, but also something that soothes the savage beast. When I was twelve, I copied my sister's shorts pattern onto newspaper and then cut them out and sewed the seams by hand. I was off and running in the world of sewing. My first sewing machine was an old Singer Treadle that my hubby bought for me for $10.00. The tension was terrible, but it sewed! When I was pregnant with the first child, he bought me a Brothers machine and I happily made my maternity clothes.
I made plenty of little girl's clothes and little boy's shirts for a nephew for about twenty-five cents. I just sewed and sewed. My sister-in-law got a Singer Golden Touch and Sew in the seventies and I had to have one like it. I sold the Brothers to the woman across the street and moved on up to my Singer. It saw me through grade school clothes, prom dresses, a leather coat for my youngest (which she outgrew in about six months) and even a wedding dress for a friend's daughter. Once my hubby was earning better money, I asked for a Pfaff and gave the Singer to my daughter-in-law. The quilting bug had bitten by the time the kids were out of the house and even though I was happy with the Pfaff, I coveted a Bernina Artista. The husband was spending too much money on raising quarter-horses at the time, so he didn't complain when I spent over $3000.00 for the Bernina. I love that machine like it was one of my kids. The Pfaff is my back-up machine, but it is living at my oldest daughter's house, because her old White quit working and I had given her quilting fever somewhere along the line.
The little critter on the right is part
of an embroidery card that I finally started using on the Bernina and I put together a baby quilt for an unknown baby boy. It is ready to be quilted and the backing is pieced and the binding is ready. Someone just needs to have a baby!

I can't seem to get myself down to the actual quilting, when there are so many fabrics calling my name and so many wonderful patterns to challenge my ability. I need to learn to finish what I start before going on to the next project.
I take some of the really big quilts out to a professional long arm quilter after piecing them. I save my quilting fingers for the ones where you can show off the tiny little stitches required to call myself a quilter. The needles are so tiny (size ten or twelve Betweens) that they make holes in your fingertips. Ouch!
This quilt is called a charm quilt,
because the pieces are all different fabrics. It is a king size and I made four pillow shams to match. I have a queen size just like it--- it wasn't big enough for our king and I am stocking up on quilts for my grandkids, so I just did a repeat. The dust ruffle has dragon flies all over it and I sewed the ruffle right onto the box spring cording. It sure helps keep from tucking the skirt in with the sheets when you make the bed.
I saw this pattern in a quilter's magazine and had to give it a try. For someone who didn't do too well in Geometry classes, I have learned to figure out how quilt pieces work. This one is a standard bed size and is mostly Batik fabrics, which I really love. I found a pattern recently and have to start collecting half yard Batiks again. Sigh! I can't wait to go to Bettsville, Ohio to The Door Mouse Quilt Shop --- they have so many fabrics that I could stay all day just correlating things.
Now we come to the quilt that shames me. I bought the fabric to make a quilt for my older brother. It is huge --- big enough to be a bedspread for a king size bed. I managed to get the blocks pieced and put together. I began hand quilting with a hoop and really enjoyed quilting the open blocks. Then I did "stitch in the ditch" around the colored pieces in the odd blocks. I was slow--- I admit it. My brother died six years ago! And --- the quilt is still not done. There is a huge amount of quilting needed on the pieced border and since he died --- I have not felt like getting it done. I could finish it and give it to his widow, but she has been remarried for almost two years. Like I started out to say, quilting will keep the psychiatrist away,but procrastinating will drive you nuts!

The Deer at Dusk

About three minutes before eight, right after a fierce rainstorm, there were four deer ambling about on the golf course right outside our deck. I had hardly any battery in the camera and couldn't find the zoom button without my glasses, so the pictures are lousy. But, you can see two of them dead center of the picture across the fifth fairway. Double left click on the picture and you can almost see them. One was eating bird seed out of a neighbor's feeder. I guess having to come home to Ohio early from Florida has it's perks. The next thing will be the Forsythia and Flowering Plum trees. Spring is bursting out all over! Welcome!

Blogger Gone Crazy!

I'm ready to throw my computer out the window! My blogspot.com will not let me have comments on my posts, so I miss my wandering blog friends! This is a test, by the way.

Dratted Nose!

Sunday, our church celebrated it's One Hundredth Year in existence. We have gone from a little hole in the wall with thirty worshippers to a multimillion dollar complex serving about twenty-five hundred Christians every day of the week. We are a member of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. The board brought back four former pastors and we had a wonderful day. On Sunday evening, there was a potluck for seven hundred members with the church furnishing the meat and drinks. (Think coffee and punch) I thought about an old dessert that my kids liked at a local restaurant when they were little. It is a huge bowl of angel-food cake cubes, chocolate pudding, whipped cream, bananas, walnuts and chocolate chips. Saturday night, I cooked up three boxes of Jello Chocolate Pudding and then came home on Sunday after church to put this majestic thing together. (Believe me--- it is not cheap!) After piling my masterpiece into a cut-glass bowl, I made a little one for my honey and me. Yuck! It tasted funny! The milk I had made the pudding with was outdated! This would not happen to ordinary people, but I have lost most of my sense of smell --- so I have to depend on my husband to tell me if things smell funny. From now on, I will check the dates or taste things before investing ten bucks in ingredients for the disposal. Once the lovely chocolaty goodness was lost to the potluck, I threw a pot of baked beans in the oven and called it a day, but the dessert was pretty, wasn't it?

This has nothing to do with my lovely dessert, but rather with my blog. Does anyone know why my comments disappeared? I went to the comments section and made sure that they were allowed, but nothing helps! Oh, Dear!

Manic Monday --- "Thousand"

I saw a Meme going around over at Empress Bee's site and in a rash moment, I clicked and then realized that I knew squat about Mr. Linky or much of anything about computer workings. Today, the theme is One Thousand and the first thing I thought of was music and one of my favorites from when my kids were babies.


" The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" --- by Bobby Vee.

They say that you're a runaround lover,

Though you say it isn't so,

But if you put me down for another,

I'll know, believe me, I'll know.

Cause the night has a THOUSAND EYES,

And a THOUSAND EYES can't help but see,

If you are true to me,

So remember when you tell those little white lies,


That the night has a THOUSAND EYES!

No More Florida for Now

This picture is the view from our front
porch as the sun sets in Ft. Myers
during March. We will not be seeing it any more this season. I feel so gypped this year. What started out to be five or six months turned into three and a half months of trying to find a doctor who could give us some insight into why an old carotid artery surgical scar would suddenly start opening up and bulging outward. We attempted to see a doctor in an ER, but he didn't want to touch it in the ER where there are nasty germs, because the scar was so close to the carotid artery. Other doctors didn't want to see new patients, since snowbirds overtax the medical establishment of southern Florida and spring breakers are added to the upset. Finally, a nice doctor twenty miles up the road said he would see me in April, but I should go to Urgent Care and have some tests ordered from there. A really cute doctor looked at my neck and said, "Hmmm! I really don't know what to think of that! But, there is a vascular surgeon's office in this building --- I'll ask her to have a look at you." She looked, told him what to order and when she had looked at the CAT Scan the next afternoon, she called us. We were eating dinner at a local restaurant. Talk about co-operation --- she wasn't even our doctor, but she was adamant that we drop everything and fly home to Ohio. We knew we couldn't get a flight during Spring Break, so we closed up our home, put down the Hurricane Shutters, turned off the water, cleaned out the fridge, packed up our suitcases, grabbed the golf clubs and sewing machine and headed for home within sixteen hours. Imagine two "golden oldies" driving for nineteen hours straight and still able to function. We did ---but, we're not really hitting on all cylinders. We called my vascular guy and he was less than excited, but then, he had not seen the CAT scans. On Monday, he took me to surgery to evacuate an abscess of the surgical site. How does a three year old surgery develop an abscess? Turns out this sucker had been in there all the time, had invaded the muscle and all the way down to my carotid graft. This was done while I was wide awake with Lidocaine to numb my neck. I felt silly having an entire operating room for a little neck thingy. I believe the thinking was that it was a little nothing, but they had to have I.V.'s and all--- just in case my carotid blew. (By the way --- never have your neck operated on while you are awake! It was awful!) For now, I wait and my family waits --- for the biopsies and cultures to come back. We wait for the original CAT Scans to arrive from Florida; for the infectious disease doctor to see the results of this surgery. My vascular doctor is an amazing man who does things that have people coming from all over to see him in this jerk-water town, but he doesn't know what to do now, because he has never had anything like this happen after over a thousand carotid surgeries.
I would be lying if I said that I am not afraid, but I am trusting God to be with me and my family. If you are a regular reader ---Please, pray for us. I do so want to see Florida again. I do so want more time with my husband and family. I haven't finished enough quilts for all my grandkids. But, if it is time ---"It is Well with My Soul".

When It's Springtime in Ohio

It is Easter weekend. We left sunny south Florida last week

for a few days at home in Ohio

to see the vascular doctor. Apparently, Florida doctors don't like snowbirds, so we are forced to fly north for care when things go awry. We awoke this morning to this view across the golf course where we live. Last Saturday, I actually saw a couple of die-hard golfers playing in pretty chilly weather. They had reason to believe that winter had done its worst and was out of here. Think again! --- Winter got a mulligan! The Husband had to drive twenty miles in the blowing snow last night. He hasn't driven in snow for six years and was amazed at how incompetent he felt. For me --- it is beautiful, but I'm going back to Florida for another six weeks as soon as the doctor says all is well. Sheesh!

Finally Using my Specialty Machine

These are a couple of the seventeen blocks I used in a baby quilt. I have had my Bernina Artista machine for several years, but never really got busy and used the embroidery module. A couple of good friends told me that I was wasting the best part of my machine and got me going on this project. The critters are adorable and I alternated the embroidery blocks with the same blue and off white background and matching blue checkerboard nine patch blocks. It is very cute, but I don't have to hurry with the actual quilting, because nobody I know has had a baby boy lately. I thought that it would be great to be a couple of quilts ahead and ordered another expensive embroidery card online from eBay. I was so thrilled to win the bid on a "Precious Moments" card for about one third the original price, but was chagrined to find it did not fit my machine. $65.50 + shipping and it didn't fit! It was my first experience with eBay, so I want y'all to know that the seller refunded my money immediately without any flack. I was also happy to learn how to bid on eBay. My other half was worried about doing business online and through PayPal, but it went smooth as silk and the service was terrific. It is hard to start using all these electrical wonders at an advanced age. I am so happy to have lived long enough to see all the miracles young people take for granted. What do you suppose will happen in the next ten years?

We're Not Allowed in Howard Johnson's Either!

Many years ago, there was a joke about a couple with a fertility problem, who had tried just about everything to conceive, but nothing worked. Their doctor told them that they were being too uptight and that they needed to relax and just let nature take it's course. They were to stop all the specialized tricks and just have sex when the urge came upon them. When the doctor saw them again about eight months later, the mom was obviously expecting. He asked them how they achieved the long awaited pregnancy. The proud dad replied, " Well, we took your advice. We were eating and she dropped her fork. When she bent over to pick it up, the urge hit me and I nailed her on the spot, but I don't think they will let us back in Howard Johnson's!"


There was a time many years ago, when traveling between
Toledo, Ohio and tropical
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,
no Interstate 75 existed.
We did have a couple of four lane highways , but they were few and far in between. The thrill of any trip was 25W between Jellico and LaFollette, Tennessee. The road wove it's circuitous route over and around the mountains hanging onto the cliffs over the Tennessee River with no guard rails. But, we were young and in love and the chance for a quick trip to the Land of Sunshine was irresistible. I had never been south of Bowling Green, Ohio, but took my turn at the wheel while in the fairly flat part of Kentucky. The twenty-five miles beginning at Jellico meant nothing to me, so I didn't wake up my sweet husband to take over. I buzzed along in the dark and had a rough inkling that the road was really pretty curvy, since the cars ahead of me would disappear out of sight as they rounded yet another sharp curve. Imagine my surprise on the return trip as I viewed the flooded Tennessee River so far below us in broad daylight. It was not possible that I, a novice driver, had driven those twenty-five miles in the dark without killing us.
In those days, people along the route
showed their prosperity by putting their wringer washing machines on the front porch of their shacks. It meant that they could afford electricity. Recently, we strayed from I-75 in a sense of nostalgia and discovered that the washers were gone --- replaced by video dishes. A real sign of progress!
We had our wonderful vacation in Florida and started back home. Since we were young and poor, we always drove right straight through .... it only took 22 to 28 hours of driving and we had all sorts of energy back then. Now, it is difficult to work up the ambition to make the trip to WalleyWorld down the street. We played in the Atlantic surf, ate out, visited with good friends and went on a Safari to the backwaters of Ft. Lauderdale (which is code for "Take a quick right behind the Mangroves and we'll have these dopey tourists believing they are in a dense tropical jungle".... otherwise known as the beginning of The Everglades). Come to think of it, we went on the same cruise while doing the touristy thing in Australia many years later!
We left Florida and started our weary way home on those two lane highways and the occasional divided highway. In the fifties, Atlanta was a small city with a by-pass. I think it was State Route 441, which skirted the edges of the city. It was approaching 10:00 p.m. and we had not stopped to eat dinner, yet. We knew that if we passed by Atlanta without eating, there was nothing much until the next morning in Knoxville, so the husband told me to start looking for a place to eat. Everything was thinning out, stomachs were rumbling when I spotted a sign. Howard Johnson's ---2 miles! Honey really didn't care for their food or prices, but was willing to try anything under such circumstances. I put my shoes on and combed my hair, but as we approached this den of ptomaine last chance for food ---- the lights on the outside all went off!
"Oh, no! They're closed!" There were lots of people inside, so my darling knight in shining armour said, "I'll go in and ask how late they are open", as he cruised up to the front door. He left the car running as he opened the car door and strolled up towards the entrance. Funny,... all the people inside came running to the windows and peered out at us. Golly, they were probably closed already! "Honey" made it as far as the front fender, then started backtracking to the driver's side of the car. "Are they closed?," I asked like a dimwitted troll. Honey, replied, "I don't know, but I pulled up too far,... I'm on the grass". So he backed and backed and backed up----all the way to the street. The parking lot was on the side of the building! Here we were donutting their front lawn! Needless to say, we aren't allowed in Howard Johnson's anymore, either!
The hunger problem was solved a couple of miles down the road at a truck stop. We giggled so hard we could hardly swallow, but it was just another fun trip in the lives of a couple of ditsos, before children life became a serious thing and we had to begin living like civilized human beings. It was a good time...a great time...I wouldn't change a whit!
We have, also, never been in a Howard Johnson's since that time. Have we missed anything? All those flavors and we are on a terrorist list! Somebody give me a little snakey lick of the butter-pecan, please?

I promise to stay off the grass!

We're Not Allowed in Mammoth Cave, Anymore

Many years ago, my husband and I with visited Mammoth Cave, Kentucky with our youngest daughter and her young husband. We took a guided tour of the largest cave and enjoyed hearing of the many uses the caves have had. One was the mining of Saltpeter for the use in gunpowder during the War of 1812. The main cave is huge and has so many interest points that it should be on your list of places to visit before you die.

