Down RIver Drivel

Worth the Effort or Not?

2012-01-31T20:28:00.000-05:00

When you own (or are buying) your own home, there's always something that needs repaired, remodeled, ripped out and/or resolved, isn't there? And it really makes no never mind if you have a nice relatively new house or an antique, like mine is as there's always something needed.

ALWAYS!

This place of mine will be 109 years old this year and overall, for a house that age, it's not in really terrible shape but it does need a good bit of work nevertheless.

One thing we're going to have to try to figure out how to get done -sometime in the not too distant future -is a new roof. Yes, by the standards most people set for having a home reroofed, it's well overdue to have this done but lucky for us, it's never leaked yet and that's a bonus considering the current roof is probably at least 33-34 years old now!

Then there's the siding that needs finished up because the contractor who did the bulk of the repairs on the house after the fire managed to screw up my funding so there wasn't enough of my loan and insurance money left to finish siding the back of the house. Sure would be nice to find a way to get that done too.

We need a new window in Kurt's room as the one in there is in an early stage of rotting out because it was not installed properly -or so they tell me anyway -but other than that the inside isn't in all that dire a need at the moment with the exception of the basement, that is.

And that's something I'm really wondering about -if it would be worth the money, time, mess and such to have the old concrete floors prettied up and covered up with basement floor tile? I might think about this differently if the stairway to the basement was a bit wider with a handrail and also, if each room down there were also a tiny bit larger as well as being heated too but since it's highly doubtful that those things will or could happen here plus, we'd also have to find a way to make the area "deeper" too because there isn't all that much headroom down there, so I'm thinking there really isn't much point then to try to figure out a way to improve on that area of the house and make it into something a bit more useful than just to house the washer and dryer.

I guess this is one area where the old expression "Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" really is the truth, isn't it?

Supply and Demand

2012-01-31T20:08:00.000-05:00

I received a note today from a friend telling me that as of today, she is now officially retired!

Pretty doggone nice for her after working for the same office and company for 39 years. And I sure do hope she has a great time now finding new ways to enjoy her retirement.

But now this puts me in a bit of a pickle as I'd love to get her a nice little remembrance type gift -to let her know I'm happy for her -but one that I can also afford and that won't break the piggy bank, ya know. Plus, she lives almost 300 miles from me so we rarely see each other except once in a blue moon she make come here to visit relatives and I might happen to see her there, then, but who knows too how soon that will be. So, to get her a gift and have it sent to her -well, the darned postage then adds a bit more to the overall damage to the piggy bank then too.

So, what to do?

Well, I did what I find myself doing more and more these days -I went online and searched out for retirement gifts online where I found something fairly reasonable to my budget -although I'm thinking she might better prefer the picnic basket thing there complete with a bottle of wine. However, she's gonna have to make do with a little smaller present from me and that's final!

The nice thing about shopping like this is that I didn't have to walk out of my house, out into the cold to get something very nice for her and I think I really like that part the best of all!

The Letter!

2012-01-31T19:52:00.000-05:00

Boy, did I ever get a surprise today and a sweet one it was too!

I received a letter, hand-delivered no less and the biggest surprise of this letter was that it was from Kurtis!

I know his printing is a bit difficult to read so I'll interpret this piece then for you.

At the upper right hand corner -that's the date, January 30. Then he addresses me with the 2nd line there - and believe me, it took me a good while to figure out that was saying just "Dear Grammie!" (Actually I think he has it printed out as "Gramee" or something akin to that.

Then, the body of his letter is really sweet "I luv my mom! Maya liks to play with legos." (Yes, he has likes spelled as "liks." And then he closes it with the "Love, Kurtis."

Isn't that just adorable though?

Now that I have this scanned into my computer I'm gonna have to go looking for some photo frames online to get just the right size and type too of frame to put this in and save it for posterity. Well, it's either that or big scrapbook -which might be in order anyway too!

I don't remember my kids ever writing me a letter, much less one done while they were still in kindergarten.

That just makes me a firmer believer in the saying I had on my status on Facebook today. "All grandchildren are Brilliant, Beautiful and Take after their Grandmother!"

That's gotta be the most honest Facebook status ever!

Viewing Pleasure

2012-01-30T18:04:00.000-05:00

Our dog, good old little Sammy and our indoor cat, Pearl the PurrBall (because she purrs on a virtually continuous basis) have been friends since they first met -back in June or July when Mandy found Pearl and brought her home.

She was a sweet little kitten and still is a sweet, gentle, loving and friendly cat now too. The people who had been living in the house about 2 doors up the street from us had moved out and left Pearl and another kitten behind to fend for themselves. Pearl somehow had managed to crawl out an upstairs window and then, had fallen to the ground when Mandy found her. It was also pouring down rain on the poor kitten who then was about 6, maybe 7, weeks old so when she brought her into our house, the poor baby was shaking from the cold and wet, plus probably from being scared to death too.

Sam, of course, had to meet Mandy at the front door and definitely had to check out this new creature she held in her arms. So Mandy then put the kitten down on the floor and we stood back a bit, expecting the kitten to arch her back and throw up some defensive poses against Sam's advances.

However nothing of that sort happened at all!

Nope. Pearl took one look at Sam and sidled up next to him and before you knew it, the two of them were chasing each other around the house, frolicking like they were old time best buddies.

And they've been doing that ever since then although Pearl doesn't chase Sam every chance she gets now -only maybe every third or fourth chance as I suppose she is starting to grow up and mature a little bit. But she does still relish a good rough and tumble bit of exercise with Sam from time to time and she is frequently the one who initiates it too as she will go up to Sam and torment him until he responds and starts rough housing with her.

Here are two little videos that Mandy took the other evening here so you can see our two slightly strange and fun to watch pets in action!

As you can probably tell by watching these two silly videos, it takes very little to entertain us!

Switcheroos?

2012-01-30T13:47:00.000-05:00

Oh, Katie bar the door and whatever else she's supposed to do when you want to warn people about certain things taking place!

Someone in this house in on a cleaning kick today (and it ain't lil ol' moi either!)

I'm not really complaining about this as when Mandy gets the urge to clean, big-time, like she is on track doing today, far be it from me to whine and moan about something like that. No sirreee, Bob!

Just give me ample opportunity to stay out of her way though.

Thankfully, today's cleaning spur is just that really -cleaning. Sometimes she get a wild hair and starts ahead of time trying to figure out what things she can change, other than just moving furniture and looking to make sure there are no "mouseketurds" lurking in any corners along with the dog and cat hairs and other accumulated dust bunnies.

One of these days, I fully expect her to go on a total revamping of all the switchplates which, as long as they are relatively plain and such -nothing along the lines of Michelango's David, ya know -maybe all nice new plain white ones -I wouldn't be objecting to that. (Yeah, color my world calm and oh maybe just a tad bland, huh? Probably not what you figured I'd lean toward there, is it?)

But, since she's got half the stuff in the living room all out almost in the mjiddle of the floor, including my lovely organ I wrote about last week, maybe this would be a good time to convince her that it would be really nice, even useful perhaps, to put the organ back and put the cord plugged back into the outlet in the wall while we're at it!

Just perhaps the time has come for that to take place once again!

Won't the cat be surprised though the next time she tries to walk on the keyboard and discovers her own brand of musical ability then too?

Just For Suldog!

2012-01-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

Many of you who read my blog also follow the same bloggers so if I mention the name Suldog here, I rather suspect a whole lot of you will know exactly who I mean and also, of some of the many things he writes about and things that are high on his list of favorites.

Let me clarify this a bit first off though. Don't get too excited over this post Jim as it is meant for your information and not as an announcement of a pending gift for you. Although, if I ever hit the lottery really, really bigtime, I promise faithfully that I will then see to it that you receive this item!

Hey! I'm generous but also usually very broke hence the need to explain this a bit, ya know.

Anyway, while doing a little bit of surfing, looking for some nice little gift but affordable for my dear daughter's big birthday coming up in oh about 12 more days, I stumbled across something that just told me would make for a perfect gift for my good old blogger buddy, Jim -aka Suldog!

If you read his stuff then you know already that he's is heavy duty interested in sports -basketball, baseball, football and the like. Heck he's been playing on a softball team for umpteen years and for the past several years has professed time and time again that this will be the year he will finally give up playing that game because his knees are about ready to go totally out on him, (Wondering now if this will be the end of that road (year) for him?)

But anyway, what did I spy (with my one little eye) today but baseball cufflinks however, these aren't your run-of-the-mill cufflinks honoring the great all-American sport of baseball. No sirree!

