Chain Reactions

Holy Buckets! I've really fallen behind, lost track of time here. I just realized it has been four days -can you believe it, four whole days -since my last post!

So what's been happening in that time?

Nothing, really. Well, nothing much all that exciting anyway.

I'll start with Saturday afternoon when Mandy got home from her little shopping fling over at the monster sale in State College. I had given her a list of floss colors and quantities I figured I needed to use on the current tablecloth project and asked her to pick them up for me at Joanne Fabrics and she handed me this little bag with my "treasure" therein -about 10-12 skeins of floss, mostly in the green shades I needed. I promptly laid that little bag on the end table by the recliner and on top of the chart for the current project. Then, each time I would put my work down, I would lay it on top of that little bag of floss too -since I didn't have the time to stop and wind it all on cards and put it all in my storage boxes I bought and set up about 3 months or so back to keep my floss somewhat organized.

Yeah, it was one of those rare occasions back then when I actually took a couple baby steps along the path towards organization, ya know. In case you're wondering, it hasn't worked miracles in the organizational department, but it has helped somewhat so that makes it a good thing and progress in my book.

Sunday, I was a bit on the groggy side -for whatever reason I'm not really sure -but had gone out to lay down and take a little nap when I got a phone call from my grandson, Alexander. He wanted to know if my offer was still on that I would pick him up and bring him up here so he could meet Jonaton, the sonof the lady from Sweden who is visiting this area. Would I still do that? You betcha! Suddenly I was awake and moving a bit, stirred and turned the bbq ribs I had cooking in the crockpot, gave Mandy instructions about peeling and cubing some potatoes so we could have oven-browned potatoes with the ribs for dinner and away I went! Oh, and to make Mandy's time a little easier on her, I took Maya with me.

Away we went down the mountain to Milesburg where we met up with my ex-son-in-law, "Big Daddy" and got Alex into the jeep and zipped back on up home. I called my friend Janet -the lady Anneli and Company are staying with during this visit to make sure they were home, not planning anything drastic and made arrangements then to take Alex up to introduce him to Jonaton and vice versa. Again, I took Maya with us.

Now, I have to tell you this -Janet's home is a very large, very, very beautiful ranch home and there is very little, if anything, that would be lacking in her house. THere is an in-ground swimming pool, complete with a great sliding board going into it all of which is surrounded by a lovely patio, which is encircled then too with lots of very well-trimmed and beautiful shrubbery. In the basement of this home there is I guess what would be referred to by many as a rec room and in that area there is a pool table. So after the boys met, Janet suggested that maybe they might enjoy going down and playing pool -figuring (correctly) that having the boys get acquainted over a game of pool might just make the ice-breaking process proceed a lot easier. Which it did!

Meanwhile, upstairs -Janet, Anneli and I chatted about a lot of things and Anneli showed me a presentation she had done up on her computer consisting of quotes from various immigrants and/or first-generational people too about life here in the states or comparisons to their former lives in Sweden way back when. She also had several photographs in this presentation too and three of them were of people I had known over my life and had thought very highly of them too. One man had been the janitor at the high school I had attended so I knew him from there as well as through his children and from church too. Seeing his photo actually brought tears to my eyes as he was one of the sweetest, nicest men you'd ever hope to know.

To try to keep Maya fairly well-contained and entertained, Janet found some plain paper and a box of crayons as well as a couple little puzzle type games and Maya was kept quite busy entertaining herself. Janet also was quite surprised when she found out Maya knows the alphabet, can print it, counts very well and can write her numbers too. Then I informed her that Maya also has begun to read and she was quite astounded by the amount of progress and knowleedge this little girl has already and she's only attended pre-school programs set up primarily for autistic children! She will start kindergarten, as you know, this fall. I was still a bit on edge from time to time with Maya though as she can turn on a dime if the mood hits her and become a demon child at times but thankfully, she stayed on her very best behavior during our entire visit.

Yes I was quite proud of her for being so angelic. Well -angelic as far as Maya is able to manage at any rate.

We left and returned home, had a bite to eat and then, called Big Daddy to tell him we were ready to leave and determine if I would take Alex to Milesburg and meet his Dad there or just take him straight to their home. Big Daddy said if I didn't mind taking him to their home, that would be fine and that was a-okay with me too so, off we went.