About ten years later, we had been house boating at Dale Hollow, Tennessee on the Kentucky border with several other couples and decided that we would like to visit the caves again and tour a different cave. We stayed in Bowling Green, Kentucky overnight in a motel where fifty or sixty little girls were competing in a beauty pageant. What a thrill! Little Miss West Bowditch covered in sequins , satin ruffles, a quarter inch of pancake makeup and false eyelashes. Who could do that to a six year old? The next morning we found a little country restaurant with a scrumptious breakfast buffet. Pork tenderloin, biscuits, ham and red-eye gravy and all the great down home, heart attack on a plate goodies known to man. We stuffed ourselves with a fairly normal amount of food containing a wildly inappropriate amount of saturated fat, then headed out to see the caves. We bought two tickets to the "Peaks and Domes Cave". In human people English, this is a straight up and down cave of Stalactites and Stalagmites with a circular stairway about eleven stories down. One hundred and twenty people started down the stairs while ogling the sub-carboniferous rock formations all around us. "Honey" and I were about numbers sixty and sixty-one and about half way down, he said, "Oh, oh! I think I'm in trouble. I need a bathroom!" The dude had his gall-bladder out when he was twenty-nine and always had trouble with the amount of fats in restaurant food. Wouldn't you think that we would know better than to trap ourselves in the middle of a single file line of people (young people, old people, mommies carrying babies) half way down in a cave. So, here he is doing Lamaze breathing and praying that they have a bathroom facility at the bottom of the stairway. At the bottom, I asked the State Park Guard where the bathroom was. She replied, " Back up the stairs when the other sixty people get down here or one half mile out of the cave, but he can't go either way until the other guard gets down here." When she finally arrived at the end of the line of people, "Honey" took off running up the approximately one hundred and twenty steps and landings. I began the walk up and the guard wanted to bring up the rear, but I insisted that she go up with him, because I would be considerably slower and he was not well. I didn't tell her that I had suffered a small heart attack earlier in the spring. When "Honey" got to the top of the stairs, the door to the outside was locked! The guard eventually arrived and unlocked the door and "Honey" bounded off into the woods, dropped trou and leaned against a tree. The State Park sent a car for us and drove us back to the office. I looked at the back of my darling husband and "Holy Bat Guano"--- there was a tick on the back of his pants.

That sort of thing happens, if you are not too persnickety about where you drop your drawers. He visited their facilities to check for ticks and other woodland things. So, now you know why we are not allowed back in Mammoth Caves.

Next, I'll tell you why we aren't allowed in Howard Johnson's either.

Dad's in the Highway Patrol

Our youngest daughter was married on Saturday of a Labor Day Weekend. Every t was crossed and every i was dotted, when suddenly, two days before the wedding --- Grandma died! It was too late to cancel the wedding and honeymoon, so everything went ahead with, of course, the exception of Grandma. The next day was Sunday and you can't skip church right after they have provided a lovely wedding for your daughter, so we went to church and then headed thirty miles south to Grampa's church for the funeral. Our pastor preached his normal length sermon and that put us a little behind in getting to the other church ontime. As we were speeding southward on I-75 with our son following closely behind, we were stopped by an Ohio Highway Patrolman for speeding and for following too closely. The officer was polite, but was one of those "by the book" types. We explained that we were late for my husband's mother's funeral (it was really a step-mother), we had the interrment papers with us and his elderly father would be worried to death ---- could he please speed up the process for giving us the dreaded ticket? "No, please stay in your cars until I call this in!" How many people are speeding down the highway on Labor Day Sunday in suits, ties, church dresses and high heels? Most people are in beach clothes and have a six pak in the back seat. No matter what we said, he went slower and slower, even saying that he would have to start all over at the beginning, because we bothered him. Eventually, we took our tickets and drove the rest of the way. We were late, but it didn't make Grandma any deader and everything worked out in the end. The honeymooning couple had stayed in that town over night, so they could get to the funeral and then be on their way to their new life as Mr. and Mrs. (Our daughter had actually gone to the funeral home the day before, after the reception in her wedding gown, so her Grampa could see her in her bridal gown.)

I immediately sat down and sent a letter of complaint to the head of the Ohio Highway Patrol --- not because of the tickets, but because of the length of time we were detained on the roadside. I even included the death notice and the wedding announcement from the paper, feeling that a little compassion would have gone a long way in our case. We might have even made it to the church ontime.

The happy couple came back from their honeymoon just in time to have a sergeant from the Patrol come to our house to get the whole story. He had actually timed the trip from our country home to the other town to see what time we should have left to make the trip in reasonable time for the funeral. The only catch was---- we didn't leave from our home ---- we left from our church service. My new son-in-law was so impressed with the sergeant that when a new class was held in Columbus, he joined the Highway Patrol and has been with them for twenty-five years. He can retire next month and will be in great demand as an accident reconstructionist or stay in as a sergeant and have his retirement go into an IRA. He is only forty-eight and already has one career behind him and almost anything ahead of him. His college degree was in marketing and he wound up in law enforcement, because we were stopped for speeding the day after his wedding. God leads us along in mysterious ways, sometimes He has a great sense of humor. The little guy in the picture is my grandson, Alex in his dad's Stetson. He is now a junior at Nyack University in New York and is inclined either towards videography for Christian movies or perhaps a preacher. Either way, his dad's in the Highway Patrol and a really great guy.

Sad, but true---

I love these Canadian billboards. But, this is really very sad!

Holy Toledo! What a Fink!

I hate to admit this weekend, that I have lived in Toledo, Ohio for most of my life. Since we live across the river in a lovely suburban town, I can no longer vote for mayor, but am praying that the good people of my home town will get the message from the national news ---Toledo's Mayor, Carty Finkbeiner, is a few cards short of a full deck. Toledo's economy has been going downhill in direct proportion to the auto industry in Detroit, Michigan for years. Despite a fantastic location on I 75 between Sioux Sault Marie and Key West , I 80-90 between New York and Chicago on the St. Lawrence Seaway, this Crossroads city is losing factories, companies and businesses by the dozen. It's getting to the point where the last person out will have to turn out the lights.

Does Mayor Finkbiner want our young service people to learn how to check buildings for terrorists and incindary devices in downtown Bagdad? I am the proud grandma of an Air Force Arabic translator, who has pledged six years of his life to the service of this country. I'm so happy that the people of The Defense Language Institute in the Presido of Monterrey, California didn't throw him out while he was learning Arabic. He is a proud graduate of Perrysburg High School and a former student of the University of Toledo.
Wake up Toledoans! You need a mayor who knows that America is involved in a war and our kids need to know how to do their job when they step onto unfriendly soil that is across the ocean, not just over the Ohio/Michigan border.

The following article is an example of how the mayor handled a request by our Marines to do practice maneuvers in a deserted downtown.

This from NBC --- Channel 24 in Toledo, Ohio
Mayor Carty Finkbeiner on Friday ordered some 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines from Grand Rapids, Michigan, out of Toledo just before the unit was supposed to start a weekend of urban warfare training downtown.
The mayor’s spokesperson Brian Schwartz said, “the mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people. He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area."
Toledo police said they knew about the training and had approved the unit’s use of the Madison Building and the Promenade Park area. The training was scheduled to start Friday afternoon and last until Sunday. Police said the unit’s presence would have a minimal impact on the city. Police issued a press release earlier in the week saying the marines would be wearing green camouflage uniforms, operate military vehicles, carry rifles, perform foot patrols, and fire blank ammunitiion during the exercise.
Schwartz said there was a breakdown in communication between police and the Finkbeiner administration that led to the mayor’s action.
“The marines drilled here three times during the Ford administration and once under the Finkbeiner administration. After the last visit, the mayor told then police chief Jack Smith, that he did not want the marines back. Smith failed to inform the current police administration of the mayor’s feelings,” Schwartz said.
NBC24 spoke to Jack Smith who recalled that after the marines last visit, he and the mayor had a heated exchange about the training.
“He told me he did not want them, as he put it, 'playing war in Toledo,'" Smith recalled. "I told him, as a former marine, that if one young marine’s life is saved because of training he or she received in Toledo, Ohio, then it was worth the inconvenience.”
Smith said if the mayor objected, then he should have been the one to convey those feelings to police. Smith took his run-in with the mayor as an objection to that last visit, and not future training in Toledo.
As a result, the Toledo police went ahead, granting approval to the 1-24th Marines to conduct the routine exercise. The police notified members of the Finkbeiner administration, who were not aware that the mayor objected to unit’s training in Toledo.
When the mayor found out, he sent a member of his staff to tell marines they could not conduct urban operations in Toledo.
The unit was notified about 3:30 p.m. after an advance team arrived in Toledo. Five buses carrying some 200 marines traveled four hours from Grand Rapids, only to find out the training had been shot down.
The unit briefly stopped at a another 1-24th marine base in Perrysburg Township, then returned back to Grand Rapids where training was expected to be held this weekend.
A spokesperson for the marines said they were disappointed by the mayor’s decision especially after the city had been so helpful in the past.

No Further Words Needed!

A perfect example of, "I'm speechless".

Peas in a Pod

Something tells me that we all will wind up in a pod somewhere!

=================================
On a grave from the 1880s in

Nantucket,Massachusetts :
Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod.
Pease shelled out and went to God.

=================================

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York :
Born 1903--Died 1942.
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the
car was on the way down. It was.
=================================
In a Thurmont, Maryland , cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist, all dressed up and no
place to go.
================================
On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in
East Dalhousie Cemetery , Nova Scotia :
Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102. Only The
Good Die Young.
================================
In a London , England cemetery:
Here lies Ann Mann, Who lived an old maid,
but died an old Mann. Dec. 8, 1767
================================
In a Ribbesford, England , cemetery:
Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread, And
the Lord sent them manna.

Clark Wallace wanted a wife,

And the Devil sent him Anna.
================================
In a Ruidoso, New Mexico , cemetery:
Here lies Johnny Yeast...

Pardon me for not rising.
================================
In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania , cemetery:
Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.
Stepped on the gas, instead of the brake.
================================
In a Silver City, Nevada cemetery:
Here lays The Kid.
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger
But slow on the draw.
================================
A lawyer's epitaph in England :
Sir John Strange.
Here lies an honest lawyer,
and that is Strange.
================================

I read most of these on my friend Matty's blog last August, but I got an e-mail with these in it today. Matty asked what we would write if we were to compose our own epitaph. So, I thought about it and said, "I plan on cremation and we bought crypts for the little boxes".

=================================

Here she lies

On a tight, little shelf

As usual

She made an ash of herself!

Duh!

So, we're in Florida with nothing much to do, except watch Tiger Woods blow all the other golfers off the course in the Buick Open. Which means, if golf is on T.V., then my better half is going to sit in his recliner and watch golf. ( Really, I love Tiger, but I can do more than one thing at a time) At least I thought it was possible to do a couple of things at once, until Friday night. I wanted something good --- you know like, uh, chocolate. There is always a big plastic bowl of chocolate frosting in the fridge, because I make it five pounds at a time for moments just like this. I whipped out a couple of boxes of Brownie Mix , chopped up some walnuts and set the frosting out on the counter to warm up. I had to move the upper shelf of the oven from the top position, where I had used it last to broil something. I really had to hustle back to the living room to see what was happening on the TV, so I didn't notice that the shelf was sitting on two different rack positions. We wound up with a huge pan of brownies that were about one half inch on one end and about three inches of raw brownie goo on the other end. We have each had two brownies from the end that actually baked and I had to pitch the rest. Baking and golf are not to be taken lightly or together. DUH!

Life in a Nutshell

There was a time when I never gave a thought to the fact that life tends to pile up. Minutes become hours, days, months and then years. While I procrastinated, life was relentlessly slipping away and all the things I wanted to do someday slipped away with the years. Whoever said that "life begins at forty"? At forty, I was still wet behind the ears. Fifty was good, but still there was plenty of so much time ahead of me. Through my sixties, I was busy being a grandma --- still water skiing, still rollerblading, still having fun. I don't really know when my age became something to worry about. My mother died at seventy-two and my father at seventy-eight, so perhaps hitting seventy opened my eyes to my own mortality.We suddenly find ourselves circling the drain and the current is swift here in the golden age rapids. When you read the obits in the paper and see that someone died today or a movie star passed away at sixty-eight or eighty-two, your brain tells you that they had a nice long life. Truly, life is never long enough. The only day that counts is today and we all want to get through it and have another one tomorrow. Even people in terrible circumstances desire to live long enough to overcome their unfortunate problems and have a period of happiness. There is a passage in The Bible, Psalm 39, that says (paraphrased)---"Even though I am bowed and bloody, beaten down by life---please, let me recover and be happy once more before I die." There it is in a nutshell --- we know there is Heaven and look forward to being there, but please Lord, not today! God must think we are terrible ingrates.

Why Don't You Blog Something?

A favorite blogger friend popped over and asked if I were going leave that last little post there forever. There are so many excuses for not posting. Two come readily to mind. The first is being hooked on reading my favorite bloggers every day and then, they mention another site or two and I am off and reading several more blogs. I have a huge bookmark section just for bloggers.

My second excuse is that Ancestry.com offered me a fourteen day free trial to trace my forefathers. It happened to arrive the same day we received a family history for my husband's mother's side of the family. The cousin who sent it, spent years gathering information and researched in other cities' courthouses. This is so complete and well done (back to the 1600's) that I had to try the free fourteen day thing. I burn the midnight oil looking for more and more threads to my family's origins. You cannot explain how wonderful it feels to see your own Dad's handwriting on the 1930 U.S. Census. I didn't know that the Census is not available for public perusal for seventy-two years after it is taken, to protect privacy. The 1940 Census will be available in 2012. I am finding some family secrets that are not so pleasant, but it does explain some relatives that were sort of hinky in my memory. This is a picture of my father (in the suspenders) when he was a boy in Arkansas. (Taken about 1912) He is shown here with some of his siblings. Notice that that are combed and prettied up, but barefoot and obviously walking in the dirt. The nine children here range from one and a half to twenty, but two sisters were already married and mothers at 21 and 22.

I always knew that Dad had ten siblings, but I could only name nine. In looking at Ancestry.com, I found a message board with a lady who was looking for her husband's grandmother, whose one brother had moved to Ohio and become a lawyer. My Dad! The grandmother was my long lost aunt, who had died eleven years before I was born. Everything started falling into place and I am finding relatives all over the country who would have been lost to my children and grandchildren when I die and take my few pitiful memories with me.

With such exciting hunting going on here in my computer, I have been lax indeed, memories are almost gone, but somehow are trickling back a bit at a time.

Another reason for no new posts is my "forever friend", the hubby. He is tired of watching television all by himself. Living together in Florida without our children and grandchildren means we need to amuse each other and we aren't very funny any more.

I have one more really big reason for not blogging, but I am still trying to think my way through this one --- I'll let you know if I will write, close my blog or change my place of blogging.

Meanest Mom on the Planet

From an ad in The DeMoines Register---


For Sale: "OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents, who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom, who needs to get a life, found booze under the front seat. $3,700/Offer. Call Meanest Mom on the Planet."

You just have to love a mom who is this dedicated to her principles and her children. She told her ungrateful nineteen year old son there were only two rules. No booze and keep the car locked. (She did sell the car and is getting calls by the dozen thanking her for placing the ad.)

Now that you have had a laugh for today --- click on over to:
Antique Mommy and read her post for today called Hands. It
is so beautiful that you will shed tears for the sheer loveliness
of her thoughts about her son and God.