These babies are made using leathers from old seats and such from famous baseball parks! And one of those parks that has cufflinks made from it is none other than Fenway Park which I do believe is up in Boston and that those Red Sox are one of Jim's favorite teams too!

I thought this would be something he might be interested in seeing -at the very least -or maybe even getting himself a set or letting his wife get that for him for some special occasion type gift.

Just hit me as being a great way to pay tribute to one of the things that's taken a good place of interest in a person's life, ya know!

Ah Woe is Me!

2012-01-30T11:45:00.001-05:00

Let me first set this record straight here.

I do love plants! Flowers, especially, are high on my list of things I enjoy and appreciate but, to see how they respond under my apparently not fastidious enough care, would make folks think I am definitely a plant hater.

Green thumbs do not run in this part of my family tree!

That's some news that my Grandfather would find totally appalling, for sure. He always had flowers growing in little beds around the house and yard -everything he could possibly get that would grow in this climate during the spring thru fall months, I think he had it growing here.

One thing I don't ever recall seeing here though was any kind of special stuff to make the flowers grow bigger, stronger, faster, bloom hardy, etc. I wonder, were he alive and gardening today, would he try something like ProPlants for get well plants?

Indoor plants -and I grew up with lots and lots of beautiful African Violets growing and on display all over the downstairs of this old house as it was one of my Grandma's favorite things, favorite plants. And they too all grew and blossomed so well for her. But under my tutelage, the longest any plant has ever survived here as an ivy plant that somehow managed to live about 3 years in my kitchen!

And I thought that was quite an achievement too, believe you me!

I have a cousin on my Dad's side of the family who is a horticulturist and became interested in flowers way back when he was probably only about 8-10 years old. By the time he was maybe a freshman in high school, he had converted the back porch on his family's home into a makeshift greenhouse and was then growing orchids -beautiful, beautiful and very delicate orchids -in a large old fish tank! I can still see the look of shock and admiration in my Mom's eyes, on her face, when he showed her the various flowers he had growing -and blooming -in that porch.

One would never know I have people in my family trees who have the ability to breathe life, as it were, into these plants because I sure don't!

I keep telling myself that someday I'll do better but then, knowing my prior track record, and ability to kill, not nurture, I think it's best that I steer clear of harming any more of the floral community, don't you?

Master and Slave

2012-01-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday -that would be Sunday -we managed to get up (rise and sort of shine), get ready and made it out in time for church. Some Sundays, that's an impossible feat just for me to wake up in time to even think about getting ready to leave the house, ya know.

Since the kids both attend Sunday School immediately after services, we now also take two vehicle to transport four people to church. Why? Well, because Mandy stays after the service to help with the kids and be there when the Sunday School ends to bring them home. Meanwhile, I run to the local grocery store for the Sunday paper (Pittsburgh Post Gazette) and pick up other things too from time to time for our Sunday dinner or for Sunday brunch coffee and whatever trips my tastebuds trigger on that particular occasion.

Yesterday, it was doughnuts -cream filled for the most part with a couple other types -to have with my after-church coffee and while I read over the paper and messed around a bit with the crossword puzzles then too.

But yesterday morning, as Maya and I walked up the sidewalk to go into church, I realized what a beautiful morning it was. Sunny, bright and actually didn't even feel like January cold at all.

What a change the day had in store for us though!

When I left church, there seemed to be a very icy touch to the wind blowing things around -an iciness I sure hadn't felt a little over an hour earlier when I entered the building.

Just amazing how quickly temperatures can and do drop, how much colder it feels when just a bit of a breeze stirs up around a body too, isn't it?

And how our lives often parallel the weather at times.

Things sometimes do change in a heartbeat while others change, but more gradually, gracefully perhaps.

If someone had told me 9-10 years ago that someone in our lives was not going to be at all the same person today that he was then, I would have said that would be the most improbable thing ever.

But, sadly, I now know how that does happen. The winds of change to our lives, within our family came unannounced initially, then slowly at first, we noticed a few minor changes but three years ago now, things began to evolve even more and now, I would hope they've peaked out and that the individual involved in this mess has now perhaps reached bottom.

What caused all this upheaval, the "winds of change?"

That would be this.

DRUGS: I destroy homes, tear families apart, take your children, and that's just the start. I'm more costly than diamonds, more costly than gold, the sorrow I bring is a sight to behold, and if u need me, remember I'm easily found. I live all around you, in schools and in town. I live with the rich, I live with the poor, I live down the street, and maybe next door. My power is awesome; try me.......you'll see, but if you do, you may never break free. Just try me once and I might let you go, but try me twice, and I'll own your soul. When I possess you, you'll steal and you'll lie. You'll do what you have to just to get high. The crimes you'll commit, for my narcotic charms will be worth the pleasure you'll feel in your arms. You'll lie to your mother; you'll steal from your dad. When you see their tears, you should feel sad. But you'll forget your morals and how you were raised, I'll be your conscience, I'll teach you my ways. I take kids from parents, and parents from kids, I turn people from god, and separate from friends. I'll take everything from you, your looks and your pride, I'll be with you always, right by your side. You'll give up everything your family, your home, your friends, your money, then you'll be alone. I'll take and take, till you have nothing more to give. When I'm finished with you you'll be lucky to live. If you try me be warned this is no game. If given the chance, I'll drive you insane. I'll ravish your body; I'll control your mind. I'll own you completely; your soul will be mine. The nightmares I'll give you while lying in bed, the voices you'll hear from inside your head, the sweats, the shakes, the visions you'll see; I want you to know, these are all gifts from me, But then it's too late, and you'll know in your heart, that you are mine, and we shall not part. You'll regret that you tried me, they always do, but you came to me, not I to you. You knew this would happen. Many times you were told, but you challenged my power, and chose to be bold. You could have said no, and just walked away, If you could live that day over, now what would you say? I'll be your master; you will be my slave, I'll even go with you, when you go to your grave. Now that you have met me , what will you do? Will you try me or not? Its all up to you. I can bring you more misery than words can ever tell. Come take my hand, let me lead you to hell... Repost this and you might save a life... or at least make someone think

If someone had told me back then that this would happen to this person in my family, I never would have believed it then, even though I've been aware for longer than that of how terrible any addiction can be to cope with.

But seeing is believing -unfortunately.

Attitudinal Changes!

2012-01-28T12:31:00.000-05:00

Thinking this morning about lots of things -good, bad and indifferent -and my mind wanders all over the place.

One place where my wandering mind crept into today though were thoughts about how some things in our lives have changed and really drastically too in many circumstances.

One of the most dramatic changes -with the kids for instance -has been their attitudes about doctors, nurses, appointments and such.

Not too terribly long ago, we dreaded having to take either of the kids for a doctor's visit. They were horrendous times filled with screaming, shrieking, kicking and screaming small children, to say the least.

Even if while we waited in the reception area the child could maybe be as good as gold but as soon as we got called back towards the examining rooms, Maya especially would set up such a fuss as soon as she laid eyes on the Howard-Medical.com medical cart. This was before the LPN even had a chance to say hello to her much less try to take her temperature (in her ear) and heaven forbid that she had to be weighed and/or have her height measured too!

All those things were relatively innocuous types of stuff that are standard parts of a doctor/nurse's entry examinations but to these two kids, they may as well have just met Frankenstein!

But somehow over the years, things eased out very nicely -thank goodness for that small miracle! And I'm quite sure the receptionists and nurses are all equally happy that no longer is there such wrenching pain-filled anguish involved to either of these kids when it comes time to go see the doctor and even to the dentist too!

I marvel at how much they have adapted and neither of them has this trepidation, this terrible fear of doctors, nurses, dentists, emergency room personnel, etc.

The dentists who saw me when I was a kid would be scratching their heads in amazement too and questioning if I'm really sure that these two are either the same children as before or are they really related to me?

A Bit Baffling!

2012-01-28T12:18:00.000-05:00

There are lots and lots of things that truly do confuse me a lot. Rocket science, obviously, is one of them, people and why they sometimes do the really weird things they do at times is another obvious one too.

But sometimes there are lots and lots of other things that really do confuse the living daylights out of me and among those myriad of items to choose from various kinds of advertising stuff really can get me scratching my head -a lot!

Take this for an example: the ads we keep receiving in the mail from the electric company we deal with already in which they promote special savings to their customers. Then there are other things that offer low cost electricity but from other power companies and yet, they say our current power company will still be the provider of the current lines/power supply to our home.