Because his Dad wasn't there yet, I offered to Alex to take him to the home of his other grandparents and he said that would be excellent. They live just around the corner from where Alex and his Dad live so it sure was not problem in doing that.

As Alex went to get out of the jeep, he turned to me, threw his arms around me giving me a big, big hug and a kiss goodbye and told me "Thank you so much Gram for coming to get me and taking me up to meet Jonaton and spend this time with you. I really enjoyed it and I really appreciated it!"

Well, needless to say I was very happy to have him say that to me and it was more than obvious too by his expression and tone of voice that he meant what he said and wasn't just giving old Gram a bit of lip service. I had also promised him I will set him up with a g-mail e-mail account so he will be able then to communicate via e-mail with Jonaton in the future and also, as I told him, with a g-mail account, he can also read Grammy's blog and will be able to comment easily then on it too! To that idea his reaction was simply "Cool!"

Monday and Tuesday were both yucky days here -not just with the temps dropping a good bit and the dreariness with rain now and again, but with the havoc that stuff brings onto my joints as it seems to fire up my ankles, knees, hip joints and my lower back too into fits of achiness! That, plus I was just plain cold both days and could not seem to get warm no matter how many pieces of clothing I put on or how many blankets I wrapped around myself either! Today wasn't much different in that respect either as I have been freezing for most of the day again.

Now, if things had worked out the way I wanted them to, I would have, could have spent a lot of time Monday, Tuesday and today too working on the tablecloth but even that didn't come to pass. Mostly because Monday and Tuesday it seemed everyone and their brother was hell-bent on camping out in the recliner and that prevented me from working on my tablecloth then. You see, the table by the recliner is set up so as to hold whatever I need for whatever project I might be working on. It has just the right light available there plus, the electrical outlet there is just the right distance so I can easily hook up a heating pad to have behind my backside while I work on my projects too! And between the son-in-law camping there in the morning while he sips his morning cup of tea for well over an hour, then Kurt's TSS arrives and commandeers said chair for about 4-5 hours solid while Mandy proceeds to hog up the computer and the chair here, I can't get to my stuff to get a bloody thing done! Enter here a little more of the ARRRGH stuff I wrote about in my last post, ya know!

Tuesday afternoon, I had to do some stuff on the computer while Mandy was out doing some stuff and ended up having problems with the damned printer! Can't get it to release the paper it has just printed without it giving me an error that the paper has jammed, which it hasn't -it just sort of hangs there and the print cartridges clang and clink back and forth sounding for all the world like they are going to make the printer just blow apart! I ended up uninstalling the printer and re-installing it and still the same problem.

Then my mouse froze on me and I had a devil of a time getting that to correct itself. But eventually I was able to print out two attachments a cousin had sent me on our family tree on my Mom's Mother's side of my family. This side -also from Sweden -is the one which I've done very little research on Grandma's ancestors but have decided now I am going to purchase a three-month subscription to Genline -a really terrific ancestrial research medium for those of us with ancestors from that great country!

Then, finally last evening I was able to get to the recliner, hook up the heating pad and begin work -again -on the tablecloth. However, that is going to come to an abrupt end in the near future until I am able to get to a Joanne Fabric store -again -because somehow or other that little bag containing those 10-12 skeins of floss Mandy bought for me on Saturday have completely disappeared!

I darned near ripped the living room apart, as well as checking in the rat hole known as my bedroom too in case somehow, someone had magically transported that floss to my room or to some corner of the living room! However, all my searching was to prove to be in vain as the little bag has yet to re-appear! What gets me is that I had laid it upon the chart for my tablecloth and then, had the tablecloth itself, all kind of balled up ya know, laying on top of the floss so where the hell it went, is anyone's guess! It's not that it was directly out in the open and appealing or shall we say "calling" to a certain five year old who occasionally gets kind of sticky fingers!

But the floss is not the only thing of mine that has gone missing of late either. Last week I discovered that a brand-new bottle of Avon's cologne -Mesmerize -was no longer in the cabinet in the bathroom where I had put it, nor was a jar of some shimmering fragrance stuff called "Rare Gold" (also by Avon) in there where I had placed it either! Hmmm. Seeing as no one here has a clue as to what has happened to those items -or the floss -I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there maybe a ghostie or two loose. Considering how many of my things have just up and walked away from here over the years, it's probably a darned good thing I am not a firm believer in ghosts or apparitions and stuff or I would have turned tail and run from this place about 29 years ago!