I Love My Computer

This little guy really has a great point. I began my first post on May 21, 2004... almost four years ago. I thought that I might leave something for my children to remember me by and perhaps make my generation more human to our great-grandchildren. Instead, I have found a wide world of wonderful writers, whom I read every day....thereby, lacking time to write anything myself. But, oh, how I love reading the talented people living out there in bloggityville. Funny writers like "Antique Mommy" (who was published in Good Housekeeping in August) and "Big Mama" keep me laughing with the antics of their children and the lovely way younger minds perceive daily life. My first love was Teri Franta of "Here's to Happy Women". She offered a weekly essay every Friday, which I was lucky enough to stumble upon, when she first began writing a blog. She has not been actively doing a weekly blog for some time, but I suspect that there is probably a book skulking about somewhere in the works. Through the comments left on their posts, other bloggers developed personalities and became very real to me, so I added Lisa from "A Comforter is Not a Bedspread" and Big Dave of "Big Dave's Blog" from Ann Arbor. Well, shucks... Ann Arbor is just a hop, skip and a jump from where I live in Ohio. We have a great time trading digs about Michigan and Ohio State, but we have arrived at a good place this year.... I will cheer for The Wolverines in the Capital One Bowl and he will cheer for my Buckeyes in the Championship game. Carine from "What's Cooking" is a friend from California like Teri, who actually has things published, too. Matty from "Running on Empty" ( isn't that a clever name?) and I met through comments on other peoples' blogs and I so admire her witty and thoughtful writing. I introduced her to The Dishing Divas (a cooking site) and their daily Fun Trivia game. We both love to play every day..... apparently, we are very trivial women! If you would like to play... let me know, and I will invite you into the game. Matty sent me over to "Cathy's Place" where I met Cathy and found her to be an insightful writer, passionately interested in St. Judes Hospital and a fellow Ohioan. She ran a challenge contest for an essay about "09/11/01" This made me very happy, because I won! Of course, I twisted every arm I could find on the INTERNET. Cathy has not been writing for a while and I am praying that her health improves, so she will be back with us soon. "Whirling Betty" and "Time with Shelby" came into my life by following comments from Teri's blog. Both Betty and Shelby have very interesting lives and their blogs reflect what point in life they are referencing. These people and many more have been kind enough to leave comments on my place here in bloggityland. I keep thinking of wonderful times that I would like to write about, but am afraid that if I did....my family would kill me. Perhaps, I will have to change the names to protect the innocent. People like Summer of "Life Thoughts" are wonderfully loyal to their readers, even though she is very busy with her cooking site and show, but she still finds time to comment , if I stir my lazy self and write something. "Loving Annie" checks in all the time --- I suspect she thinks I may have died, because we all know I am older than dirt! You have all made my life so much happier with your blogs and I am looking forward to 2008 and finding even more great bloggers. Someone writes a comment on a blog and that leads to another one and then another and on and on. Shucks! Who needs a library card?

To all who live in

my computer----

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Someday

" Someday"by Rick Vale

Someday, when this night is over,

And the stars have faded,

And the angels fly,

I will --- Look on You with wonder,

Dreaming of that first night,

When I heard you cry......

Someday, You will take these fingers,

And with just a touch ...

Cause the blind to see...

Someday, You will walk with strangers,

But tonight I rock you,

Stay awhile with me...

Someday, they will call You Savior,

Hope of all the people,

Light and Life Divine.

Someday, He will spread the words,

And touch the hearts of many...

As He touches mine.

You will ---Speak in love and wisdom,

Prison doors will open,

All will be made free.

Someday, you will walk among us,

But tonight I rock You;

Stay awhile with me.

I float in the miracle of God's love. Merry Christmas!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

There's no place like home for the holidays, but our Ohio home (where our hearts and children are) is knee deep in snow and ice. Being just a little older than dirt, we finally got the okay from the doctors, packed up the car and beat it out of Ohio just about six hours ahead of the ice storm. Now, we have blue skies, sunshine and white sand by the mile. Admittedly, my tree is way less than I approve of, but the weather makes up for the deficit. For all the bloggers in bloggityville, enjoy your Christmas preparations --- I'll think of you when I see the weather reports on The Weather Channel. Meantime---let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! I'm dreaming of your white Christmas.

Signs of the Times

I went to the doctor's yesterday for a check-up on my recent vascular surgery. Since y'all are not dying to hear about my aches and pains, I thought you might like the notices on the doctor's door.

One said --- "Unattended children will be captured and used for medical experiments."

But, my favorite said, "Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy!"

Then, while driving home, we went past a car-wash with this sign prominently displayed, "Don't try this at home! We're professionals!"

I love it that the world is managing to keep a sense of humor.

Disgusting!

These pictures are not very clear, but this is something I saw on my deck this afternoon and I almost flipped out. Here in northwestern Ohio the leaves have fallen and the deck furniture is put to bed for the Winter. Lo and behold this squirrel appeared on the corner of the deck busily eating a small bird. He tore this little winged friend feather from feather before my very eyes. The pictures are lousy, because I had to slowly slide the screen door open without scaring him away and take the pictures through the glass. I Googled squirrel food and find that they are herbivores, except for the thirteen striped ground squirrel (a striped gopher). What is this world coming to? Ugh! I'll tell you one thing --- no more nuts and seeds from me for these blood thirsty creatures! It's just plain disgusting!

Just Pound Me Into the Ground

Sometimes, life seems to be handing you a bowl of cherries and other times, you are being pounded into the ground with a sledge hammer. Recently, it feels more like a bulldozer is after me and I am not running fast enough to keep ahead of the bad luck gremlins. We are taking things one catastrophe at a time, but I am weakening quickly. I had that little carotid endarterectomy in late August, but it leaked fluid into my clavicle and shoulder and I needed to start a bit of therapy. No big deal! The other half had his total knee done the 1st of October and is still going for physical therapy three times a week. He is really a tough old bird and by today has eliminated the need for the surgeon to knock him out and manipulate the joint. (It sounded really awful, so "my honey" has knocked himself out to attain complete mobility of that knee)

In the middle of this, my older brother was taken to Hospice in the evening of October 23rd. Nobody in his family was available to sit with him all night, so I decided that I would stay with him since I would not want to be alone if I were to die in a strange place. He passed away at 6:10 in the morning of the 24th while I held his hand. I don't know if he knew that I was there, but I knew. It was my 54th wedding anniversary. I want to thank my husband for knowing that I had to be with my brother on this special occasion.

I have been quietly losing my cool over the thought of packing for our six months in Florida. The bad part is that the vascular surgeon discovered an incidental finding an obstruction of my major artery that keeps my liver and other innards functioning. So, Monday morning I am having a celiac stent put into the artery right at my aorta. I understand that a bunch of dudes from the company that makes these things are going to be standing by laughing at my naked, old body to help the doc achieve this daring feat. Hopefully, I will still be alive at the end of the whole thing and be ready to make the southward migration to the Land of Sunshine and Golden Oldies. The AneurX procedure better work or when I wake up I will be facing a big surgery involving my aorta and ciliac arteries.

All of these things have been interrupting my routine and sleep, but I finished a whopping ironing and packed a couple of suitcases by last Saturday. I don't know how much I will be allowed to do after this surgical thingy, so I had to get ready. I don't mind packing for six months in another home when we have a Ford F150 and I can just take any volume of "stuff" with me. (If he can take golf clubs --- I can take a few sewing items --- like my Bernina and a few dozen yards of fabric) I am a quilter, after all. My anal retentive son figured out that we will spend an extra $600.00 by taking the truck instead of our Ford 500. Okay, I'll take less and be uncomfortable to save that money, but darn!

Early this morning, my youngest dingbat daughter called from New York, where she and her husband had gone to visit their son (a Junior at Nyack College) and catch a few shows. She had left her backpack in a New York taxi with her computer, good professional camera, police badges from all over the world, her Bible quizzing materials and her heart medicine. "Mom, would you call the cardiologist and give them a heads up that a New York pharmacy will be calling for a refill of my prescription?" I did and they informed me that they couldn't tell me anything due to HIPPA --- sheesh! It is an antiarrythmic, not narcotics!

We arrive at this afternoon, November 5th, 3:50p.m. and we are driving to the physical therapy place when an adorable young mother (7 1/2 months pregnant) with two kids in the back of an SUV ran a stop sign and smashed the be jabbers out of our lovely Ford 500. Nobody was hurt, but the car is a mess. You have to hand it to a really great driver ("my honey") for realizing that she was coming straight at his door and he gave it the gas and made a big right swerve. Our go to Florida car now has a smashed rear quarter panel, back door, back tire, rim and maybe axle. Quote the husband, "I hate to drive cars that have been in accidents!" This comes after forty-five years as a Ford salesman and then general manager of a large dealership. He drove new cars every year of our marriage until retirement. If you had your choice between a repaired wreck and a wonderful four-door F-150 truck ---- which would you choose? You tell me and I'll tell him. I'm beginning to lose it ---- definitely on overload!

All Things Unrelated

Fifty-four years ago today a little girl with a very devious mind snuck across the state line with a very cute young boy and got blood tests to obtain a marriage license. After a few small lies shadings of the truth, the license was obtained and the marriage did happen. On Wednesday, we will celebrate our 54th Anniversary with our children. These sort of marriages are doomed from the beginning, but somehow, we have survived and are still hanging in there. Our bodies are beginning to give out, but our minds are still in one piece each. (His mind had better agree with mine or I'll knock the stuffing out of him) Just kidding, he is my "Honey Bunny" and I love him more today than all those years ago.

Next on my unrelated list of stuff for today ---- The hubby had a total knee replacement three weeks ago and is beginning to get around on his own two feet with frequent rests and lots of Darvocet N 100. While he was in the hospital, I was reading the newspaper and came across an obituary in The Toledo Blade. There was a picture of a very handsome soldier from the World War I I think and a current picture of an elderly gentleman with this caption under the pictures. "Oh Crap, my name is finally in the obits." This is exactly what I would think, if my name were to appear in the obits!

Yesterday, we were out for an early dinner at P.F. Chang's (which is brand new in our area), but is well known to us from our time in Florida. Afterward, we stopped at a friend's house for a minute, but while leaving --- I must not have been paying attention to where I was going and I tripped and fell flat on my face in their cement driveway. I have always prided myself on my ability to recover from a stumble, but this time I went flying and hit about every place on a body that is on the anterior side. I actually hit my face on the cement and have a big ecchymotic area on my left cheek. Even though I am certain that nothing is broken, how am I going to explain a black and blue face to my friends at church in the morning?

I read on "Cathy's Place to Blog" that she is giving up blogging, at least for a while. Why do the people we love to read give up, while others with no talent keep going and going ---- like the Energizer Bunny"? I know I will miss her. How about you?

This is about it for my list of totally unrelated stuff today. I hope the muse will fall upon me again soon or I'll be joining Cathy.

Oh, yeah --- I made the bunnies in the picture.

Congratulations Matthew and Laura

One of my grandsons was married yesterday afternoon in a beautiful outdoor ceremony. Yes, they are young, but they are out of school and are working people. Today, they are off to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Congratulations Matthew and Laura! God loves you and so do we.

9/11 The End of Innocence or The Beginning of the End?

Cathy of "Cathy's Place to Blog" hosted a blog challenge for posts about 9/11/2001. I want to thank everyone who went to her blog site and voted for me. I won! I won! Okay, now I will humbly quit bragging (yeah, sure!) and tell you to check her blog for very interesting writing. Check her blog here.


September 11, 2001


It was shortly before nine, that Tuesday morning, when the phone began to jangle on my bedside table. Okay, so I was lolling about on my bed like Cleopatra on her barge. It was a time of life when there were no pressing reasons to leave the soft comfort of my quintessential retreat. I languidly answered and heard the excited voice of my youngest daughter. "A plane just flew into one of the Twin Towers in New York! Turn on your TV!" The horror unfolding before our eyes short-circuited the link between reality and belief. The child within wanted to deny that this could be happening even though our eyes watched the undeniable on the screen. How could such an accident happen? Stacey and I talked as we watched separately, yet bonded together in mutual sorrow for those who would never again talk with a loved one or cuddle deeply in their comfortable beds with a spouse, lover or child. People leapt from windows without hope of living, but in fear of dying from the flames left behind. American Airlines Flight 11 had ended at 8:46 am. As we watched and talked, we saw United Airlines Flight 175 hit the second tower at 9:03 --- the age of innocence ended as we realized there are people in the world who want us dead. American Flight 77 tore into the Pentagon Building at 9:37 and United Flight 93 plummeted into the ground in Pennsylvania at 10:06. This all occurred in one hour and twenty minutes, but would change the world as we know it forever. We cried together and finally hung up the phones, only to remain transfixed before the TVs. The words Muslim, elQuaida and terrorists began to filter into the reporters jargon and I searched my mind for what little knowledge I had of their activities.
Americans have attended their churches faithfully for hundreds of years and have heard the Biblical stories of the ancestors of Jesus; not thinking of the ramifications of the Old Testament lineage of Abraham and Sarah. Many people know only of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection. You know --- Christmas and Easter people. The faith of Abraham filtered down from King David to God's only son, Jesus, through many generations of Hebrews. When Abraham was eighty-six years old, he took (at Sarah's behest) Sarah's handmaiden (slave), Hagar. She bore a son, Ishmael. They thought this would fulfill God's promise of a son for Abraham in his old age, but no! God had promised a son through Abraham's legal wife, Sarah. It was accomplished when Abraham was one hundred years old and the child was named Isaac. Isaac's descendants are the Jewish Nation, of whom Jesus is one descendant .... the "new covenant" with God, from which the Christians spring. Ishmael and Hagar were cast out into the desert to become the Arab Nation. God promised Hagar that her son, Ishmael, would head many nations. This, from The Living Bible; God appeared to Hagar in Genesis 17:10-12, saying , "This son of yours will be a wild one --- free and untamed as a wild ass! He will be against everyone, and everyone will feel the same towards him. But, he will live near the rest of his kin." So, we know that the Arabs and the Jews are half-brothers, but surely the Arab Nation resents the inheritance of slavery as opposed to legitimate offspring of their forefather. The stage set over two thousand years ago endures between the Jews, Christians and the Arabs in lands all over the world to this day. The Barbary Pirates of the seventeenth century were Muslims, determined to acquire enough money to spread the word of the Qur'an telling the World of Allah through his prophet, Muhammad. Their Allah is the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians and Muhammad is their prophet, whom they consider to be the equivalent of our Jesus. However, Jews await the coming Messiah and Christians believe in the Trinity of God. . Early century Muslims were just as dedicated to their mission as they are today. Muslims have never rested in their zeal to rid the world of infidels, because they truly feel it is ordained by Allah that the world be ruled by their God. We must never cease to be vigilant, because the world, as we have know it, will never be the same. Our lives are frail as breath ... we gasp at the prospect of future attacks. What does God think of mankind's perversion of His love in His name? God have mercy. Was 9/11 the end of innocence or the beginning of the end?

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

I'm back online and almost raring to go. I chose green, because I feel green around the edges. I went to sleep telling the assorted and sundry operating room people medical jokes. Like the good news/bad news jokes of the surgeon hovering over his waking patient with good news/bad news.

The patient says, "Give me the bad news first!"

Doc says, "We had to amputate both your legs."

Patient says, "OMG, after that --- what could possibly be good?"

Doc says, "Your roommate wants to buy your slippers."

Needless to say, they shoved the sodium pentathol in as a bolus! The right carotid endarterectomy took almost three hours, because although the plaque was only at 55% --- it had begun to dissect (split away from a crater in the artery) and there was great danger of causing a massive stroke. Now, I really hate to brag, but will take poetic licence with this, because, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, you would cry, too, if it happened to you!" Seems to me I've heard that song before??? My doctor is a genius and people stack up in his waiting room on Tuesdays as though they were waiting for the Pope to bless them. I can't imagine that people from all over the country will come to Toledo, Ohio to see a vascular doctor, when there are famous places in big cities, who do vascular surgery. Ah, but his one does robotic surgeries like repairing aortic aneurysms with little bitty, band-aid incisions and he is an adorable Argentine. What a far cry from John Denver's "Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio, is Like Being No place at All".