Now, how exactly, can that be? That's the thing I really don't comprehend. Do you?

Of course, if I think back to an episode I saw on Law and Order a while back where some executive of some fictional power company and some other executives of other companies, managed to sell each other power and create well-timed outages so this company could then demand higher rates from their customers and so on, with the end result being that the wife of one executive and his daughter were kidnapped and his wife killed in the process -well sheesh, I sure don't want to risk anything like that happening, ya know!

Guess I'll still be confused, won't I?

Family Politics?

2012-01-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

I heard on the news yesterday and saw in our local newspaper the announcement that the gentleman who has been our State Representative for the last 19 terms (AKA 38 YEARS) is going to retire now.

That was a bit of a surprise to me as I had kind of figured all along that he was going to just die in office someday.

I'm not going to put any comments in here of my opinion of the guy either as those who know me also probably are already well aware of my opinons/thoughts about him, his time/tenure in that office.

What I am wondering now though is whether I'll need to make arrangements for another campaign yard sign to put in my front yard again this year?

This sign was in my front yard last summer and early fall in support of my cousin, Paul J. (PJ) Monella regarding his run to be elected one of our county commissioners. I don't know if PJ will attempt to run now for the state legislature as he might be too busy with classes and also, I don't know if there is an age limitation on state elected officials or not. (He's only 19 -just turned that the beginning of this month!)

But someday, I fully expect PJ to run for this office -just right now might be pushing the envelope just a bit too much. However, when he does make a move in that direction, provided I'm still around on the face of the earth then too, you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be there, supporting him with a big old sign in my front yard once again!

Three More Weeks?

2012-01-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

Pretty soon my time in what I consider to be a sort of purgatory will be coming to an end. But will it end? Really? That's still a bit of an unknown entity to me at the moment.

The "purgatory" I'm talking about has to do with the allergy shots my grandson, Kurtis, is getting now. The time table mentioned is how much longer he will be getting these particular shots.

He went through all the testings back in December and the first of January and the results of those tests were -in some respects -a bit of a surprise to us.

That he tested very positive for allergies to many of the grasses, trees, leaves type things was NO surprise at all. But the fact that he showed being positive for allergies pertaining to pork, green beans, peas, soy, onion and garlic -now those were a bit of a surprise!

And they've created some problems for Mandy and me too in the process.

How to cook for him has always been a bit of a problem -for his sister too -as they've always had some "issues" -shall we say -with various food substances but not to the extent that they created any rashes or reactions, at least not pertaining to the above mentioned foods anyway.

From the time Kurt was a baby, Mandy had to screen any fruits or juices to see if they contained pears because anything with pears as an ingredient would give him a nasty diaper rash but no where in the testings did he register as being allergic to pears. Go figure that one, huh?

The pork thing -which of course means pork chops, spareribs, bacon, sausage and hot dogs -the latter three things that he likes and the pork chops/spareribs being something he had only recently begun to eat and surprise-surprise -that he also likes were things we could deal with. I just don't fix ribs or chops for all of us for a meal until this shot period ends and we can re-introduce foods back to him. Hot dogs were easy to contend with as we switched to beef/kosher hot dogs and the bacon and/or sausage, we started trying turkey products in place of the pork sausage or bacon and he was fine with that.

Vegetables have always been an iffy meal item with both kids but not due to any reaction he ever had to any veggies, just his taste buds not being big on most veggies. But, wouldn't you just know it the green beans and peas were two that he initially would eat! That does figure to me because I am a firm believer in old Murphy and his stinking law, ya know.

But the roughest part of this whole thing has been trying to figure out what and how to cook without onions, garlic and yes, soy!

Soy seems to be a major component in just about any food products on the market today. One of those that Mandy discovered contains soy just happens to be the Nestle's Quik Chocolate Milk stuff and on learning that, she decided she wasn't going to remove that from his diet in order to preserve some degree of sanity for herself and for me! The boy is totally addicted to chocolate milk and LIVES for those periodic cups of chocolate milk that, in his mind, provide curative, restorative properties to him and fix all sorts of ills and ailments!

The onion and garlic thing was a big issue for me and my cooking though as I use those two items in just about everything I cook -well, except for breads, cakes, pies, etc., anyway!

But try getting allergy information about these food substances -now that's a whole 'nother ball game there!

Mandy did hear or read somewhere that when reading food ingredients on a package that the further down the list that a substance is mentioned means that it has lesser amounts of that substance in the product. So, with respect to products containing soy, we've pretty much taken that tact there. And we have done that on some occasions to where a product lists garlic powder too. My theory there is how much garlic powder could there possibly be in some items anyway?

As to my cooking, well I've made my own spaghetti sauce or marinara sauce sans onions and garlic by loading the sauce up with various other seasonings, including sugar, a bit more of the red cooking wine and bay leaves and the sauce has tasted pretty decent! (Yeah, I'll always believe it would be better were there some amount of chopped onions in it, but still and all, it was very passable in the end.)

But, I wish I knew to what degree he actually is or was or will be in the future too affected by these food items. Another three weeks to go with the shots and then, we can start introducing those items back in to his diet so as to see how much, if any, reaction his system has to them then.

Sure am hoping the onions/garlic and soy items come up as minimal though! And Mandy and I were both extremely relieved, as well as surprised, that he didn't test positively for being allergic to dogs or cats.

That could really have been very problematic news in this household!

Ups and Downs

2012-01-26T00:53:00.000-05:00

The past week has been a full one, that's for sure. Full of funny little things coming from the kids -mainly from Kurtis and also, unfortunately, very full of some major downers that do come along with life.

I'm sure most everyone has heard by now the news coming out of my Alma Mater, Penn State University, that "Joepa," (as many referred to him) -Coach Joe Paterno, died on Sunday (January 22, 2012) of complications of lung cancer. It's been a very difficult time for the Penn State community as a whole since early November with all the bad news of "that" event circulating like a tornado some days and no need for me to mention it here. But regardless of what some people may think about Joepa, he was a great coach, mentor, family man and supporter of education -in particular, Penn State University. Although I never met him -never even ever passed him on campus while I was a student there in the early 90s -but I've admired him and his work for many, many years!

He will be missed, for sure!

And then, on Tuesday afternoon my daughter and her children (Maya and Kurtis) received some very sad news too. Her former father-in-law -the man the kids knew as "Pappy" - died of lung cancer too. Granted, we knew he had very little time left but no matter how much information you have, how much you prepare yourself and especially two small children for such news, it's still a difficult time for all concerned.

Mandy had been explaining as much as she could, as much as she felt the kids could grasp and understand about Pappy and his illness and such but still, when it came time to tell them what had happened, she was braced for an onslaught of questions -mostly from Maya. And yes, those questions did come forth too!

She started to tell them that Pappy had no longer been able to fight off the thing that had been making him sick and making him hurt any longer and so, he had died. Maya does understand to a degree about death but Kurtis -I'm not sure there about how much he really grasps. He hears things but he may be too immature right now to actually comprehend this. Mandy also tried to explain a bit of what we think will probably happen and, knowing that the plan is for Pappy to be cremated, she mentioned that too.

And after that, Maya's questions began and that's when Mandy called out to me -saying "Assistance needed in aisle two, Mom" -meaning hey, I don't know how to answer her, see if you can help me out!

So Maya came over to me and began by asking me "How do people go up to heaven? How do their bodies get there?"

So, I told her that our bodies don't go there, just our souls or our spirit -whichever you want to call it. And she seemed okay with that explanation. But then, she asked me what happens to people's bodies then when they die and I explained to her that most people are buried in the ground but some people are cremated and yes, I was hoping that she would gloss over my use of that word - "cremated" but my hopes were all for naught as her very next question, of course, was "What's cremation?"

Now, trying to figure out a way to explain that process to an 8-year-old who has a tendency to pick up on things and then obsess about them, I ended up telling her simply that right now, I felt that trying to explain cremation to her was a topic she wasn't really old enough just yet to understand exactly but when she is older, able to understand things better, I would explain this to her then.

And thankfully, she accepted that answer. But then, she caught me a bit off guard with yet another question as she asked me if people who are cremated have cream rubbed all over their bodies? Hmmm. Now how to respond to that. So I said "Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose you could say that."

And her response to that was to clap her hands together and say -very excitedly -"I knew it! I just knew they did that!" And away she went, off to her own devices and seemed content with the explanations she'd received. If she gets her mind set on something and the answers she's given don't register completely with her, she will keep on asking question after question until she is satisfied with what she'd heard in her mind so apparently -for the time being at least -she's coping fairly well then.