This morning, I'd gone to bed around 3:30 a.m. but was awakened about 4:30 a.m. by Kate telling me she was going back to bed but that Maya and Kurtis were both up, both on the couch in the living room too. Wonderful! NOT!

I told her to put the boy back in his playpen bed and to tell Maya to come back out here and go to back to bed with me. Kurtis fussed very briefly then quieted down and Maya did do as she'd been told and came back and crawled into bed with me. Where she promptly decided it would be a good idea to scratch Gram's back then. And I am never averse to having my back scratched regardless of the time of day or anything else so that was fine by me. The back-scratching lasted maybe for 15-20 minutes at most until Maya began to get out of bed again. I told her to stay put but she insisted she had to "go pee" so ok, go -but do not stop and visit, much less disturb and wake up Kurtis and be sure to come straight back to bed. About 10 minutes later, when she hadn't returned, I got up to check on her and she was on the sofa, covered up with a big old brown furry type blanket and Kurtis was still sound asleep. She didn't want to come back to bed, preferring to watch cartoons on the tv from her spot on the couch so I foolishly agreed to this provided she did not go near Kurtis and wake him up. (Yeah, she lied and said she would be good, of course!)

About 6:15 I had to get up for a bathroom call and when I entered the dining room there was Mandy up making coffee, Maya in the living room playing with stuff and Kurtis -running back and forth, jabbering for all he was worth! Hmmm. Wonder how all that came about was my first silly thought and my second was towards Mandy and consisted of "Sucks to be you, Kiddo!" I went about my business and back to bed. When I got up around 9 a.m., Kurtis was out like a light and slept then until a little past noon!

Maya brought home a little project from school today that she had done. It pertained to going on a picnic and the kids had to cut and paste items that they were going to take on a picnic. Maya's choices consisted of Bush's Baked Beans, Macaroni Salad, two 12-packs of bottled spring water, a liter bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale along with a big bottle of Sunkist orange soda, a can of Crisco shortening, some Dum-Dum lollipops and some dog food. Mandy and I found her choices quite odd since she will not touch macaroni salad with a ten foot pole, we have no clue either as to what she would want or need the shortening for on a picnic and the dog food -well that's the real puzzler since we have two grown cats and four kittens here but no dogs! Go figure, huh?

Oh, and one last thing too -this morning, I was online briefly -just long enough to check my e-mail, answer any messages I had to attend to and read the Centre Daily Times online version of that newspaper. I didn't have a chance to get back to the computer until late this afternoon when I intended to try to do some blog reading but that took a back seat initially because some how or other, someone or something had been by the computer and had managed to delete all my bookmarks! Yeah, imagine that, huh?

I monkeyed around a while, couldn't find anything to indicate what might have happened and then, I came upon the bright idea to just shut down and do a restart.

I did that and like magic, they were back again and boy, you can just imagine how happy I was to see them too! If I'd really lost them for good, I don't know how in blazes I would find some of the ones that are really, really important to me to use! I still have no clue what may have caused them to disappear but it also took my Firefox as well as my Google tool bars out for a while too!

Ah yes, I do believe that it is all just a bunch of chain reactions -one domino falling after another, all trying to give me just a tiny bit more havoc in my life than I really want or need.

Let's hope though that it all stops here -now -tonight and that tomorrow there are no bad chain reactions as bright and early in the morning, Mandy and I will be leaving the peacefulness known as this house and home and travelling to Pittsburgh for my checkup with my surgeon down there. After that is over and done with, our plans are to head north up Route 79 to Grove City Mall for a little visit there, stop and say hello to my former sister-in-law and then on to see my "favorite" (as she likes to refer to herself) niece, Angie and her three children too!

Kate will be in charge of baby-sitting the two little ones since she has no school tomorrow and Bill is taking the day off work to do a few things around the house and kind of supervise Kate as she supervises Maya and Kurt. The monkey wrench to this whole deal though is that Bill had told his other two kids that it would be fine and dandy for them to come here for the day too. A move that Miss Kate was not too happy about as she figures by noon she may be ready to commit hari-kari from watching all four of her siblings.

I think I can pretty well understand her sentiments since there are days when, on occasion, that thought may just cross my mind too!

We told her not to go through with anything drastic though because she has to remember that Maya is also fascinated now with blood.

Don't ask why as I have no clue what brought that on but it is true! Maybe it's just another type of a chain reaction too.