So, I have bragged about the doctor and will rave about the nurses in Constant Care and the staff in his office, but for those of you who will ever go to a hospital ---- make certain that your own family doctor has privileges at the hospital where the surgery will be done. Number One -- (Oh, no!---this sounds like a pun in the making) They took my Foley Catheter out the morning after surgery and then hung around like eighty-five grandmothers waiting for me to tinkle. A round of Lasix is usually guaranteed to make anyone pee, but when I finally felt like I had to go ---I only dribbled, but knew that my bladder was full. The resident doctors have apparently not had enough experience with Foleys to know that people have a bad time going the first day after removal. There are cute little ultrasound machines that they rub over your tummy after you have tried your best and it tells them that you have a ton of urine in your bladder. When I was in nursing school, this condition was called retention with overflow and it eventually resolved itself after a couple of straight caths. My resident doc, however, hung around like I was about to go into terminal nephritis. He called in a real Urologist, who politely left his card and suggested that I see him in three weeks. I'm sure Medicare will get a bill for this guy and I am not very happy about it, since I started peeing on my own by the next morning. Resident boy was still rambling on about fun things like bladder cancer, etc --- I wanted to smack him! It might have been seeing my age on the admission chart, but I was really insulted when he sent in occupational therapy --- "Do you need help with your daily activities?" Yeah, were you considering a maid or what? Next came physical therapy ----What in the world were they going to do for me? I could probably use some help putting on my roller blades. Then, he sent in a nutritionist to see if I understand the proper nutrition for geezers. You mean that Hershey Nuggets are not a balanced diet? I thought I mentioned that I am still a card carrying nurse. These different areas of hospital expertise are probably a legitimate way of getting a few extra bucks out of Medicare. Look out "Baby Boomers" --- there isn't going to be anything left for you at this rate!

What started the whole adversarial thing was my saying that I wanted to go home on oxygen for a few days. Quote from the resident dipstick, "You're not going home on O2!" A funny thing happens to me when I have anesthesia, I breathe very shallowly for several days and my O2 saturation drops to levels that are incompatible with life. But, gee, I have asthma and COPD and I know how to compensate for these problems, except when I have had anesthetic. Last time I had a carotid done (three years ago---when I was a very young 68), I came home without O2 and sat up all night, trying very hard to get enough air to stay alive. We got some tanks of oxygen and I used them for 2 or 3 days and happily sent them back. My bossy resident decided that if I need oxygen after surgery --- I must be in great need of a pulmonologist. Enter another great one followed by half a dozen students in his wake. Since I had a pulse-oximeter on my finger and we watched it drop to 69 to 78% when I got out of bed or tried to walk in the halls, we didn't need anyone else to tell me that I was not exchanging or perfusing oxygen in my lungs, yet. Needless to say, I came home from the hospital after four days with a bunch of oxygen tanks and enough tubing to walk downtown. This gave me great respiratory support for four days and then I kicked that cannula to the curb. It's going back very soon, since I exhibited the ability to huff and puff my O2 sats up to 97% at my first visit on Tuesday.

Let this be a lesson to each of you---- don't let the hospital's errand boys get their hands on you ---insist on your regular PCP, who knows all the little weird things about you. For now, I am getting better every day. I can do without the O2, I am eating small amounts of food, I am up for small amounts of time, but if these dang headaches don't go away --- I'm going to call that idiot resident and have him call in a neurosurgeon for a consult!

Addendum to Yesterday's Post

So, by now y'all know that I am going under the knife on Monday morning. Every place I turn, people are blogging about someones death, epitaph or impending doom. I
am reading a book titled "Under the Knife" by Diane Fanning. The main character's name is Dean in the book and there just happens to be a Hurricane Dean wending it's circuitous route through the Gulf of Mexico. I admit it gave me pause to think of the ramifications of all these coincidences. My husband has assured me that he has prayed about it and that I am going to be just fine, but he keeps giving me these loving glances that say, "I am memorizing your face, just in case you don't make it out of the O.R." Which leads me to say sweet things like, " Would you like me to teach you how to sort laundry just in case I die?" "I'll type up a paper for you that tells you how to work the computer --- could you just let my blogger friends know if I don't make it back home?" "We should really hit that great little restaurant after church tomorrow--- just in case, you know!" I have only had a couple of days to accomplish an abundance of things that are important to nobody except me. He has been dusting and vacuuming without a peep. He also played thirty-six holes yesterday and 24 holes today. You just cannot go into the valley of the shadow of death without your ironing done, taking your Bernina into the store for it's annual check-up or without a French manicure and filing the mountain of papers on the desk is a must for perfectionist type folks. Anyway, I am milking this for all it's worth. Dear Lord, please don't let the joke be on me!

Things are Moving too Fast!

Medicine is certainly a confusing patchwork of specialists, fancy tests and insanity these days. Since I have a bit of experience in the world of nursing, I know enough to gather up my own medical records and important tests into a file that will remind doctors what they did last. Things that happen to this old body are way more important to me than they are to any doctor or medical institution. It never ceases to amaze me that we are told by fancy physicians that something about us is important and they will be keeping an eye on the problem, only to have them forget why you have appeared in their office this year to check on some spurious condition. Couldn't they write on the front page of the chart--- "Don't forget that this patient's head is in danger of falling off in another year?" Do you get tired of that quizzical look that says, "What in the world could be wrong with you now?"

We live in Florida for six months at a time and then amble home to Ohio to have our doctors check on various and sundry old people complaints. Florida doesn't have enough doctors to keep up with the snowbirds who flock to their sunny shores, so I dutifully collect all our records and enough medicine to keep us going for another season each fall. As we are preparing to return to Ohio, I call ahead to make the appointments that are designed to keep us alive until next season. (Sort of like curb side restaurants) Since we arrived home in May, you would think that we would be done by June and call it a day with the medical experts. I have known that "My Honey" was going to have a total knee replacement (after the golf season and before the return to Flamingo Paradise), but I finally got to the right doctor this week to check on an old surgery and think about the reason for a sudden rise in my blood pressure. The PCP and the cardiologist didn't have a clue, so they said just keep taking the medicine and "Here's another pill or two to add to the upset" --- they'll see me next year. Not so with the vascular surgeon who reamed out my left carotid three years ago and is keeping the proverbial eye on the right one. He is such a busy and important man that I feel silly going to his office. Who would think that Toledo, Ohio has one of the rare vascular surgeons who does robotic surgeries? I have met people from all over this country in his waiting room, including one from Maine by way of Massachusetts General who came in need of this man. I have also waited in his office for up to five hours to see the great one. Why would anyone in their right mind wait that long? Because he is the one who looks at horses and sees Zebras. Where other doctors see someone who looks pretty healthy, but has some ridiculous symptom --- so they cut them loose until something important shows up, he gets a far away look in his eyes (like he is reading page 961 in the Internal Medicine Book) and orders an appropriate test.

Last week he ordered three dimensional CAT scans of my carotids and lower aortic branch arteries. But honestly doc,--- I feel pretty good! We saw him on Tuesday and he slapped the scans up on the light box and visibly paled. In his Argentine accent, he said, "This is not so good." On Wednesday, I was back at the cardiologist's getting clearance to have surgery sometime soon. Yesterday, I was back at the hospital having out-patient testing done pre-op. On Monday morning, he will be saving my life. That pesky right carotid has problems not seen by ordinary tests or felt by ordinary doctors, but dreamed of by this extraordinary doctor. There is a crater in the plaque that is causing the blood rushing up my neck to force a disection in a carotid that is not blocked enough to call attention to itself by the usual means. Am I scared? You betcha! Do I trust him? You betcha! But, I trust God even more and will abide by whichever prayer He decides to answer. If things go well on Monday, I will have to come home from Florida in four more months for a stent in my celiac artery (it goes from your aorta to your liver). I told you there were Zebras in my barn --- and this amazing doctor is the head zoo keeper.

I guess I am trying to tell you that you shouldn't be put off by a medical community that seems to be too involved with all the paperwork and too short on time to find what is the problem in your life. Keep dinging at them until someone listens to you. It's your life that they are messing with --- hold them accountable.

Tagged by a Blog Buddy

Carine over at What's Cooking? tagged me with a cute set of questions ---I hope they aren't all for baby boomers, because my kids are boomers, but I have a few bangs left in me!

1. What is your middle name?--- I don't have one! My parents named me for a friend and didn't know her middle name was Gertrude. Praise God!

2. What color pants are you wearing?---White clam diggers

3. What are you listening to now?---Some western movie is playing the den, but I'm not really listening to it.

4. What was the last thing you had to drink?---My addiction--- I always have a Coca Cola going with lots of ice.

5. Do you wish on Stars?---No, I believe that God controls my life.

6. If you were a crayon what color would you be?---Pink or peach.

7. How is the weather today?---In the middle 90's and humid, but I'm in

the A/C

8. Last person you spoke to on the phone?---my daughter, Lesley

9. Do you like the person that sent this to you?---yes, from everything I've

read about her!

10. Favorite drink---that dratted Classic Coke or Pepsi

11. Favorite sport---I love Tiger Woods playing golf! (I live on a

golf course)

12. Hair Color---childhood blond turned yucky with highlites courtesy

of Keith's Salon and some gray, courtesy of God

13. Siblings?--- I had 2 sisters and 2 brothers, but am down to 1 of each

14. Favorite month---I love May , it's a beautiful month in Ohio

15. Favorite Food?---my homemade Chocolate Pie

16. What was the last movie you saw in theaters?---"Knocked Up" (I'm

ashamed to say, but it was funny!)

17. Favorite day of the year?---any day I still wake up in the morning

18. What do you do to vent anger?---pick a fight with my husband

19. What was your favorite toy as a child?---rollerskates

20. Summer or Winter?---Summer--that's why we spend six months in

Florida

21. Hugs or kisses?--- Don't they both go together?

22. Car or motorcycle?---Car, but I do have a Honda 50

23. Chocolate or vanilla?---Chocolate

24. Do you want your friends to do this survey? I'm afraid they are already taken

25. Who is most likely to do this survey? --- Me, I need to get a life!

26. Who is least likely to respond?--- I don't know

27. When was the last time you cried?---about four years ago in Florida

and my grandkids still worry that I am unstable

28. What is under your bed?---moss green carpet

29. Who is the friend that you have had the longest?---my BFF, Elaine, from the 4th grade, about 60 years ago, but really my husband of

almost 54 years.

30.What did you do last night?--- Read a book.

31. What are you afraid of?---The money running out before life does.

32. Plain, buttered, or salted popcorn?---salted

33. Favorite car---Our Ford F150 truck---the ride is great, it has

heated seats and keyless entry

34. Favorite Flower?--- begonias in my decorative pots outside and

all my tropical plants around the house in Florida..

35 . How many keys on your keyring--- Four, but I never use them.

36. How many years at your job?--- Twenty years in a hospital after going

to nursing school at forty---retired now, but miss nursing

37. What did you do on your last birthday?---Out for dinner --- never do much---too close to Christmas

38. How many states have you lived in?---three

39. Did you have fun doing this?---It beats watching old westerns on TV.

40. To whom are you going to send this ? My Lacey Beth

The Wedding Shower

There was a wedding shower Saturday night. After having seven grandsons and one granddaughter (Thank You, Lord), the first one has finally embarked on the path to matrimony. At last, some females to offset the testerone around here. It was the most unusual shower I have ever attended. It was held in a Bead Store! We all were given $10.00 to start picking out beads to make a bracelet or a necklace with help from the staff. Then, we played the usual wedding shower games (at which I absolutely stink). There were lovely fresh fruits to dip in a fondue pot of chocolate, and cheese cubes, BBQ meatballs, petite fours and punch. After the fun and games, my new almost grand-daughter-in-law opened up some really great presents. Invitations had specified a particular time of day to buy a gift. Since I was 9:00 to midnight, I stayed away from Victoria's Secret.and gave her one of my king sized quilts. Here it is --- thrown over a queen size bed, so I know there is lots of room for a king. I think her mother wanted it, but I hope Laura likes it. (She is a real cutie)The fabrics are all batiks from India ,I think) and they cost an arm and leg. I have at least three other quilts waiting for someone to marry, but I have to finish four more before I am allowed to die. If I would stop playing on the computer with all you lovely bloggers and I could knock them out in half the time, but I'm not going to---I love you guys!

I've Been Tagged

Loving Annie tagged me for some fun. Here's the rules:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

*Players start with eight random facts/ habits about themselves.

* People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

* Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged and to read your blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Random Fact #1. At seventeen, I eloped with my school bus driver after dating him for six weeks by forging my parents' permission and stamping the permission with dad's notary seal. He was a lawyer.- I'm going to jail! That permission is still on file at the courthouse over the state line, but we are still married after almost fifty-four years.

Random Fact # 2. In high school, I was a gymnast and walked a slack wire (as opposed to a tight wire). I could do the splits, swing sideways with the wire across my feet, sit down, lie down and get back up. Now, I find it tough to get up from the floor.

Random Fact #3. I went to nursing school when I was forty after being a stay at home wife and mother for twenty-two years. When I started working in a hospital as a nurse, I would have done it for free. Luckily, they didn't ask me to forego the paycheck.

Random Fact #4. I am an extremely fussy eater. No salad dressings, ketchup, mayo, sour cream, pickles, tomatoes. I eat most things totally plain, but have found out that there are a bunch of people just like me and it is genetic thing. Picky eaters like me are a pain in the butt have a funky response to bitter. I used to think I was weird, but my oldest grandson tested me in freshman biology and discovered my genetic trait.

Random Fact #5. I am an expert seamstress. Quick pat me on the back, before I break my arm trying to do it myself I started sewing at twelve by copying my sister's shorts pieces onto newspaper, cutting up a roll of my mom's tea toweling fabric and sewing the seams by hand with a needle using back stitch. I have made everything from leather coats to a wedding dress. After many years of sewing clothes for myself and my family, I have gone over to quilting --- because quilts last forever and are meant to keep people you love warm.

Random Fact #6. Reading is my life long passion. I have read medicine bottles, if detained in the bathroom. I must read at night to fall asleep. The written word is a thing of beauty. That must be why I read so many blogs. I caught my daughter today with the word "antimacassar" --- she never heard of it. Have you?

Random Fact #7. We live half the year in Ohio and half in Florida. Whichever state I am in --- I worry about our home in the other state and desire to be there. I don't know which one is my favorite --- Ohio is bigger, on a golf course and the furniture is more expensive, but Florida is easier to care for and life is really relaxed without a condo association to argue about every little thing. I think Ohio has to win, because my children and grands live here.

Random Fact #8. I am a perfectionist, but am learning that I can't keep it up forever. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is older than dirt weak.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, I tag these bloggers to carry on:

Matty

Teri

Big Dave

Momofalltrades

Carine

Summer

Molly

Betty

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FIRECRACKER!

July 4, 2007

She's fifty! She's fifty! She's fifty!

This is the child that I dreamed of, waited for, tried for over three years ( it was fun) and finally on a wonderful 4th of July, 1957 at 9:17 at night, God finally gave me the perfect child I had dreamed of having. We had started out wanting six children. I had thought a girl to start, a girl to finish and however many boys who would happen in the middle. Remember, I told you that I wanted to make clothes (I made this dress) and fuss with little girl's hair? Well, she was so beautiful, that I sewed far into the nights and fixed those pretty blond curls to my heart's content. She was a wonderful baby, but I found it hard to put her down for even a few minutes. I remember asking the doctor at six weeks, "How long will it be until I can safely go to the bathroom and leave her alone?" Motherhood took every minute of my day. She turned three a few days after my third child was born and I had thought that she was very grown up and helpful with the "little kids". She always seemed so self confident that I didn't know until recently about all the little insecurities she had as a child. Through the years she has mentioned how frightened she was if I had a baby sitter and left them alone for a couple of hours before her dad came home from work. Children today are brought up with day care from six weeks old until they marry and leave home. But in the early sixties, moms stayed home and the kids became very attached to their security blanket parent. For all the little things that frightened you, Lesley --- I am so sorry that I didn't see it or know that you were not old enough to know how safe you were. But, I am very flattered to know that I was her whole world.