I mentioned as I began this post that the past week or so had also had some ups too and those times involve things with Kurtis, beginning with his questions one night last week at the supper table.

He was trying to skirt around finishing the chicken on his plate that he was just pushing around, not eating, when out of the blue, he asked me "Where do ducks come from?" I have no clue what possessed him to ask this question because there are no ducks around us and nothing about ducks had been mentioned prior to this.

So I answered him, very matter-of-factly, saying "They come from duck eggs." I figured this would suffice but unfortunately, he had other ideas as he then began to argue with me that no, they didn't. I don't know where Kurt gets his information from but it led to a strong discussion about who was right -him or Gram. Just before he asked me that question though, Maya had left the table to go back to the bathroom and as she came back to the dining room, I said to her, "Maya, Kurtis doesn't believe that ducks come from duck eggs. Will you tell him that I am right and he's wrong because they do come from duck eggs?"

Well, I wish you could have seen the look on her face when I said that to her. You could see she was really bewildered about what the heck Gram was talking about there so I repeated myself to her and then, you could see a look of understanding come across her face -that here was her chance to side with Gram in an argument with Kurtis that she could win! (And do it without getting into trouble too!) So she immediately then told him "Oh yes, Kurtis, they do come from duck eggs so you are wrong!"

And then she geared up to have a nice long session of lecturing Kurtis to show him how knowledgeable she, his big sister is and how he doesn't know anything at all. I think Kurtis sensed that was what was coming too because he then turned to her and said "I no wanna talk about duck eggs no more cause I am not interesting to them!"

I love the way he tries so hard to speak using "adult-type" words and sometimes, gets them a bit confused -like saying "interesting" instead of "interested" but it sure does say that he's understanding words and usage a lot better than we realize a lot of the time, isn't he?

Then another day last week, someone had posted a video on Facebook of Etta James -about her passing and the video was of her singing the song she was probably best known for, "At Last." I was sitting here, playing that video, watching and listening to the beautiful words and music when Kurtis came up to me asking "What's that noise?" So I corrected him by saying "Kurt, that's a lady who was a very good singer and she's singing a very beautiful song."

He backed off momentarily then came back over, standing by my left side and said, "Boy, she sounds like Mrs. Lawrence when she sings!" The Mrs. Lawrence he was referring to is a lady who belongs to our church but more than that, she is also one of the Kindergarten teachers at his school.

I had to giggle to myself at that comment and posted about it as my status then on Facebook that I was wondering if Mrs. Lawrence had any idea at all that Kurtis thought this highly of her singing! To which, one of the members of our church choir then responded by saying "Well, now they know who to go talk to about joining the choir!" I'm still waiting for the opportunity to tell Sue Lawrence this myself.

So anyway, there you have it - a few of the light and bright spots of life in our little "fast lane" here and also, the things that had come to pass within my grandkids world that will change their family, their roots and life and the event that also has greatly impacted not just my world as an alum of Penn State University but had saddened many, many people across the nation.

Rest in peace, Pappy and Joepa!

How To Cultivate Potential?

2012-01-19T13:51:00.000-05:00

There are things I would like to have happen here -kind of a repeat of history if you will -but as yet, I haven't figured out how to do many of these things.

One thing I wish I could see take place is more musical instruction for both the kids.

When I was Maya's age (she's 8 now, ya know), I had begun getting musical instruction on the piano.

The teacher I had was a strict (boy, was she ever!), crusty old maid - Miss Grace Dom!

If my cousin Ruth Ann ever reads my blog and sees this post, I know she can attest to Miss Dom's methods because she too had her for her piano teacher back then.

Miss Dom made you sit up -very straight, VERY STRAIGHT! Proper posture was I think the first thing she tried to teach her students. After that it was finger and wrist position which had best be just as exacting as did your finger and wrist positions in school for those Peterson Penmanship Classes all students of my generation seemed to be forced to learn. Then it was on to the finger exercises and she was as much a bear over those things as the positioning of one's back and hands.

The coup d'grace though probably had to be the metronome and how everything you did, ever key you struck, had bloody well be according to the right timing on the metronome or the little wand she always carried in one hand would surely be landing in no time at all across your fingers to let you know that last move -whatever it may have involved -was in error!

I think she had also taught my Dad's baby sister how to play the piano too and I think Aunt Mike had said Miss Dom was "old" then but by the time I landed in her front room, she definitely should have been retired long before I got there! Patience was the very last thing that could be said about Miss Dom's attributes although the mere fact that she took me on as a beginning student and put up with me and my lackadaisical ways for over 18 months does say that she must have still had some patience left in her, doesn't it?

But anyway, I would really like to see the kids -Maya especially -learn not to just read music but also, to learn to play an instrument. But herein lies a bit of the problem.

When I was a kid, we still had the piano my Grandparents had purchased via Sears and Roebuck back in 1917! My Mom had taken piano lessons on it as a kid and she actually had learned a good bit about playing the piano too -unlike her wayward daughter.

But today, the piano no longer resides in my house. It's now in the "rec room" at my older daughter's home. It also is in dire need of tuning -to the extent that I wonder if tuning it is even possible to do for it today.

But we do have an instrument here in my house now -the beautiful electronic Hammond organ that had been the pride and joy of my late Aunt. Something I had coveted for many years but never dared to even dream that possibly it would become mine after she passed away. And when it was given over to me, I was in such a state of shock for quite sometime, in disbelief at my good fortune. Not that I am so talented in the music department that I actually know how to play this instrument. Oh my no! I can putsy around on it a bit but about like those violin lessons I also had as a child, most of my attempts at making music on it sound like a big old nasty cat fight much of the time.

I think the lousy sounds that come forth when I try to play the organ are what prompted Mandy when she last rearranged the furniture in the living room to put the organ against this one wall and leave the cord to it showing on the floor under the keyboard but to plug it in, would require the help of another adult to move the organ out, away from the wall, to be able to reach the receptacle. Yeah, that's what she did to me, knowing full well that I wouldn't be able to find someone when I get in the mood to try to play this organ to help me move it just to plug it in. Sadistic, isn't she?

But anyway, let's be realistic here too and come to terms with the fact that to learn to play a keyboard type instrument, well an organ like this one isn't exactly the recommended piece of equipment! That, plus to be honest, I don't want any unnecessary further possible damage inflicted on this item that, truth be told, I do treasure having it here in my home. Every day as I walk past it, I remember my aunt and the beautiful music she was able to come out of it and I remember that aunt for all her wonderful ways too.

I wouldn't want to take a chance that allowing the kids access to the instrument might harm it in any way, shape or form.

About the only solution I can see here to my lovely but yet jaded idea about their learning to play a keyboard type of instrument is if we could ever afford something along the lines of say a digital piano maybe. Even something like that, although the prices are way lower than those for a spinet or heaven forbid, a big old upright piano, they're still more than a bit out of bounds for Mandy's and my income put together.

And then too, there's also that other thing that comes into play here -that being do either of the kids actually have any talent or interest in learning to play an instrument. In many ways, it's evident they both do have a modicum of musical talent but is it enough for one or both of them to make it worthwhile to invest in the cost of lessons and of course, an instrument? The talent may be there but I wonder if either of them would be able to sit through the dull part of music lessons to learn the very basics without the child going totally stir-crazy in the process?

And then too, there's also the added problem for us in getting enough funds gathered to build a side room onto the house -one that would house the organ as well as the piano! (We barely had enough room in the living room as it was to get the organ in here, ya know!)

Oh well. I'll cross that bridge if/when it ever becomes a reality or a necessity and right now, it's highly doubtful that will come about.

Mr. Blue

2012-01-17T20:48:00.000-05:00

If I remember things correctly -which sometimes I do when it pertains to something from way, way back -like my elementary or high school days -wasn't there a song that was popular at sometime with the words "I'm Mr. Blue" I think in the opening line? Well, something like that anyway. I don't remember any other words but do recall the melody a bit. Be glad I can't record my lovely once alto, now almost bass voice, trying to hum the melody for you now.

Anyway, I do believe my grandson either wanted to change his name to "Mr. Blue" or already thought perhaps that it was his name -at least judging by the appearance of his hands, in particular, the fingers of his left hand. Not that the right hand escaped unscathed but it wasn't near the color of the left!