One day when she was a preschooler, she was very bored and I told her that when she learned to read, she would never be bored again. She took me at my word and learned rapidly to be a voracious reader. By the end of the first grade, the librarian gave her special permission to read from the junior high area of the library and she read over 100 books that summer. The school gave state proficiency tests to the primary grades when she was in the second grade and her teacher called me to school. I was so afraid that she had done something wrong, but the teacher just wanted to tell me that she had the only student in the three grades who had a perfect test ----my Lesley! (And she beat the third grade kids!)

My dad bought her a flute when she was in the fifth grade and she started flute lessons at school and piano at home. The high school had a program where the eighth grade band kids would attend marching band camp for two weeks in the late summer and then be allowed to play with the high school band for the first football game. She was afraid to go to band camp, but I told her that grandfather had bought the darn flute and she would go or I would wrap it around her neck. She loved it! The older girls each took a younger one as a little sister and shepherded them through all the important things, ate lunch with them and generally made them feel at home. This was just the thing a kid needs to feel like they have a hand up when entering high school.

Lesley was an excellent student (Honor Society), an officer in the band, a majorette in the marching band and worked in a restaurant by sixteen. Working gave her the idea to pay for college herself. We didn't know if she could make it, but by going to a local college and keeping a semester ahead of the tuition, she was able to go to England and Scotland for a study tour between her junior and senior years. She arrived back home from London with fifty cents in her pocket, because she purchased the in flight movie for $3.00. College took only three and a half years, because she had tested out of so many courses at the beginning.

Graduating mid-year made her available when a local school district staffed a new school for a March opening. They had over three hundred teachers apply for five jobs and Lesley got one of them. She is a lively chatterbox and I think she charmed the superintendent into hiring her. She married that next summer and had three boys in the next few years, but unfortunately the marriage went south. So, she has raised three boys, taught school full time and received her Masters+ in Reading (big surprise) in order to earn enough to handle the single mother job.

We are so much alike in so many ways, --- like reading and sewing, but she knows way more about old movies than I do and she loves almost all music from the classics to all the latest things.

One thing she started in our family is left handedness. There had never been any in either side of our families, but all three of our children are southpaws. I think the other two copied her when they were little, because they do some things one way and other things right handed. Lesley does everything as a lefty. She had to have left handed scissors and I couldn't teach her how to knit or twirl a baton without having her switch it around to her way of doing things. I'm not smart enough to switch it, but she did everything automatically.

So, she is fifty and she is a wonderful woman, but she is still the little girl who holds our hearts in her hand. It has been a fantastic fifty years. We love you, Firecracker --- Never stand in the window waiting for us to come home, because we are always here. Dad and Mom

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STACEY!

Stacey will be forty-seven at exactly 2:00 p.m. today. I actually had a doctor's appointment at that exact time, so you could say that Stacey kept my appointment for me. This little cake looks so sad compared to today's birthdays with acrobats, organ grinders and moonwalks. Possibly, things got out of control that week. Matt had turned four a couple of days before this and had fallen off the ladder of the neighbor's swimming pool during "the birthday party" and had a concussion. Notice the shiner on his left eye. But, this is about Stacey and the joy she has brought into our lives. Since she was due just one year after the second child, my other half wanted another boy to keep him company. I, on the other hand, already had a baby boy in the house, so I wanted another girl to make clothes for and hair to fix in girly ways. She made the hair impossible by cutting her own bangs right to the quick the week of her annual baby picture sitting. She did grow it out after the disaster, so I suppose it is not the worst thing that can happen in a mother's life. Stacey gave us the best of both worlds by being a pretty little tomboy. One Christmas, I had made her a red wool double knit dress with picot edging on the collar and sleeves. She came out with her lace tights, French fold hairbow and MaryJane shoes looking like a child model. Then, up came her skirt exposing her six-guns and holster strapped on underneath. The two younger kids played with Legos and Matchbox cars for hours out under the evergreen bushes, while her sister played with her Barbies inside like little girls do. I have read that some of the moms in blogger land have trouble training their kids. (Probably because "Pull-Ups" have made it so handy for the tots to stay untrained) Since Stacey was my third in three years, she announced at eighteen months that "I wan siouk pants like Lesley". I bought her silk panties with a little bow on the side and put them on her and that was that. She was dry day and night, but I still had to convince her brother to get out of diapers at night. I was watching "Kate and John" the other night. They have two six year olds and six two year olds. Three of the sextuplets are girls and three are boys. She tackled training the girls first, because boys are harder. I don't think they are harder --- they just lack the incentive of silk panties!
Stacey moved on to bigger things after we moved to a bigger house in town. The neighborhood guys would come over and holler for "Staaaceeey" to come out and play a little street football or a pickup game of basketball in our driveway. I think having an older brother made her think in terms of sports or perhaps it was her Dad's influence. To this day, she can name almost any athlete, which school they played for, what position they played and where they went as pros. In high school, she ran track, high jumped and played softball which made Dad happy. Then on Friday nights, she became a majorette in the marching band with a cute little short skirt which satisfied my girly instincts.
She followed me into nursing, got married and after several losses of babies, finally has a wonderful son. Her life is spent working with the senior high youth of the church and the Bible quizzers, because she is gifted to work with kids.
Until tomorrow night when we have the birthday party (lookout blogger buddies, my first born has a birthday this week, too) this will have to do for today --- HAPPY BIRTHDAY STACEY! We love you, Dad and Mom

Happy Birthday Matthew!

Forty-eight years ago today at 12:46 in the afternoon, my only son was born. Through the years, we have talked exactly at that time. It will be 12:46 in less than half an hour, so I am going to go look up the number of his office. This is one of my favorite pictures of him. These are his boys and he has one beautiful daughter. (Thank you, God!) There is an old saying---"Your son is your son, till he takes him a wife, but your daughter is your daughter for all of her life." So, moms give your sons to their wives, but keep them in your heart and keep loving them, even when they are getting a bit long in the tooth. Luckily for me, my daughter-in-law is a real gem and shares him with us. I gave him his "birthday cookies" a couple of days ago, but I know he reads my blog occasionally. So, today ---
Happy Birthday Matthew!
Love, Dad and Mom

The Dreaded Church Picture

Let me give you youngins' some advice. When they tell you that you need to have your picture taken for the new church directory, never get a haircut about an hour before the actual sitting. I had written about the dreaded frizzy perm that I wanted to allow me to swim and dry in Florida without all the fuss and bother of hairdryers, brushes and such. I had gotten to the place where I could in a few short hours handle it a bit, but never knew how well I could do my "do". Enter another thought into my feeble brain --- get a haircut and the stylist would do my hair for the picture. My guy (I love him dearly) does my hair with the chair turned backwards, so the outcome is always a nice surprise. I suppose he wanted me to really look great for the picture, but he went for broke and did my hair in a way that I never wear it. My darling hubby calls this look "my football helmet". There are worse things than having your hair about three inches taller than your head, I can't think of one right now but not when the picture will be in the directory for around five years. Since we are seventy-one and seventy-five, we might not even be around for the next big event, but if I am --- I'm doing my own hair! Don't you just hate mandatory pictures? My last driver's license was really a great picture, but the church doesn't want it --- there is a hologram in the middle. Why didn't we appreciate the younger years, when we didn't think twice about pictures or anything else for that matter? So now, we are retired and every day is Saturday (except for Sunday) and we didn't see old age coming. Enjoy your youth, have fun and don't save any of your big desires for a better time. There is no time like the present. Never wait for the "when we can afford it, we will have enough time for it or when we have the free time". Do it today and have the memories to keep you warm when your days are long, but your time is probably possibly short.

E-Mail Nut on the Loose

I hate it when people forward bogus warnings, and I have even done it myself a couple times
unintentionally...but this one is real, and it's
important. So please send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list.
If someone comes to your front door saying they are checking for ticks due to the warm weather and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!! They only want to see you naked.
I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid!

His name is Steven

There was a little boy named Steven, who was the firstborn grandchild in our family. I thought I would really like being a grandmother, but I had no idea that he would become the "Light of My life". Children are very different from when I was raising mine. They are free spirits, that will go anywhere, anytime, because they have been to day care and are outgoing. We were living on a small horse farm when he was born and suddenly the grandma who swore she would not be a full time babysitter was open to his staying overnight anytime or all the time. We had so much fun together and he was game for anything. We cleared the brush from a small copse of trees with his tiny hands in rubber gloves to keep him from touching the poison ivy. The child was a pyromaniac and loved to clear the brush and have glorious bonfires. We dumped large limestone rocks down an old, existing cistern to fill it up, so no child would accidentally stumble upon it and drown. We took the boom box outside and played tapes of Christian pop music. The child was certain that he sang exactly like Sandi Patti. Sure he did! Day after day we worked with such camaraderie, that the task became joy --- just being together. One day when we had finished about twenty feet of clearing small saplings and debris, Steven in the wisdom of his four years said, "Would you look at the size of that uthwum?"As I turned to see his amazing earthworm, he gave a final rake to the now barren ground and in tones to waken the dead screamed, "It's a snake!" and jumped into my arms.

His Grandpa spent many weekends showing quarter horses at conformation shows, so Steven kept me company and never seemed to miss his Mommy and Daddy as long as he had me to cuddle him and make him "my special boy". He slept in our king sized bed and we stayed awake late at night and watched his favorite things on T.V. --- the QVC channels --- he loved keeping track of the number of items left before the clock clanged doom. I should have known that we had a huckster on our hands way back then. I admit to being a sneaky Grandma. His mom and dad had a few problems, but my daughter was too proud to tell her parents that all was not well in paradise. He was telling me about the day his dad was looking for a certain shirt in the dryer and he pulled the clothes out and dropped them on the floor as he looked for that shirt. To which, I asked, " What did your Mommy say when she found the clothes on the floor?" With a serious face, he said, "Why that asho!" It certainly is hard to keep a straight face when you are priming the kid for information and gossip drips innocently from his lips . I never came right out and asked my daughter if they were having marital troubles, but eventually (after three boys in four years) they divorced and I knew that my fears had been well founded. She took care of the kids, taught school full time and got her master's degree + in the next 2 1/2 years. I took full advantage of the situation to keep one or two of the boys for overnights , whenever I had the chance. All three of my children had baby boys when Steven was two. They are all college age and treat each other as cousin/brothers. One of these days I'll get to some of my other wonderful grandchildren and bore the be jabbers out of you with their exploits. But, for now ---the only constant was the thing Steven and I had between us. He would come in the back door and through the living room with a look of determination on his face and a fast pace in his feet---looking for his "Mamaw". About five, he stated with a solemn face, "You're not my Mamaw --- You are my Drandma ---- Right Mamaw?" I can't even explain how he made me feel. I loved my own three children dearly, but I had no time to spend just basking in the light of a young child's love for me. One day I dropped a bowl of homemade vegetable, beef soup and it sprayed up and over the counter, the cupboards and the floor. Green beans were hanging at rakish angles from the window over the sink and corn was sliding down the cupboard doors. I started to laugh and said, "Did you ever see such a colossal mess?" He replied with a stricken look, "My mom wouldn't say that!" I was afraid to ask what she would have said!

I want all of the young mommy bloggers to know that the children in your life are just the beginning. Children grow up too fast, so savor every minute with them. Steven is twenty-five now; just about to start law school after having worked for our Governor in Washington for the last three years. He is out of our daily lives, but never out of our thoughts and hearts. I wish I could have a mulligan for those early years.

We Never Forget

Courtney would have been twenty-three today. So much has happened in that time, but we never forget that for today, we had hope for her. My daughter and son-in-law were great parents, but they were not destined to hold her here on Earth for very long. I will always be grateful for the courage and faithfullness of my children in caring for my granddaughter during her nine and a half years here. She lives with God and we never forget her.

Life is a Journey

By now, most of you have heard about the little girl in Washington State, whose parents have decided to have her surgically altered in an attempt to keep her small and manageable. Her prognosis is to be a mentally handicapped child for her entire life. The problem is that normal parents cannot handle a full grown adult infant, as they themselves age and lose strength. These parents had their daughter's uterus, appendix, and breast buds removed and massive doses of estrogen given in an attempt to keep her "little" forever. It was not a decision made lightly, but with the help of medical ethicians. It is being called The Ashley Treatment. This family loves their little girl and takes excellent care of the child. I went to their site and read the comments by perfect strangers and was stunned by the freedom other bloggers feel in forming opinions and being disgustingly frank with these well meaning parents. There were comments like "Cut off her limbs, too --- that would make her smaller" or "How do you know that menstruation would be painful for her --- let her grow up normally". What words did these people not understand? This child has a condition that will never allow her to do anything and caring for her is a huge problem. Unless they have walked in these parents' moccasins, they have no right to an opinion.

This picture is my youngest daughter as she and her husband awaited the birth of their first child after suffering an earlier miscarriage. May of 1984 was a time of great joy and expectation. Every week she went to the doctor and then stopped by our house to tell me what the doctor had said. Her due date was around the 24th of May and she was hoping to have the baby on the 30th, because her birthday, her husband's birthday and their anniversary were all on the 30th of different months. When she missed the 30th, the appointment on the 31st was rather anticlimactic --- but, she didn't come to my house afterward. After a few hours, I told my husband that I was worried and we decided to call her house. She answered and sounded nothing like my daughter. When I asked if something were wrong, her only answer was ,"We're coming over". She was crying and distraught. I am a nurse and she is a nurse --- all sorts of awful things went through my mind, but I could not imagine what the actual problem was. They arrived and my son-in-law went around the car to help the expectant mom out of the car. Her face was blotchy with swelling and tears and he looked like someone had just shot him. "Mom, I had an ultrasound today and the baby has hydrocephalus". My mind was flipping through all the pages of child and infant care from my training and I knew there was hope for this type of handicap with shunts and good neurosurgeons. After a quick discussion of where we were with this (already a week overdue), I called the doctor for her and asked if there was any possibility that the baby could be delivered the next day, since nobody could eat or sleep until the baby was safely here.

Fast forward to the next morning and the birth of a lovely baby girl by C-Section. Things looked pretty good when the neurosurgeon said that a shunt would take care of everything Then came
the CAT Scan of Courtney's brain. June second, the neurosurgeon waltzed into my daughter's room and stuck the films against the window, where sunshine streamed brightly and illuminated a skull with a large amount of empty space. He said, "Unfortunately, this child has almost no brain and I'm not sure we should shunt her". With a shunt, she would live about two years and without the shunt , she would live about three months. The decision was taken out of this young family's hands. The federal government had passed "The Baby Jane Doe" ruling that required that medical personnel notify the authorities, if physicians did not do everything possible for newborn babies. Ironically enough, women could kill their fetuses inutero, but families could not withhold treatment from children who could not possibly live. The cephalic shunt was done the next day and the excess cerebrospinal fluid was drained from her skull and absorbed in her abdominal cavity. This allowed her fontanels to close and her skull to become a normal size. She would never be able to see, hear, eat, speak, roll over or even know she was alive. This is a picture of

Courtney at a couple of months old. Cute, huh? Yes, she was lovely and lovable, but the trick is

--- she is being held up for the picture. She was never even able to hold her own head up. My kids struggled to feed the baby by

dripping formula down the throat of a child who could not even suckle. By eight months old, the doctors finally realized that she would starve to death, if she was not fed by gastric tube, so they operated again and she was fed parentally by machine for her whole life. Her life was a series of specialists from every type of medicine, but nothing could be done to change the prognosis for this little girl. Even with very good health insurance, her medical needs took two paychecks, so my daughter worked part time at the hospital and the kids moved in with us to save money and have help caring for Courtney. Friends and family took CPR and learned to work her Apnea Monitor and G-Tube, so they could babysit occasionally to relieve her exhausted parents. Her medical condition caused seizures and the inability to have feedings while awake. If she coughed, she vomited, so feedings were done at night while she slept. I could hear my daughter and son-in-law running to her bedside all through the night to keep her from choking or to clean her up after vomiting. By four years old, she tipped the scales at nineteen pounds and remained easy to handle. I wonder how hard it would have been to care for a child who grew normally, but never was able to move and was a total lift.In this picture, you can see the plugged G-tube that was her lifeline for

feedings. By forcing her to be shunted, the government rules condemned her to nine and a half years as a prisoner inside a tiny body that did not function. She was loved so much and her family suffered terribly from this enforced slow death by well meaning souls who have no idea what they have brought upon such children. We watched as she writhed in convulsive seizures and wondered each time, "Is this the day?" Families of severely handicapped children need to be free to make educated decisions regarding the medical and surgical issues involving these children without input from the public at large. I feel that the parents of Ashley in Washington should be applauded for their choice to keep their daughter small and manageable in order to care for her at home.
This picture shows Courtney as she was getting older. You can see the spasticity in her body and know that she had no cognitive function by the way her hands are curled in decerebrate movement. If she had been born in an earlier time without medical intervention, she would have passed quickly from this world of pain. Once again, one of God's special little ones was snatched from the jaws of Heaven by do-gooders without knowledge of her best interests. Courtney lived for nine and a half years suffering through pneumonias, abdominal surgeries for obstructions and clam shell braces for a scoliosing spine. Her family watched helplessly while she suffered with multiple difficulties. How can anyone say what medical procedures should be done to a child, if they are not the ones who have to live with the consequences? Our family has lived through the heartache of birth defect and we would support Ashley's family's decision to prevent her from becoming adult size and necessitating care outside a loving home.

I first wrote this in January of 2007, when I heard about Ashley's family on television and the problems they were having with public opinion. This week, I heard that the hospital where her surgery was done is in trouble for not having a judge approve of the surgical procedures done to the child. The world has so many problems to handle --- why can't they leave this family alone to deal with their personal difficulties and to care for their child?

"I Am the Lucky One"

Happy Mother's Day to Mom, the original seat belt! Today is Mother's Day and this is the card I got from Numero Uno child. It really cracks me up, because I spent their formative years throwing my arms across the chest of the child sitting next to me on the front bench seat of the car to prevent their being thrown through the windshield. Lord knows how they managed to live through no car seats and certainly no seat belts. One absolute rule was that they couldn't sit too near any door, because who knew whether or not the lock would hold and one could possibly fall from the car during a turn and get run over by the back wheels. However did I manage to get them safely through infancy, school, college and to the altar without killing anyone?

I think motherhood started for me when I was about ten or eleven and our neighbor had a baby boy. I was allowed to play with him on a blanket in their backyard while my Mom chatted with the new mother.

I fell in love with the smell, feel, touch, the enchanting smiles and the cuddly little body of any baby. Little girls are preprogrammed to desire babies in their lives. Shortly after marrying at seventeen, my mind turned to thoughts of having my very own baby to cuddle and smell and love. Luckily, God knew that we were not ready financially for parenthood. He made me wait until I was twenty-one, before He felt I could be trusted with an infant of my own. I couldn't believe it when after all those months and years of trying, I finally knew I was pregnant.

Every since that very first day, when I knew there was a baby coming to our home, I have been the most blessed of all creation --- a mother. If there is to be a special day --- it should be a day for rejoicing in the fact that God has seen fit to give us children to raise and love and then set free. This is a picture of me with my first child when she was two years and six weeks old. My second child was only six weeks old and I was six weeks away from getting pregnant with my third. How ironic that after almost four years without children, we had three in less than three years. Motherhood has been a joy every step of the way and I am still thanking God for the children he sent my way almost fifty years ago. I love you Lesley, Matthew and Stacey and the ten children you have brought into my life in the last twenty-five years. The pastor praised moms in church this morning, but it is we who should be thanking God for the privilege He has given to us. I cannot imagine a life without my children. To quote Ben Folds, " I Am the Lucky One!"

Going Home, Going Home

We really are headed in the right direction .... up I- 75 from

Ft. Myers to Ohio. We had an hour and a half delay outside of Atlanta, because some poor (probably old) dude had turned over in his pickup truck while hauling his vacation home. It took up a four lane highway and thousands of cars and trucks waited for hours. It sure seems that the Highway Patrol would reroute traffic or at least direct the mayhem created by such bad accidents. Next, we were toddling on down the road when the local radio station started telling us that there was a tornado warning for Big Booger, Tennessee and hail in French Gulp County. We knew that Texas had been having really bad weather earlier in the week and that it was moving northeast. So, I pulled out the map and discovered that we were only about fifteen miles from Big Booger and doubted our ability to find a safe place before Knoxville. Happily, we discovered a Days Inn in Oak Ridge with Hi Speed Internet. Tomorrow, we will be going home early in the day before the storms start up again. My "Honey" is as happy as a pig in mud, because the motel has FOX News and he hasn't seen a nice conservative newscast for six months. See you in Ohio!

Here we come, ready or not!

It's that time again ... the move back to Ohio. Everyone there tells me that it is colder that a witch's t** and raining, too. I am packing a big dose of sunshine in my suitcases and will treat all those Ohio Valley people to some rays. I have lain in the sun in two hour increments for the last couple of weeks. Most of the people here have glistening skin about the color of a kiwi without the fuzz. I, on the other hand have a collection of brown, red and white spots that sort of mimic a tan. I figure that when they all run together, I will look just like George Hamilton. My teeth will look like a string of pearls next to my beautiful brown skin. When my perfect house guest, Lesley, was here , we went to the pool every day for two hours. She got a wonderful tan ---- I got sun poisoning by the third day and spent the rest of her time here waving goodbye as she blithely sauntered to the pool. Of course, I have been a raving maniac trying to remember what I brought down here six months ago and why in the world would anyone in their right mind even consider bringing a couple hundred dollars worth of quilt fabric 1200 miles and never opening a single quilt book?

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that we are going to the land of civilization, where people actually wear appropriate clothes in public. No Capri's and backward ball caps for senior citizens there. Maybe, this is really more fun! See you in Ohio.

Home Sweet Home!

Spring Break in Ft. Myers

Springtime is beautiful in Ft. Myers. The weather is hot, hot, hot, the sand is white as talc and the water is warm. We wait all winter for these last few weeks in the tropics. Snowbirds tend to leave for home around the first of April and the college kids have been and gone by now. They leave in their wake locals who are underage and in jail for drinking and partying with the big time college kids. Our oldest daughter flew in the 30th of March for her Spring Break from school. She had been held hostage by a band of renegade third graders since last August. Here she was; free at last. If you really want to have a great house guest --- give birth to the perfect home companion. Her idea of a wonderful time was watching TV until the late news, reading until sleep grabs her by the eyelids, sleeping until she awakens of her own free will, more reading and a little counted cross-stitch, suntanning beside the pool, eating out and having her mom and dad sit and appreciate her presence. I insisted that we had to go out to Ft. Myers Beach, just for the sudden view as the crest of the bridge is reached and the Gulf of Mexico lies spread before us like a glittering jewel to be tucked away in the recesses of our memory until the next occasion to behold such beauty. We went after dinner and strolled along the beach as we awaited the sunset with many other romantics. Since I am an old lady, I plopped down on the sand --- it is so soft and white that it is a wonder that people don't try to bake bread with it. It is so fine and powdery --- it sticks to your bare feet, to your butt and hides in your pants pockets. I am not proud! In the presence of natural beauty, who cares if you get a little gritty?

As we walked around the end of the island through Bowditch Park, we came upon this image of family togetherness. Dad, Mom, one little girl with pink sandals and one tiny little girl with a white sandal at each end of the grouping left their shoes to wiggle their toes in the wonderful white sand. People scan the sand bars as the tide goes out and the sand dollars appear and occasional shells beg to be picked. Most people pick shells just to prove to themselves that they actually were here.

The daughter did her obligatory visit to the beach and crossed it off her list of things you have to do when in southern Florida. When you are the single mom to three grown sons, Spring Break means just that --- stop whatever you have been doing for so many months and flop until you are revived to go back and start all over again. I told this child when she was four or five and bored that once she learned to read, she would never be bored again. She took me at my word and has a Master's Degree+ in reading. She read three books while she was here, but I think she brought eleven or twelve. It's hard to believe that she is only a few years from retirement herself. After eight days of revitalizing sunshine, we took her back to the airport on Easter morning. She is back at her desk with her brood of nine year olds, but summer is only two months away and she will be able to recoup until next August.

Today, I made a zillion chocolate chip cookies to send to my grandson in the Air Force and I am starting to drag things out of their hiding places to pack for our return to Ohio. I just don't understand why we leave Florida when things are just getting really good here. I want a Spring Break!

On, No! Flamingos!

In the land of sunshine and blue skies, people in double wide, pre-fab homes (trailers in all other states) tend to put all sorts of junk in their front yards and flower beds. I have been guilty of being a lawn snob and snickering at the people who stick tacky junk out in front of their homes.
So, what did I do yesterday? I went out and bought a few things for our porch. It was the last place in our Florida home that was stark raving naked. My flamingos can be forgiven, because they are so tasteful and are not pinky-orange. Truly, they really are cute, aren't they? The colors are pretty and also, they match the fish I bought for the wall above the futon. ( That is the futon I had to buy for my grandson's visit) Today, I hit JoAnne's Craft Store and bought a vase and some greenery for the end table. We have owned this place for about eighteen months and I have just about run out of things to buy. I know we have run out of money. See, --- how cute is this fish? The shop in Punta Gorda is new and has a ton of adorable do-dads for around the house. How am I going to stay away from this shop when there are so many things I really, really want? Oh, well, I can't have

everything --- but, I have the flamingos and the fish!

For all the good, caring cyber friends I have out there, I have good news about my frizzies. I can manage my hair (the hair of the too tight perm). When my darling daughter gets here for her week in the sun, I'll swim and sun and my hair will be wash and go. (Providing that I get a quick trim next week) Have a great day y'all --- Spring is upon the land!

The Control Freak

This is not a very good picture, but it shows the true definition of a control freak or a true man's man. Notice that he sleeps. Also, notice that he sleeps with the T.V. controls balanced on his right knee, so nobody can change the channel while he is watching something really important through his eyelids. Husbands --- you just have to love them!

The Frizzies

The grands have been and gone for a week since their spring break here in the land of sunshine and alligators. We have a couple of weeks before our own firstborn will fly in for her spring break from teaching the third grade. The grand kids are fun, but I look forward to seeing my very own kid, because she will want to do the things that I love --- laze around the pool, get a tan, read some good books, go out for dinner and sleep late. While thinking along these lines, I started thinking that having to do my own hair every day after the pool would be a whole bunch easier if I had a perm and could let it air dry, then apply a curling iron. Keep in mind that I haven't had a perm in ten years and I have really thick hair, but my mind was remembering how cool the last one was. I would let it dry and then just brush the curls into place. Those days were before my "honey" retired and money was no object. I could go get my hair done all the time and a professional blow dry lasted forever. My frugal husband keeps telling me that he loves the way I do my own hair better than the salon dos. It occurs to me that he is cheap and wants to spend our money on frivolous things like --- uh, golf and buckets of balls. Is he cheating me, maybe? Ya, think? So, in the spirit of future savings, I decided that a perm today would save me hours of future work and only cost $85.00. When the little curlers came out, the stylist was oohing and ahing over my lovely curls and sent me to the dressing room to get my smock off and into my own clothes. Oh, for pity sakes! I looked like I had an Afro! Where were those lovely little ringlets that occupied my mind's eye? Tonight, I look much better after the application of a curling iron, but I know there are frizzies lurking under this thing. I'll know in the morning whether or not I have wash and wear hair for poolside or whether I will have to shave my head. How can you live this long and make such bad decisions?

Look Who's Coming to Town!

My blog has been temporarily put out to pasture. The reason for my lack of time is #5 grandchild. Spring break is upon us and the college students are winging their way southward. This cute, curly haired blond is the last of my oldest daughter's three boys. Her oldest is twenty-five and lives in D.C. He worked for Gov. Taft for three years and now is heading to graduate school for his law degree. We keep trying to talk him into coming back to the midwest and attending a local college, but the political bug has bitten and unfortunately there is no vaccine for that. Her second son is twenty-three, in the Air Force and has just completed eighteen months of Arabic language school and heading for something secret, but he is not allowed to tell us anything about his job. Luckily for the U.S.A., this guy would never tell anyone anything --- he is the original closed mouth dude. He says, "If I tell you, I would have to shoot you!" I believe he would do it. Lastly, we have her twenty year old guy, who works two jobs and is a junior in college. We have put everything on hold and have stocked up the fridge, because we get to see a grandchild and his lady friend for the next week. (She is absolutely adorable!) I have cooked and frozen until the freezer door won't close any more. He is a year older than this picture and has grown the scruffy hair stuff in the middle of his face --- people are calling him "McSteamy". because of the guy on Grey's anatomy. I'm excited to see them here in the land of sunshine and we will finally have an excuse to hit the beaches. Old people just don't go to the beach and flop on a towel, without an excuse. We have arranged for a boat trip out into the Gulf of Mexico for Sunday and I'm thinking of renting Segues over on Sanibel for some fun. If that doesn't pan out, we might go kayaking in Matlacha Pass. Anyone have any good ideas? After these kids leave, I have three weeks until the next spring breakers. If you want to see your children and grands, move to Florida and I guarantee they will come see you. Okay, Ryan--- hurry up!

The Best of Times

We moved to the country when our
youngest daughter graduated from high school. The other half had always wanted to own horses and take care of them himself. Our children were very happy in their school, so we waited until they were done with high school to build our country house and small quarter horse barn. We owned a few acres and had a pond for swimming and playing. The grand kids actually learned to water ski behind Sea-Doos in the pond. There is nothing like a small body of water in your back yard to soothe the savage beast. The sunsets were spectacular in the winter when the sun was in the southern sky and the big red ball reflected in the pond. Life was good and we were living in a style we had never dreamed of when we were young and very poor runaways to the closest altar. HRH (His Royal Highness) was in seventh Heaven with a couple of horses in residence. One of them was always expecting, so I should have foreseen the coming of more and more equine types. Eventually there were mares in every stall, with foals on their side and another one in the oven for the next year. I never thought I would be shoveling horse manure. The things we do for love! Our children started marrying within a year of the move to the country and the grand kids started arriving within three years. It was a wonderful place for the grandchildren to visit. There was plenty of swimming in the summer and skating in the winter. The horses had foals, the Australian Shepards had puppies and the calico cat was always having kittens in the loft of the barn. The little boys in the picture are my first two grandsons --- also known as the lights of my life. If I had known how I would feel about grandchildren, I would have had them first! Steven and Greg are standing in the doorway of the barn in front of the horse's treadmill. Did you know that horses have to be exercises on a treadmill when the sun is too bright and would ruin their hair coat? Our total number of grands ended with eight boys and two girls, but we have lost one little girl and one boy to birth handicaps. As they grew older, we added swing sets and volleyball to the yard and a large hot tub to the deck. The little guys thought it was great to "swim" in the hot tub at Christmas time. Soon, we had to sell the place in the country because as HRH says, "The mower broke". I was the mower and I developed asthma at sixty and could not continue mowing all the yard and pastures. But, the real reason was that the city was encroaching on our country life. People were paying outrageous prices for land and building mcmansions in the wheat fields across the street. There are times in your life when you suddenly have a revelation that it is time to sell, before you miss the golden opportunity to triple your money. We had nineteen years in our little horse farm and still tripled our investment. The only costs were taxes ---I don't think you can ever get away from taxes. My husband still wishes he could have a horse or two of his own, but we moved to the fifth tee of a golf course and they frown on tethering horses on the fairways. HRH thinks that those were the best of times, but I have loved every stage of this life we have shared together and today is the best of times for this day.