Mandy left the house tonight about 6:45 to attend a church council meeting. Maya finished up what she wanted of her supper and then, disappeared to her room (aka MY room) to watch the Disney channel and play with her DS and Kurtis had been here in the living room with me. Then, about the time I realized it was ultra-ultra quiet in the living room, he appeared, coming from the bathroom and said something to me that I couldn't understand as he waltzed past me with a brief wave of his hands.

It was that hand wave that caught my eye -a tiny bit after the fact -but I did a double take, got up and looked at him sitting on the couch only to see -much to my chagrin -that his fingers on the left hand were a very, very, VERY dark, dark, REALLY DARK DEEP BLUE!

Yes at least one -probably a few more -expletive deleteds escaped from my mouth!

"Do not touch the couch, Kurt!" I roared at him!

Then, I grabbed him and marched him into the bathroom where I had to begin the job of trying to get whatever it was he had gotten into washed off his hands. Hopefully sometime this evening but at least before tomorrow morning was my prayer that the hands would come clean.

I began questioning him, in the hopes he would explain to me what this stuff was all over his hands but as soon as I started to ask questions, he immediately dissolved into tears. For the next 10 minutes, as I scrubbed -and scrubbed -then scrubbed a whole lot more -the only thing coming from his mouth that I understood at all was his repeating, over and over, "It'll be all right!"

I scrubbed his grubby little fingers first with hand soap, which didn't even make a dent in the color. So, from there I moved on to trying the lysol liquid cleaner stuff on top of the bathroom shelf. That took a tiny bit of the deep blue away but not near enough. Finally, in desperation, I grabbed the spray stuff of Clorox toilet bowl cleanser, squirted some of that on the washcloth and went to work on the blue fingers with that stuff. I was a little worried about using the Clorox stuff for fear combined with the wash cloth that I might wash skin off too but lucky for him -and for me too -it did take almost all the color and left all the skin, intact!

After that, it was pajama time and as I got him dressed for bed, I questioned him a bit again about what he'd been into. Finally, he pointed to this little box on the table in the living room that said something or other about SpongeBob Squarepants and indicated there was a marker pen that came with that box but I didn't see any marker things around so I asked Kurt where the marker was. It was then that he told me it was on the couch.

Talk about feeling a bit of a panic, I was about that time as I thought to myself, boy am I gonna be in deep doo-doo with your Mom when she comes home if this sofa has all kinds of dark, deep blue marker pen stuff smeared all over it!

Lucky for Little Mr. Blue, I found the marker -sans the cover being on it but I did also locate the cover too -and none of it -fortunately for Kurtis (and for me) was showing up anywhere on the couch cushions or under the cushions either (which was where I located the marker.)

I stuck that marker into the box and then, put the box up on top of the mantle while giving instructions to Kurtis that he is never, ever, ever again to touch that box. Actually, I told him don't even go NEAR it or even think about going near it!

What kind of company manufactures markers that won't even wash off tender skin on little kids anyway?

Only someone with an extreme hatred deep inside for parents and grandparents and no respect whatsoever for any kind of furniture.

That's my opinion anyway and I'm sticking to it!

Meet Rudolph Harbart...

2012-01-17T01:53:00.000-05:00

The past week was, well - interesting - to say the least. A whole lot of ups and downs along the way but we survived 'em in spite of 'em all (as an old trucker friend would have said.)

Mid-week, Maya developed a cough -dry, hacking kind of thing -and by Wednesday evening, it was obvious she wasn't feeling up to par. Thursday morning though, still coughing, Mandy asked her if she wanted to stay home from school, telling her if she didn't feel well, she didn't have to go to school.

Her response to that was such that you'd have thought she'd just been threatened within an inch of her life or had been given a really long, terrible prison sentence because Maya informed her Mom that by no means would she be staying home from school, that she absolutely had to be there.

Some things are such a switch to hear for me as I think back to when my kids were in school. If I'd ever given them the option of staying home or going to school, I probably would have needed dynamite to get them up and out the door when the illness was gone!

Friday morning though, it was quite the different scene as about 10-15 minutes before the bus was due to arrive, Miss Maya developed a severe case of the weepies during which time she rattled off several reasons why she couldn't go to school that day. One of the reasons was that she was afraid to get on the bus and another that the bus driver calls her names. Yeah, right!

It took a bit of prodding but eventually Mandy got to the root problem which was that she had been given a paper by her reading teacher to bring home, have it signed and return it to school and apparently Maya had misplaced that paper so as a result she was obsessing about the whole thing and was afraid to go to school because she feared she would get into trouble with the teacher and get an "infraction" on her record.

Needless to say, she was on the bus when it pulled away from in front of the house.

Saturday morning was another really interesting day here too.

Mandy was at work Saturday a.m. -her last day -so I was here with the kids. Maya was upstairs playing quietly -a switch from her normal routine of pestering her brother by bossing him around, getting him in trouble -and Kurt was in the dining room playing by himself with the "Hungry Hippos" game.

He was having himself a high old time with that game as he played one game after another and after each one, he would announce that he had won that game or that "You won that one!" to his invisible opponent. Then he stopped playing that and came to me announcing that "Rudolph Harbart had gone home."

Okay, I figured, I'll bite and I asked him who Rudolph Harbart is. His answer was that he is his friend and he had just gone back home -to the North Pole. According to Kurtis, Rudolph Harbart lives at the North Pole with Santa Claus. Oh, yes he does! Quite emphatically he told me that story.

When Mandy came home, I gave her a bit of a heads up on what he'd said and then, I asked him to tell Mommy who he had been playing Hungry Hippos with that morning and he reiterated the whole story to his Mom then too. And, again on Monday when his TSS -Miss Dawn -was here for the day to work with him, I asked him about Rudolph and he repeated the whole story all over again for her too.

Makes you wonder where in blazes these kids get some of their ideas doesn't it?

Tonight, at supper, he delved into a whole different area -clothing!

I had on a red v-neck sweater made of a sort of soft, plushing kind of yarn and out of the blue, Kurt reached over and ran his hand up and down the right sleeve of my sweater after which he looks up at me and announces, "Gram! Your sweater is made of fabric!"

Why yes, Kurtis, I guess it is.

At that point, he looks up at his Mother and tells her "Your sweatshirt is made of fabric too, Mom."

Gotta love his observation skills, don't 'cha?

I love never having a clue as to what is going to enter in a conversation here next. It's the little announcements that definitely keep things moving along, don't they?

Swift Recovery

2012-01-11T19:37:00.000-05:00

Children, when they are ill, amaze me!

No, that doesn't mean I enjoy seeing them sick -most definitely not. But I do have to smile, sometimes even laugh aloud at the antics they will pull to try to get out of things, or around stuff, under the guise of an illness or an injury.

Right now, Miss Maya is slightly ill. She does have a dry cough that started Sunday night and isn't improving either. The lack of improvement though, I firmly believe, has to do a lot with the fact that she doesn't want to take any of the cough medicine that Mandy has for her and proclaims too that she can't take any cough drops either because -well, they are yucky. Sorry for your luck child, but you keep this up and you'll be enjoying this cough from now until spring arrives and then some most likely. Mandy did finally get her to take some cough medicine, the amount of which in the little dosage cup came to less that the amount of wine she gets in church every Sunday now that she takes communion. She was protesting swallowing that big amount of cough syrup though until I pointed out to her that it looks like the wine, is a smaller amount than the wine and she could just pretend she is taking communion then at home. Why that logic on my part apparently appealed to her, I really don't know, but it did and I'm not arguing with it.

Now though, she's maybe feeling a notch better because after Mandy left to go to work tonight -it's her 2-hour shift this evening -Maya knew she had homework to do and was all nice-nice about discussing it before her Mom left but within 10 minutes or so, she was making very strident statements to me about NOT doing her homework. So at the moment, I am currently biting my tongue so as to not give her any more things about which she could and would use to dig in her heels and argue more with me other than to remind her that if the homework is not done when Mommy gets back home, she'd better be prepared to get with the program in a hurry and get it done then!

However, she is going to be a bit upset when Kurtis gets a snack/treat here shortly because he did all his homework earlier when Miss Dawn, his TSS, was here, plus he ate all his dinner too. Maya did eat all her supper but the homework thing is there, doing the "heavy, heavy, hangs overhead" thing and when that comes crashing down on her as she gets no treat/snack before bedtime... Well, we'll see how smug she is then, I guess.

It is funny though some of the things kids do, the comments they make from time to time, isn't it?