From Jury Duty to Nursing School

I was over at Matty's place (Running on Empty) and she wrote a great piece on Canada's hunt for a jury for a mass murderer's trial. They must find people who are capable of sitting on the jury for a year. He confessed to his crimes and has expressed no remorse for his multiple murders. The good citizens of Canada are to spend buckets of money for a fair and proper trial for this dude. Matty thinks that the only people who can spend a whole year on a jury are retired folks in good health and a few other assorted souls. If they seat enough people and then someone dies (old people tend to do that), they will have to start over again! Good Heavens! Most seniors really can't afford to give away a year of their pitifully short life expectancy. Personally, I couldn't sit still for whole days while the lawyers (or do they call them barristers there?) go through all the hanky-panky they learned in law school to get the guilty and depraved off. This is all a prelude to telling you about my experiences of being on juries.

I was called for jury duty when I was thirty-nine. I had been married for twenty-two years and had children who were a sophomore and junior in high school and a freshman in college. In those days, stay at home mommies were the rule rather than the exception. I made their beds, hung up their clothes, washed their nylons, ironed all their clothes, cleaned the house, cooked the meals and did the dishes for my husband and family. It was working very well, because my kids were very involved in their schools, sports, music, honors courses and worked in a restaurant. They all saved their money and totally paid for college themselves. We wanted them to have the very best experience in school that was possible, because I had been forced to do multiple household duties as a teen by the poor health of my mother. Then the summons for jury duty came! I panicked. How would my family get along without me for a whole week? How could I get up at the crack of dawn, get myself dressed, go downtown and still stay up late enough to maintain our home as we knew it? There are no excuses to get out of jury duty. If you were not ill and of reasonable sanity, you got the job. Off I went on the first day and found myself hoping that they would like me well enough to choose me for a jury. I believe we received $8.00 a day for serving. That almost paid for parking and lunch. Right away, I found myself seated on a civil jury. Oh, the joy of being in the middle of a real soap opera! The case consisted of a plaintiff charging that a cement truck had hit a car driven by an elderly man, who was taking a patient to a local hospital for a chemo treatment. This gentleman danced around at the scene while insisting that he was just fine and needed no treatment. However, the paramedics took him to the hospital with the injured woman. He sat in the waiting room of the E.R. for several hours, declining treatment and when the hospital got around to checking him over ---- they admitted him for observation, due to his age. Apparently, he suffered a blood clot in his leg that let loose and traveled to his heart. Dang! He died! Our feeling (in the jury room) was that he misled the medics claiming to be fine and the hospital neglected to diagnose him in time to prevent the embolism. The fact that the truck had actually hit his car did not cause his death, the delay in treatment caused his death. The accident was little more than a fender-bender. The lawyers wanted lifetime care for a retarded son, who was left after the accident and since the truck was from a large company, the lawyer went after everything they owned the big bucks. The jury decided that the request was outrageous and found for the defendant. Ironically, the truck driver, also had a handicapped son and would have lost his ability to care or his son, if we had given them what they asked. The dollar signs were positively rolling around in the pig's lawyer's eyes. When the verdict was read, the defendant cried and we were dismissed. As we tried to leave the third floor of the court house, the plaintiff's attorney was in the elevator with some of the jury. He started raging at our lack of compassion (his lack of big buck fees) and actually chased us down the sidewalks of the courthouse shouting, "Which one of you is going to take this man home and care for him for the rest of his life?" I was scared out of my skin. We told the judge the next morning about what had happened and they filed a grievance. The actual depositions from the jury took six months to get going and when they were done (parking, driving and lunch out of our own pockets) nothing happened to this attorney. I felt abused by the law.

The next two days, I was seated on a criminal jury. After the experience with the civil thing I was frightened to be on the second jury. It involved a black man who had been living with a black woman and had stolen her household goods one day while she was at work. The witnesses for the prosecution and the defense all knew each other and sat together outside the court and ate lunch together. It was one big happy family for everyone except the jury. When we returned a guilty verdict and started out of the courthouse, all the witnesses were laughing and scratching, while going down the sidewalks. I was seriously frightened to walk to my car. If they had started to yell at us as the civil attorney had, I think I would have gone back into the courthouse and asked the judge to walk me to my car.

The amazing part of this was the fact that I was able to get out of the house and into the world ---- and my family did not perish in my absence. This led to my husband making a call to the nursing school and getting an application for me to take the admissions test. I loved reading anything (medicine bottles, if I am detained in the bathroom) and have always been curious about medicine. But, I had married at seventeen ---- long before I knew what area I would have liked to study in higher education. If I were starting out today, I would head right for medical school. By being a wife and mommy for twenty two years, I had the best of young motherhood, and going to nursing school at forty made me an absolute fool for learning. I got the best grades and couldn't get enough of the books. The human body and the disease processes are fascinating. I have been retired from hospital nursing for almost ten years and still read everything I can get my hands on. I never thought I wanted to teach, but I love teaching people about their illnesses and treatments. Every family needs a patient advocate in the medical community and believe me, Florida is crawling with seniors, who don't know s**t from Shinola when it comes to their health. Their doctors never give them a reasonable explanation of their orders --- they need a middleman. I help neighbors here, because I was called for jury duty over thirty years ago.

I was called for jury duty again a couple of years ago. I spent the morning in a back room with the rest of the jury pool --- all the time knowing that I couldn't be on any jury in that case. It involved the Highway Patrol and my son-in-law (a Sergeant involved in the case) was going to be one of the witnesses, but I couldn't even tell the other jurors that I knew what the case was. After four hours of sitting in a crowded room, we were dismissed for the day --- the case was postponed and remanded over to a court in a different city. Never make the mistake of thinking that the law knows what it is doing!

Smack that Brat!

We were out in the car tonight, when the 6:00 o'clock news came on the radio. One of the items reached right out and grabbed me by the throat. It was the story of a three year old girl who threw a tantrum on an airplane that was about to leave the gate here in Ft. Myers. The parents could not get her to sit down and get buckled into her seat, so the plane could leave. Everyone must be strapped in for departure. The mother wanted to hold the child on her lap for takeoff and calm her down, which is against FAA rules. Every passenger on the plane was detained while this family demanded time to deal with their child, who showed no signs that she had ever been taught that certain rules govern public behaviour. I know it is considered bad form these days to use corporal punishment on children, but if a little smack had been used previously on this child --- she would have known who was in charge and could not have held a plane full of adults hostage. The airline finally had to remove the entire family from the flight and they had the nerve to complain. The airline did send them on their way on the next available flight and also gave them three tickets to anywhere in the USA for free! What? People are being rewarded for bad behavior? Get in line folks! The louder you scream and the worse your manners, the more you are rewarded, just to keep the peace. When I was a kid, I did get spanked by my parents, the neighbors, my teachers and any other responsible adult. I never had a ride on an airplane or was allowed to be loud in public or anywhere else. I was sometimes seen, but never heard. Most of my time was spent alone --- hanging out in the neighborhood. Come to think of it --- I literally hung out in any convenient tree! I listened to "The View" this morning and those four women of modest intelligence all supported the idea that children should never be hit. They were in agreement with the California Congresswoman, who has sponsored a bill forbidding
the spanking of any child under four. What do you do when your child has not learned by the sound of your voice
that something bad is about to happen?
They will not run into the street as a car approaches, if your tone implies that they are about to get a smack. They might think it is the "mother is at the end of her tether" and gonna belt me tone, when it is really the "look out sweetheart" tone that saves their life. Do parents of modern children not see the anguished looks on the faces of other adults when their child is raising Cain in public? We bite our lips in an effort to keep from yelling "SMACK THAT BRAT!" I am probably a throwback to the dark ages when we disciplined our children in love to "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it". Proverbs 22:6 I believe that children are a gift from God and we are obliged to teach them the things that will make their later lives happy and fulfilling, instead of self-centered monsters. The day is coming when the government is going to decide our every step --- what we can eat, where we can go, what we can drive, where we can live, how much we must earn, how we can raise our children, et cetera. If I were young, I would think twice about bringing children into a socialist state.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Our dear friend, who has talked half the state of Ohio into moving to Florida for the season, if not the entire year, swears that this is Heaven on Earth and all cities have just as high a crime rate. The nightly news is full of mayhem and murder,---- old people falling into canals, children being snatched from their mothers' arms, horrific crashes on the Interstate, bank holdups, gang fights and multiple other items of good cheer and reasons to stay awake all night for protection. This friend says that it is our imagination when we claim that there seems to be more crime in southern Florida than in northern Ohio. It makes sense to me that crime in Ohio is not as prolific at this time of year. Burglars and felons are not completely stupid. Why freeze your tochas off, when you can have all the crime you want down here in your shirt sleeves? We live in a doublewide park for people over fifty-five years old. Translated --- a candominium for crotchety old people who insist that anyone under fifty-five is bound to be wild and stay up past 9:30, keeping the good senior citizens from sleeping with their riotous living. In the words of John Denver,---"The sidewalks are rolled up precisely at ten and people who live here are not seen again". We heard that a lady and her sinful live-in partner were robbed while they peacefully slept, blissfully unaware that a burglar had cut the screen and waltzed in through the window. On a nearby street, a lady was attacked in her bed ( a lovely euphemism for sexually assaulted), but we are to shut our eyes and pretend that all is well in paradise. We never locked our doors when we lived for nineteen years in the country to raise horses. Part of our certainty that we were safe was a pair of Australian Shepards, who roamed freely and were big enough to scare intruders away with a sweet snarl. I watch these older people keep their windows covered and private, while wondering what in the world they thought anyone would be interested in watching or seeing. The sagging bodies of people in their seventies are just not big on "peeping toms" list of fun things to do on Friday night.
So, we arrive at this night. The husband played golf today and then we went out with friends for dinner and back to their house for lots of laughing and scratching over some card games that only idiots would play. Since it was so much fun, you know where I stand on the idiot scale. Once home, my honey dropped into bed and I checked out a few blogs on my computer. While I was sitting here in my big terrycloth robe --- with the front window uncovered for the whole world to see --- I caught sight of a man out of the corner of my eye. He was just rounding the corner of our front porch and I thought perhaps he was the man next door, who is here just for a week with his little son and his mother. I tried to act nonchalant and got up from my chair, as if I were going for a Coke or some such inane thing. I thought I could duck into the kitchen and peer out a darkened window to make sure he was going next door, where they have the prerequisite security lights that all golden oldies seem to need. After disappearing around the corner of our doublewide, he ducked out of sight and the next thing I know ---- he was riding on a bicycle out into the street in front of our place. He was young, too young for this place. I feel like an absolute fool for sitting here night after night with my lovely Dell Laptop. You know---come rob me --- I am old and stupid. You all know what I have been doing --- sitting here typing away, while I wait to see if he appears again. I am trying to act as though I didn't really notice anything amiss, but inside --- I am scared and just awakening to the idea that times have changed and I have not kept up with the world. If I go to bed --- should I take the hammer or the big wooden spoon I used on my kids when they were naughty? As you can see, my choice of weapons is woefully inadequate very limited. Tomorrow --- I'm off to WalleyWorld for a gun security lights!

Strange Things are Happening

You just can't trust anybody these days! We left Ohio and drove to our place in Florida last week. When we arrived and walked in through the screened in porch, this was the sight that greeted us. Keep in mind that the doors were locked and the neighbor told us that he checked things four days before our arrival. We were really stumped --- thirty pounds of glass everywhere you looked. If you look closely, you can see a fairly heavy ceramic frog sitting on the under ledge of the table. He didn't have a scratch on him,--- just sitting there--- ribbit, ribbit! Oh, yeah --- that white stuff outside is not snow--- that is Ft. Myers sand. It's beatiful! After unpacking, getting settled in and wishing we had a snow shovel for all that glass, we started asking friends what could have happened. The apparent culprit was an airshow in Punta Gorda with four Air Force jets breaking the sound barrier over our place. The vibration of the jets made the heavy frog jump up over the umbrella hole in the table (the weakest point of the safety glass) and the thing just plain exploded --- showering the porch in little glass bits. We have spent five days looking for another table, but they don't like to sell them separately, so we had a Formica tabletop made yesterday and it matches the table legs. There's more than one way to skin a cat! I wonder if I can send the bill to the Air Force? It's great to be back in the beautiful weather and we just beat that terrible Winter ice storm that hit the country --- I guess I shouldn't complain about a little glass.

And a Happy New Year!

The excitement is underwhelming. I remember an old T.V. ad where the lady in question is trying to get out of going out with a real dork. So, she tells him she can't go out, because she has to wash her hair. Guess what I did on this night of joyous abandon? Right! I washed my hair. The husband is still hanging out in the LazyBoy and waiting for his last epidural, so we can run back to Florida. The translation is --- Holy Cow, I have to pack up again! Since we shouldn't be in Ohio right now, nobody thought to invite us anywhere. I think I'll pull out the party hats and bang on a big pot at midnight. Actually, I think I'll go back to my current book, while the husband is in the grip of yet another football game on his HDTV. The whole point of coming into my blog tonight is to wish all my blogger friends ---

A Very Happy New Year!

Christmas Fatigue with Google

It's simply amazing that we can spend every waking moment on preparations for Christmas, then awaken on the morning of the 26th with a feeling of letdown. The party's over! We have managed to live joyfully through another year of excess and fatigue. Three loads have run through the dishwasher, tablecloths and napkins are laundered and ironed, but the vacuum is still waiting to see whether or not someone will gather up the energy to push it around one more time. May I have this dance? Anyone may take the job from me, since I have given in to overload.

Yesterday and today have been devoted to switching my blog over to Google's new version. Since I am of the wrong generation to be a computer whiz, this was no easy task. I am thwarted at every turn. You can't have the name "Cookie's Oven" --- it is already taken. No kidding! I think I know who is hogging the name. You can't use that password to get into the new version --- you must use a Google account. What was that form I filled out for Google? They sent a verification, but forgot the housekey to my new home. Okay--- I think I've got it --- it took my identity and password, but sent me nowhere! Okay! I'll keep clicking on the faint white sign that says click here to continue --- nothing happens. So two hundred and three tries later, I decided to right click and try "open in a new window." Voila! Don't ask me why it worked, but it did. If anyone is able to read this post, it is proof that I still have a blog and it works --- just don't switch your account to the "new Google blogger" while in a state of Christmas fatigue. Wait until New Year's Day while you are hungover and it will be clear as mud!