Take this past Sunday in church when Pastor Carrie was doing the regular announcements for the week, prior to the beginning of the service and this week, she announced that anyone who didn't have any plans immediately after church, if they would be able and willing to stay and help out, they would be most welcome as help was needed to de-trim the church and remove the trees from the holidays. Upon hearing that, Kurtis called out to her that he would "Help because I'm real, real, really strong, ya know!" Thankfully, he and Maya were involved after church with their own Sunday School classes so his brand of help wasn't quite needed but sure is nice to hear him volunteer his services this early on in life. Now, if only that motivation will stay with him during the teen years and well beyond that as an adult!

This evening though, he and Miss Dawn had a bit of a difference of opinion and he kept disobeying what she had told him until finally, her patience ran out and she grumbled, a bit more than her normal correctional voice level and he became quite hurt and upset. About that time too, supper was ready and he came to the table still whining and whimpering about having been reprimanded. When I asked him what his problem was he told us that what Miss Dawn had said had "Hurts my heart." You know, it's more than a little difficult to explain things in a straight-forward manner when deep inside you just want to laugh out loud at his expressions!

So now, the time has come for me to end this little post and go dip a bit of chocolate ice cream into a small bowl and make Kurt's day complete. I had no idea that chocolate had so many healing qualities until seeing Kurtis recover virtually immediately from a myriad of illnesses and injuries simply by our offering him a scoop of chocolate ice cream or a cup of chocolate milk.

Of course, I should have realized it was a potion that great because I do know what a smuggled bite of chocolate candy will always do for me.

Definitely puts a smile on my face and a little lighter step to my walk too. Well at least until the pounds start piling back on anyway.

Time Will Tell

2012-01-06T12:29:00.000-05:00

Not too much happening around these parts this past week. Rather quiet and a bit boring -except for the fact that I have managed, since December 25th, to read five (5) -yes, 5 - books! I've got a whole lot of books here that I've purchased or had given to me or that Mandy has bought too, acquired over the past 2 years or so, that I have yet to read so decided Christmas Day to try to get a bit caught up on my reading! I'm on book #6 right now but not making all that much progress with this one. Hopefully, it will take a bit of a turn to the "interesting" somewhere along the way!

I'm still working on the smoking cessation. Still not completely off the nicotine but at least, I'm keeping my intake down to a very dull roar of between 5-10 smokes a day. That's an excellent figure for me, considering I had been using 2 -2 1/2 packs a day prior to beginning this program. The big drawback for me right now isn't so much the smoking as it is the sleeping -which this past 7-10 days has been terrible! Can't seem to stay awake during the day or early evening hours and then, of course, I can't fall asleep when I do go to bed, even if I am feeling very tired, sleepy, yawning, etc., when I do turn in. Then I lay there and toss and turn for hours on end. If/when I do finally fall asleep, it's very sporadic as I keep waking up within an hour or two and then, struggle to fall back to sleep again. Very frustrating!

Maya came up with a good one the other night at supper though. We were having leftovers and as she was sitting there, slowly eating (leftovers, unless it happens to be mac'n'cheese), when she asked Mandy and me, "Why do they call these 'leftovers?' Why don't they call them 'rightovers?" Good question kiddo, for which neither of us had a suitable answer to her -not one that she liked, that is!

Last night, after Maya got ready for bed, she came over to me and asked me if she could sit in the recliner with me and "snuggle." Sure thing, Sweetheart! That's what Grammies are here for isn't it? So she crawled up on my lap and we sat there with a nice heavy robe over us to try to keep warmer since the house is at a temperature that tends to leave me a bit chilled. Well, within five minutes of her coming to sit in my lap, Kurtis decided quite quickly that he too wanted to do the same thing as his sister! So he started trying to climb up onto my lap too only to discover that Maya takes up a whole lot of space there and Gram's lap isn't quite as big -apparently -as it used to be. Definitely doesn't hold a fairly tall 8-year-old and an equally tall 5-year-old there like it used to do!

This move, I know, was one of pure jealousy on his part -something that normally is displayed more by Miss Maya than by Kurtis. But once he tried to squeeze in and get a bit settled, Maya began to object to his presence then too. Both kids insisted that I scratch their backs which normally is a pretty easy task with one, but with both of them, well, it's not quite as simple then -especially when one's movements are a bit restricted by the presence of two kids the sizes of these two now! Eventually, when Kurtis decided to bend forward and rest his head on Maya's leg, things erupted into a bit of physicality as Maya decided that move wasn't in her best interest and punched him on the arm! Within five minutes of her throwing that punch, the nice snuggling session came to an end. Gee, I wonder why, huh?

With Christmas now gone for this year -unless of course one is celebrating Orthodox Christmas -I've had a lot of thoughts about Christmases past -mainly with the assistance of some wild and rather wacky dreams courtesy I guess of the meds I'm taking. (Chantex comes with a paper that says, among other things, this drug can produce vivid dreams, ya know.) Well anyway, let me tell you there is a whole lot of truth to that prediction!

Not that I could tell you what the majority of these dreams were about -'cause I can't -but I can tell you that the majority of them were populated with people from my past -mainly relatives, especially aunts and uncles long since gone from this earth. One of the dreams though I do remember vaguely was about Christmas and gifts, centering on a watch my Mom's older sister and her husband gave me for Christmas one year -I think I was about 14, a Freshman in high school. That aunt worked in a jewelry store so frequently she gave jewelry to her nieces for Christmas as she could get it at very good discounts and be able to buy really good stuff that way. (This particular aunt and uncle had no children of their own so they tended to get things like this for the kids in the family.) Anyway, this watch was a very nice watch -a good watch -as I recall it was not a Bulova watch but another brand of equal quality. It was white gold with a spandex type wristband and I had that watch for at least 10-12 years at which time, all of a sudden, this darned allergy I now have to certain metals (contact dermititis) kicked into gear on me and I was no longer able to wear that watch. What is sad though is I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened to the watch! I'm not one, nor was my Mom, to throw things out -even if it is something I can no longer use, I tend to keep things as mementos then but I haven't been able to figure out what on earth happened to that watch for many years now. It hadn't been on my mind either for just about as many years so why on earth did this watch memory suddenly crop up in a dream then?

Go figure, I guess, huh? Who knows what inspires dreams under normal circumstances but with the aid of various medications, I suppose I'm in store now for lots of other dreams about way distant times and events, aren't I?

Yep! Only time will tell about that stuff, I guess!

Almost Here!

2012-01-01T00:03:00.000-05:00

In less than 30 minutes now, 2011 will become history and 2012 will be ushered in.

Unlike a lot of folks, there's no partying happening here. The kids were in bed and sound asleep too by 8:30 p.m. -which is pretty much their normal bedtime -and since Mandy has work in the morning, she was in bed then too by 9:30 p.m. I'm still awake but hoping that tonight I will be able to fall asleep easily and soundly too so that I can rise and shine by 8 a.m. and start the New Year off on a good footing then too by being able to get myself and the two grandkids up and dressed and off to church by 9:30 a.m. That's my plan anyway. Whether I will succeed or not -well I'll fill you in on that later!

Although I am trying to stop smoking (or at least make a drastic reduction in my consumption of those things), I'm not doing it as a resolution type thing for the New Year -not exactly -since I actually started doing this about 2 1/2 weeks ago now. Today wasn't one of my better days -still under 10 cigarettes for the day but the three previous days I had it down to about 5. So gonna have to step up my watchfulness a lot more now aren't I?

Other than the effort to stop smoking, I'm just going to try to live life to the best of my ability -which for me simply means making every effort I can to enjoy watching my grandkids grow -and grow -and boy, they surely are doing a bang-up job of that too! Hard to believe they are as tall as they are now with Maya coming up almost to my shoulder and Kurtis very close behind her.

Having them here, living with me, was truly a Godsend right from the start and even though they each have their own little quirks, their own particular little tricks and such, they've always provided a renewed incentive every day since they arrived on the scene.

Two nights ago when my older daughter and older grandson were here to spend the night, Kurtis provided quite a neat little story for Aunt Carrie and Gram -telling us all about what happened 5 years ago and since then -basically it was his own version of the story of his life and I wish I'd had a tape recorder handy to have preserved that for posterity. Where he got the imagination to rattle off the things he told us, I'll never figure out but it sure was interesting to listen to his little tale.