Christmas Eve, at last! The family was at church for a lovely service. I was dashing about today like one demented. There was the church service this morning at 10:30 --- put on your best duds for the Birth of the King! Then on to the best grocery in the world to pick up our order for tomorrow's dinner. The husband is beginning to feel better, but I think I set him back a few paces with the grocery tape. ($303.00 for the meat, shrimp and a few last minute things.) This is the one meal of the whole year that our kids have looked forward to ever since I can remember --- so unless we can't pay the electric bill ...they will get prime tenderloin to celebrate the birth. After the grocery store, we had a precious hour and a half to get a few things prepared for tomorrow. The usual green bean casserole and the strawberry jello mold. (After all, Ohio is the Jello capital of the world) It must be because of all the church pot-lucks! Next came a great Thanksgiving dinner at our oldest daughter's house. We are all thrilled to see her # 1 son home from Washington for a few days and # 2 son home for the Air Force for a month. He just finished eighteen months of Arabic and a month of secret night training. He will be doing something that is so secret that he cannot tell us anything until 2029, when I am 93 --- what do you think my chances of ever finding out what he's up to?
After dinner, we ran home and did a few more chores for tomorrow's dinner and then flew out the door for the evening church service. It was a real blessing. One of the female singers is a very talented young mother/teacher who was one of our daughter's first third grade students when our Lesley started teaching.

She sang "Someday by Rick Vale"...

Someday, when this night is over and the star has faded, and the angels fly,
I will look on You with wonder dreaming of that first night, when I heard You cry....
Someday You will take these fingers, and with just a touch will cause the blind to see...
Someday, You will walk with strangers, but tonight I rock You, stay awhile with me....
Someday, they will call Him Savior, hope of all the people, Light and Life divine.
Someday, He will speak the words and touch the hearts of many as He touches mine.
You will speak in love and wisdom, prison doors will open, all will be made free.
Someday, You will walk among us, but tonight I rock you; stay awhile with me, stay awhile with me, stay awhile with me.

I am still floating on the miracle of God's love in the gift of His Son.

Merry Christmas to all! He Lives!

Traditions

If you look closely at this goofy reindeer, you might perceive that he is either very mellow or has been nipping at the eggnog again. His eyes have that look of....hic! hic!
Tis the season to be jolly....everywhere you go....oh, wait, that's a combination of two Christmas Songs and could confuse the best of music lovers. I have always had a passion for Christmas decorations and continually add to my collection. I take wonderful care of all my goodies and store them in plastic bins. Some of them even made the trip to Florida with me to decorate there. We didn't have a tree there, so I decorated a fake bamboo tree with gold bells and crimson berry chains. I made a bunch of great plaid bows and wired them onto the branches. Do you have any idea how crappy a bamboo tree looks trying to masquerade as a Christmas Tree? I took it all apart and am contemplating sticking up a tree with all my lovely ornaments now that we are back in Ohio. But, even though the spirit is willing.... the flesh is very weak at this moment and it sounds less and less appealing. I remember back when my in-laws were getting older and they settled for a little bitty tree on an end table.... I thought they lacked proper appreciation for the occasion and offered to trim a tree for them. They didn't want a tree! Now that we are getting older and our plans have changed for the season, we find ourselves in the position of appearing to have lost our love of the traditional things. The date on the calendar tells me that there is so little time to do all the things I once did with one hand tied behind my back. My parents were not big on Christmas, so I wanted to get my children into the habit of joyous celebration of the birth of The King. They have not failed me.... their homes are gaily decorated and the presents are wrapped.... guaranteed to please the grandchildren (I know, because they wrote their lists) and next Saturday is cookie day at my daughter's home. All these things used to be my purview, but now they are being taken care of by the next generation and I think this is what I wanted all along. It's nice to see the kids take up the reins and continue traditions. It's very nice to know that when the time comes, I can leave this world knowing that the kids will carry on with little pieces of me in their celebrations. Maybe someday my pretty ornaments will adorn another tree and a great grandchild will wonder who started the traditions in their families. Here's to the goofy reindeer ---- may he celebrate his way!

Whoops, He did it again!

I can tell that you are wondering why the snow and bare naked trees, when we are supposedly enjoying the sunshine and blue skies of southern Florida. Having bored the bejabbers out of all my friends and acquaintances for a couple of months while we packed up and raced out of Ohio, I am reluctant to tell yall' that he did it again. We have been enjoying the wonderful weather here for almost five weeks and suddenly "the husband" put his back out while remodeling the utility room. I have to put my reverse gear into action and start scouring the cupboards and drawers to see what we have to take back to Ohio for a month or six weeks. I am loading up the truck without the aide of the brute who is hanging out in the LazyBoy. It's time to call the utilities and get them turned back on and get appointments with the pain management doctor at home. We have been down this road before and I really think that I'm getting too old to pretend that I can handle this sort of thing by myself much longer. On the other hand, we will be home with our children and grandkids for Christmas. I think we should put in a fireplace at home --- I could keep warm and hang stockings, too! The question is --- do you think the big cities along the route home are ready for a little old lady driving a Ford F-150?

In Search of Colored Thread

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and even prettier out over the Gulf of Mexico. The hubby played golf with a couple of friends. He left the car for me and I hot footed it up to Port Charlotte in search of thread. Thread? Don't they have thread in Ft. Myers? Yes, but this is special thread --- the kind that you use in embroidery sewing machines in a color palette to make any artist drool. Here's the problem --- before the hubby retired, he let me buy a super neat sewing machine that does everything but the dishes. I took a few lessons to become versed on the workings of the wonder machine and then promptly forgot everything I ever knew about it. Over the weekend, a couple of friends who are very good at utilizing their machines to the max took me under their wings and forced me to watch the accompanying video for my Bernina. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I was able to embroider an adorable mouse parachuting down on a falling leaf. Oh, how cute! If you spent over a hundred dollars on a computer card to do these cute little animals and have never even opened the card --- you better hustle along and learn how to use it. Now, I know! But, I didn't have the colors of thread (special threads) to continue this work before I forget how to work the machine again. Therefore, $117.00 for thread, so I can make good use of my earlier investment. I bet I never get the car again while he golfs. I'm dead meat! Next time I'll just do the laundry, hang out in the sun and get a tan or maybe actually use the machine and the lovely threads.

I Told You So!

I distinctly remember telling you that my husband of forever thinks you can pack for six months in Florida in a couple of hours and be out the door without a second thought to the details. I, on the other hand, agonize over the little things --- like we have shirts in the suitcases, but do we have any pants? Also, I try to take things out of circulation a couple of weeks in advance, so I can have them washed and ironed in time for the great journey. HRH (his royal highness) wants his things left intact for possible use right up until the last minute. Since I am the one who does the list making and packing, I thought he would humor me and use stuff that was not making the trip. I did tell you that he would get a couple of miles down the road before asking if his sunglasses were packed? He has his glasses, but today is Sunday and time for church. Dress pants? Check! Suitable shirt? Check! Dress shoes? Uh? I left them out for you to pack!!!! They are not in the closet? I left them out for you to pack!!!! Since we went through the whole house before firing up the truck, I'd be willing to bet he left his shoes in the walk-in closet in Ohio. For sure, they are not in Florida. Honey, would you like your Topsiders, sandals or tennies with that shirt? Perhaps next time, he will let me pack the essentials ahead of time. What a turkey --- and just in time for Thanksgiving!

The Addiction

I didn't know when I ran off and married the man that he was predisposed to an incurable addiction. Sure, he talked about his love for horses when he was a little boy, but don't all kids love horses? What I didn't consider was that his blind, unreasoning love extended even to the smell of manure, green hay stains on their teeth and brutally hard feet. Manure is not a real problem once you get used to it permeating everything about your life. I have been knocked down by a skittish horse while leading her out of the pasture and then dragged around the manure pile, because like a water-skier, I forgot to let go of the lead line. The poor little filly kept looking at me sideways and tried so hard not to step on me. Like the idiot I was, I kept hollering, "Whoa" in my most authoritarian voice. It is hard to be the authority figure while lying on the ground with manure streaks on you clothes and hair. The problem I had was with the smell of horseflesh on my husband's clothing and skin that came with the constant grooming and currying of his precious equines. When you raise horses for the show ring, your life is scheduled by the needs of the horses. Do they need feeding, exercising, grooming, breeding, veterinarian care,your life savings or any other myriad of things? The hubby would feed in the morning in his business suit and then cheerily head off to the office smelling of "Eau de Hors Hide". You may anticipate an evening out after the hubby gets home from work and has fed the gang in the barn, only to discover that one of their number has been secretly plotting all afternoon to develop a case of colic..... which will require a half gallon mineral oil lavage and being led around the paddock for a couple of hours. Horses who colic are not allowed to lie down until they have done their duty and produced a manure pile to prove that their intestines have not twisted in a volvulus. We all know where the wife falls on the priority scale with this warm pile of poo! Honey, would you like to take a turn leading him for a while? So, much for dinner out.
Vacations become trips to horse shows or a quick run to Texas to take your hot mare to visit that stud with a strong hip and long neck. Not only do they have the privilege of messing with your mare.... they get paid for doing it! Eleven months and ten days later, you find yourself hanging out in the barn at all hours of the day and night awaiting the birth of the new foal. You breed your mares in late winter or early spring, because you want your babies born as close to Jan. 1st as possible. We are talking AFTER Jan. 1st! If a baby should happen to hit the ground on Christmas, it would become a year old on Jan. 1st. All horses become a year older on that day and must compete with other horses in that age class, where the rest of the horses are eleven or twelve months old, but yours is only two weeks old chronologically. People who turn up at a show with a large, well developed weanling don't fool anyone.... everyone calls those babies "turkeys", because they were probably born on Thanksgiving and hidden in the barn until January.
It all started when I was in nursing school (at forty years old) and was studying every night. My poor husband was so bored and I was up to my eyeballs trying to study and keep up with a bunch of eighteen year olds. We were sitting on the front stoop looking at the stars one night when my honey said, "I've always wanted a horse of my own." Like my brain was in the off position, I replied, "So, go buy one and board it somewhere." I think the actual purchase happened the next day.... there just happened to be a gelding offered for sale in the newspaper and BAM!... we sold the house, bought acreage in the country and started
building a home and barn in the outskirts of town. I won't lie and say that I didn't like the country or that I didn't like having a few horses in the backyard, but a very wise patient at the hospital said, "Never add onto your barn." Owning a couple of nags only lasted until his first foal won the Michigan Breeder's Futurity. The addiction was on and he wanted more and more. Every stall was soon full and the mares had babies in the stall with them and they were pregnant for the next year. Where where we going to put them? The little voice in the back of my head said...."Never add on to your barn!" I threatened to leave home if some of the babies were not sold and pronto! He did sell the ones that didn't appear to be winners and bred for more. I did love the babies.... they are born and are standing up within an hour and are nursing within two hours. If you spend time in the stall with them, they begin to think that if you are not their mother.... you are at least an aunt or uncle. You have about ten days before they start getting teeth and will suck on your fingers just like human babies. My husband handled them from the first minute when he pulled the amniotic sac off their faces and they followed him around like puppies. He would run his hands over their backs and legs to get them adjusted to standing in the show ring and having their legs placed in a show presentation. One newborn kicked out with a quick flick of his back leg and broke my husband's baby finger the first day of it's life. It didn't matter... he was mainlining on horse manure by that time. He was fortunate to win many state futurities and made money from the shows and the sales, selling to breeders in Mexico, Venezuela and even Terry Bradshaw.
Then, the time came when we were getting older and keeping a small horse farm became more than we could handle. He says we had to sell the horsefarm, because the mower broke. I was the mower and I got asthma. The day we moved away, he sat on the picnic table and stared out at the pond.... I know there were tears in his eyes, but did not go out and let him know that I knew how hard it is to break an addiction. They don't make equineaderm patches for people who can't get the love of horses out of their veins. He still dreams of possibly owning just one mare to love, but I know the secret....never add on to your barn.... and our barn door is locked.

At Last!

Okay, so I've been bending your ears about getting ready for the land of sunshine for the last month or so. We left the cold, gray skies of Ohio last Thursday at 8:00 in the morning and then drove for nineteen hours straight. Here we are a few days later and the sky looks the same as Ohio --- gray, leaden and rainy. And I am gray, leaden and rainy! I loll about on my bed like Cleopatra on her barge. Not young and lovely, but stricken with bronchitis and nasty of temperament. We have sustained ourselves on the bags of food that we brought from home, because I was not feeling like fighting the crowds at a grocery. Last night, we ventured out to the local Taco Bell and grabbed a quick couple of tacos, while trying very hard not to cough and give away the fact the a veritable Typhoid Mary was in their midst. The couple in the next booth placed a gray gunny sack on the table and kept feeling it in a very peculiar manner. The hubby said, "I think there is something alive in that bag". I eyeball the bag and look at the size of lumps therein --- too small for a kid, not noisy enough for a small animal ---- Hmmmm! Could it be a snake? A very big snake? In Taco Bell? And I am worried about taking my bronchitis out in public? You bet your life, it was a boa constrictor --- very big and very beautiful --- but not something you would find in your everyday Taco Bell in Toledo, Ohio! The folks in Florida do things differently from nice, middle class mid-westerners. I'm not talking about their tattoos or multiple piercings, but snakes on the dinner table? The young couple were very obliging and opened the bag to show us their lovely snake. I was impressed! I was also out of there!
This was the second snake we had seen since setting foot on Florida soil. Numero uno was a thin black snake about twenty inches long in our flower beds. This whole thing does not sound like the paradise I have been promising myself while I worked so hard to pack up and get here. Perhaps tomorrow, the sun will come out and I will feel differently about the gray and the snakes. On the positive side, the plants we stuck in the ground last summer have grown four or five times their original size and the living is easy.
We already have two or three sets of guests coming down for Spring Break, but Christmas is still up in the air. The picture at the top is my forty-six year old daughter at Ft. Myers Beach last spring. So, if you are reading this and are related to me --- come on down! The weather is bound to clear up any minute.

Lately, All I've Got Is Leaving On My Mind!

"Sunshine, blue skies, white sand by the mile" --- that's a line from a song on "The Golden Girls", but it's true! Unfortunately, the traffic is as plentiful as grains of sand on the beach. Snowbirds, such as I, crowd into the state along with several hundred people, who are moving there weekly. We are in search of warmth from the sun to keep our bones from barking at us when the frost is on the pumpkin. The prospect of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) looms on the horizon as the gray skies pile up along the edges of Lake Erie and our moods become a pile of gray lumps. I really believe that I could stand to hibernate indoors, shut the drapes and pretend that the snow is not there, but instead --- somewhere over the North Pole --- way up high. I can be satisfied with quilting, reading and blogging, whereas my darlin' husband would go round the bend if there were no golf club in his hand or halcyon days loafing around the pool or just plain sitting on his porch and watching the world of geriatric strollers with similar ideas. Every time we make the shift from one state to the other, we get about four months under our belts and then thoughts drift to our other home and we start yearning to be wherever we are not at the moment. The advent of cell phones has made "reaching out and touching someone" so easy, that we don't even miss the kids too much and they can visit --- if they bring enough sleeping bags.
One of our close friends called from Ft. Myers today to say they were cooking out and we could come on over. That really stinks! It is really chilly here in Ohio and he was just rubbing it in --- like SPF #15 onto my goose pimples. There are so many things to be accomplished here --- like trimming the flower beds down for the year, washing and storing the porch furniture and making to do lists for all the things we need to haul back to Florida for the winter. Talking about that porch furniture on the deck --- a crazed squirrel has attacked one of the cushions on the wicker loveseat and pulled the foam rubber out. He is going to be really constipated if he is eating it or he is going to have a lovely soft nest for the winter. The chipmunks have headed into their burrows and are harmonizing to "Christmas, Christmas time is near", you know--- Alvin and his bunch? The leaves have been dropping quietly to the ground without as much fanfare as usual. The fall colors have been muted this year as though someone gave the signal that th