The kids both had a great Christmas, that much is for sure -perhaps even too much "Christmas" in some respects because I've always believed that too much of the toys and new clothes can be just as detrimental than not receiving anything. Way too easy then for kids to price themselves out of Christmas further down the road if they get expectations of a plethora of gifts early on is my thought on that aspect of the holidays. They certainly got enough that they won't or shouldn't be bored all that soon anyway and Mandy calculated that she probably could got maybe close to 3 weeks without having to do laundry based on the new clothes they received too. We've still had a few little spats over the new toys and sharing but overall, it's actually been relatively peaceful in that context and the kids have been entertaining themselves with lots and lots of crafty things to play with along with some new games and loads of crayons and coloring books. So that's been a blessing, for sure.

Only one time did Maya start to consider whether she or Kurtis got the most gifts and we were -thankfully -able to nip that idea in the bud, then and there!

I've got a lot I'm actually looking forward to in the year ahead -the biggest thing on my agenda is the 50th Class Reunion of my High School class which will take place in early September. I'm very much looking forward to that event and working with several other classmates to try to organize it in such a manner that those who show up for it will find it memorable and enjoyable! (And that they will all be able to still recognize each other too!)

Beyond that, if the coming year treats me as well as the outgoing year did, with respect to my health, I will be a very happy camper!

My wish for each of you -family and friends -is that the New Year brings with it perhaps a large dose of that elusive peace and prosperity that often just seems to dangle close but still out of reach much of the time.

May each day be filled with laughter and love, good friends and good health! Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake, isn't it?

Happy New Year and Sweet Dreams for a great New Year ahead!

Positive thoughts only.

Innovative Name...

2011-12-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

This morning, I had to take food out to church to be served at a dinner after the funeral today for one of our elderly -and very strong -members who died on Christmas Day. And also, I had to work in the kitchen then too to help the other women there in serving and clean-up, of course, after the meal.

These events, while sad are also nice occasions in many other respects though too. For openers, if it involves a family you may be really familiar and close with, it provides an opportunity to see and have a chance to talk to people you don't get a chance to see very often otherwise. That was definitely the case with the funeral today as the gentleman who died was a brother to one of my close-by neighbors, whose wife is also one of my closest friends. As a result, all five of their children were present plus most of their grandchildren as well so I had a chance then to visit a bit with their kids. An added bonus is that I also know another sister-in-law of the man and her children too -and those kids and their Mom I rarely get a chance to see them so it was doubly nice for me to have the opportunity to visit with that branch of that family too.

But in addition, because the women who generally work to help put one of these dinners together is usually pretty much the same people from our women's group but today, was a bit different as one lady who was there to help today rarely is able to work at anything like this because she works full-time but it just so happens that this week, she had the entire week off from work, so she came up and gave a hand then too.

What was fun about that is that one of her sons is getting married this spring so she's just full of all kinds of things going on in her life right now as she's trying to help her son and future daughter-in-law in the planning phases for their wedding. She was discussing a bit today about the work involved in getting a florist -for openers -as well as wedding invitations too. She kept talking about Checkerboard Wedding Invitations which initially threw me for a bit of a loop as I couldn't figure out what the heck a Checkerboard Wedding Invitation was. Yes, I can be more than a bit dense at times! Imagine my surprise when she said that was the name of an online company the kids were checking out as a possible place to order their invitations -and not, as I had initially thought, the type of invitation they were getting!

Sometimes, I really do amaze myself when I don't fully understand some things!

Steady Business!

2011-12-30T15:40:00.000-05:00

Boy, that cookbook our church women's group put together this past summer and were able to begin selling it in early November has turned into quite the handy-dandy little enterprise for us.

No, we haven't yet sold out our inventory of cookbooks but now, we're running into other things that we're trying to address. So far, it's not become problematic, but I think we're going to have to set up some sort of program to address our needs if/when we do have to re-order reprints of our book.

It's not so drastic that we would need to invest in document imaging software or anything like that but I do believe I'll have to set up some type of program -perhaps just some relatively simple thing in Excel or something like that will do the trick, at least I'm hoping that's all we'll need.

The thing here is how to handle things if we do need to order reprints because of the way the Publishing Company would bill us for reprints. We would only have 30 some days to return the FULL payment for the order and to be able to do that, we would have to have a way to trace that we have enough requests for more books to cover that reprinting cost completely and that's what worries me -how to track that and guarantee the income to our treasury, ya know.

We're not to that point just yet, but if and when that time does come, I want to have myself prepared on how we can and will handle that tracking!

Leave no stone unturned, as the old saying goes, ya know!

Easing Up

2011-12-29T02:27:00.000-05:00

Yep, your read that title correctly. I do believe things are going to go a little easier around here in the near future now.

Not that I think this smoking cessation thing is going to be a walk in the park cause I haven't actually "Quit" yet -not in the true sense of the word. But I have made some good strides, if that means anything. Like today -okay, so I had Mandy pick up a pack of smokes for me when she was in town tonight but still and all, I only went through a total of 10 cigarettes today! That's only a half a pack in a day and that's ten fewer cigarettes than I had yesterday, which was about 20 cigarettes fewer than I was going through about 2 weeks ago too. So doesn't that count as some sort of progress.

Well, it does in my book anyway!

I've been doing something else this week too that I haven't done much of in quite some time as well. Can you guess what that might be?

If you've been reading my posts over the past couple days, you know I read a book on Monday -the one Mandy got me for Christmas. Well, yesterday I started to read (finally) the book my best friend gave me back in October for my birthday -"Black Hills" by Nora Roberts. And tonight, I finished that puppy! I enjoyed every last line of that story too.

Now, I'm thinking while I'm on a roll with respect to the reading, perhaps I should launch an attack on the stack of books out in my room that have been there for going on two years now and I haven't taken the time out to stop and even look inside them, much less read them! Ignoring good books on hand just waiting to be read was never my method of operation and I think it's high time that I get back into a little more normal vein.

To be truthful, the past two weeks all I really wanted to do was sleep -and then, sleep some more. Just couldn't seem to keep my eyes open much of the time. I don't know if it was that I was THAT exhausted, certainly not from any hard physical labor or anything, or if it may have been my body getting accustomed to the meds I was taking in addition to my normal pills for blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol control. Just before I began to take the Chantix (smoking cessation stuff ya know) my doctor had also given me an anti-depressant to take as she said sometimes the Chantix can cause problems with depression and that's something I've often had to deal with in the past so, track record taken into consideration, anti-depressants were on the agenda. And, sometimes they can make a person a bit tired early on, ya know.

But anyway, aside from the furnace running out of fuel and our doing some scrambling to scrounge funds to cover getting a delivery tomorrow, the house is far from warm tonight but it's a darn sight warmer that it was earlier today. Thanks to Kurt's TSS, Miss Dawn, who was concerned about us maybe freezing here, and she went to her home and returned with her own personal quasi-Edenpure heater for us to use till our fuel oil arrives! Gives us a chance to try something like this out too and see if it might not be a good investment for us to cut back on the fuel usage, perhaps, a bit. Worth a try to see if it would help much in that arena.

So now, I'm gonna head off to dreamland in the room that has NO HEAT but my own little furnace is out there sleeping away now and will have that bed all nice and toasty-warm for me to climb in there with her. I told her when she came back home today how much I missed not having my bed buddy here for the past two nights as I had no one to warm my toes up for me! Grandchildren serve many purposes, ya know!

Pleasant dreams to you too!

Gonna Be Some Rough Sailing Ahead

2011-12-28T17:09:00.000-05:00

I guess I can share this latest bit of news here now. What's one more item in a long list of problems from time to time? Right?

Well, hopefully this bit of news will work out for the absolute best though -once I get through all the pain in the dupa stuff of something called "withdrawal."

I've thought about this for a long, long time now. Actually, I did successfully do this about 12-13 years ago. (WOW! Has it been that darned long?) Granted it only held up for a little over three months but at least I know if I put myself really to the test, I can do it.

I started about a little over a week ago now to quit smoking!

And boy, if it was a tough thing to try to do 13 years ago, imagine what it's like now since I've been indulging in this bad -really bad -habit for darned near 50 years now!

Isn't it just incredible how stupid we can be and how easily ingrained things like this become too?

I haven't managed as yet to stop completely. So far, I've been able to cut back from a bit over 2 packs a day down to 1 pack a day and today, so far, I've only had 3 cigarettes.

I don't really want to put myself through the full anxiety of going completely cold turkey but rather to wean myself off so that perhaps the physical and psychological aspects of this addiction will wan away somewhat before I stop completely.

I have no idea if my game plan will work or not but I'm gonna find out.

Only two people had been aware so far that I was trying to quit -both of them blogger friends and both of them smokers too. My good pals Jim at Suldog and Dave at Rather Than Working. Jim, to my knowledge, is still smoking but Dave has been trying to go cold turkey for a little over a week now too. If we're both successful, maybe we can through a "virtual" stopped smoking party sometime in the future and celebrate!

Mandy didn't even realize until this afternoon -after I had smoked the last two cigarettes in my pack and bummed one from her -that I was actually trying to quit.

I'm hoping and yes, praying too, that I am successful at this venture and also, that if I can succeed, perhaps I can get Mandy to stop as well.

Just think. If we both quit, we could darned near be rich in a year's time with all the money we could save!

Now that alone should be darned good incentive for either or both of us. I know if I can make this work it will sure make several doctors very happy too!

Wish me luck and please, say a little prayer for me while you're at it too, will ya?

More Winter Woes?

2011-12-28T16:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, I just finished writing about our having run out of fuel oil today and how we're skirting around issues in getting more oil delivered and how to pay for it -all that jazz.

Since we had no oil left in the tank today, Mandy had gone up to the truckstop and purchased five gallons of fuel oil there and dumped it in the furnace. She couldn't remember how to bleed the furnace and reset it but got Ken to come down and do that for us.

However, with the weather as cold as it is right now -and bound to get a whole lot colder tonight -we figured that five gallons probably would barely take us through till tomorrow a.m. so the plan was for her to go get another five gallons of fuel oil to add to that. Ten gallons over the next 24 hours should be adequate, I hope!

So with that in mind, away she went, got the oil and back home but when she went to open the cap to pour the oil in, she found out she apparently had a whole lot more strength than she realized -either that or she'd finagled some welding supplies and managed to get the cap on so tight that she couldn't get it off now!

That'll teach her -maybe -to not fasten things so darned tightly. At least, I hope it will anyway!

Winter Worries

2011-12-28T16:39:00.000-05:00

Well, we'd been pretty lucky this year during fall and as winter began to arrive.

I'm referring here to our fuel usage and trying to keep the house at least semi-warm and the hot water flowing.

We got 150 gallons of fuel delivered the end of September and about 3 weeks or so ago, a good friend of Mandy's who doesn't rely primarily on fuel oil for heat, gleaned a little over 50 gallons of fuel from his tank and brought it here, dumped it in our tank and that kept us functioning a bit longer.

That is, until today when the well went dry!

I noticed when I was washing up dishes and the hot water wasn't going beyond luke warm and I put two and two together and figured we'd probably just run out of fuel.

Wonderful! Say that with a sarcastic tone of voice though when you read that, will ya?

I knew it was going to take some fancy maneuvering around to get some more fuel delivered since we still owed a smallish amount on the last delivery in September But between the two of us, we moved some funds around -borrowed a bit from my line of credit -and tomorrow, we should be receiving another 150 gallons of fuel oil.

I doubt that amount will last us the three months that the previous 150 gallons took us though.

I found a website where I can find out about small business equipment leasing but I'm thinking what we really need here is simply just a small business loan -something to keep us up and running ya know.

Now to figure out a way to have the household qualified as a "small business" and we could really move on from there, don't 'cha think?

Tongue Lashing Time...

2011-12-27T01:16:00.000-05:00

I think it's probably pretty safe for me to say this -and assume the worst -but I am pretty sure that the doctor's appointment I have coming up now in early January is not going to be a pleasant visit at all for me!

I rather suspect -judging by the few (very few indeed) times I have been brave enough to set foot on our bathroom scale that I am probably going to be in for a bit of a tongue lashing, big reprimand time, from my doctor when she sees the weight on my chart!

I have been very, very lax of late in my exercise routine -which as you may recall is simply walking the dog at least once a day. It's not that much exercise and truthfully, it usually isn't that difficult either, but for the past almost two months now I have rarely ventured out with poor Sammy, leaving that task to either Mandy or Ken to try to walk him once or twice a day.

At the rate I've been going with that meager bit of exercise out of my picture, to drop some of the weight I'm sure I've gained (we won't discuss actual poundage here), I'd need to go sign up for some program or other at a richmond gym and walk myself there to get a jump on the weight loss, ya see!

I kept telling myself from just before Thanksgiving on through Christmas too that I really do need to reinstate this walking program but just seemed to never have the time to get around to doing it -too darned busy either with embroidery stuff, or trying to sell cookbooks, or baking things for both big holidays too! Of course, the baking stuff isn't so much the problem as is the eating way too much of those goodies, right?

Well, as soon as the cookie containers are empty, there will be no baking refills for them for a good long while so I can eliminate that problem area then. (As long as Mandy doesn't thwart by efforts by smuggling candy -especially chocolates, which I love -into the house like she sometimes has a tendency to do to me!)

Spring Ideas?

2011-12-27T01:04:00.000-05:00

My son at times can be a strange young man with lots of diverse interests -although the overwhelming focus for him generally tends towards the automotive end.

However, a very good friend of his is heavily into biking -especially participating in various events covering a goodly distance of bike riding -generally mountainous type of terrain too.

Now, my "favorite Son" as he is often called by his sisters and jokingly too by some of his friends, is talking off and on about getting the same or a similar type bike to what his buddy owns and then, joining him in some of his riding adventures.

Knowing my son, he probably has given little to no thought though about all the things he will need to acquire -beside the prerequisite mountain type bike. Little things ya know -like oh, thule bike racks just for openers -for one example. And of course, can't forget helmets and special gloves and well gee, who knows how many other varied and sundry things he would need to accumulate to do something like this right.

And just when does he think he's going to even have the time to begin to condition his body to have the stamina for riding in things like this anyway when he's already crying now about how, come spring and summer, he never has near enough time off from work as it is to keep his grass all cut and trimmed?

Well, who am I to remind him of those issues?

If he really wants to give it a shot and decides to give it a try, I say go for it, Kid!

A New and Different Realm Ahead!

2011-12-27T00:50:00.000-05:00

This morning -that would be Tuesday morning to those of you reading this and not yesterday (Monday morning) as time in my world functions a bit differently than for those normal kind of folks -things are going to happen that will produce a whole lot of changes in my world.

Mandy has to take Kurtis for a check-up with an audiologist for hearing tests and to have the tubes in his ears checked out and after that, the changes will begin for us.

Those changes will be Allergy Shots!

When he comes back home, we have to begin trying to eliminate the many things which he has tested positive for on the allergy scales and many of those items are dietary measures.

We are going to have to remove several foods from his diet for the next 8 weeks and after that, we can begin re-introducing them to him again to gauge for any reactions.

Among the foods to be removed -first up is pork products! Mandy deliberately had the shot regime delayed until after Christmas since we had been planning on having ham for Christmas dinner and that just happens to be one of the meats the boy would willingly eat. That, as well as sausage, pork chops and bacon are going to limit not just him but us too over the next two months.

Green beans and peas are also on the list for removal too and of course, wouldn't you just know it, about the only other vegetable he would eat besides those two is broccoli but thankfully, that one isn't on the endangered species list.

But the biggest change for me is going to mean a total change in the way I cook other things because high on the list are onions and garlic -two substances which are staples in my cooking repertoire. Mandy, who has always professed to hate onions, had to adjust to the fact, early on, that Mom used onions in almost everything that got cooked here and she survived okay. But there's a big difference between like and dislike and allergic or not too, so I will, however grudgingly -and probably with a great deal of difficulty for me too -try to adapt my cooking to work without those seemingly all important onions!

Who know too but when this 8-week ordeal is over and done with, maybe I'll have enough skills using other seasonings and such that I could apply for some Chef de Partie Jobs some place or other.

Never rule out any possibilities, ya know! But truthfully, I'm hoping that things never come to that extreme.

A Nice Little Honor

2011-12-26T02:44:00.000-05:00

About two weeks or so back, both the kids came home from school showing off that each of them had been given an award by the elementary principal.

No, it wasn't anything like engraved plaques -nothing quite that fancy, but it was certificates each child received stating they'd been given a Good Citizen Award for outstanding achievement in Community Service! I have no clue what the kids were being given credit for having done, but whatever it must have been, apparently didn't go unnoticed at any rate.

And yes, Mandy and I were both very proud of Maya and Kurt for their receiving these certificates! A very nice touch for sure!

Last Thursday -the 22nd -Mandy went to the school to see the children's Christmas programs, put on by each class room. She took her camera along and got this video -which has a lot of background noise in it and the audio isn't all that great either as most of the kids are difficult to hear their little pieces.

Well, until you get to Maya and two of her best friends -who spoke out quite well! Check this video out and see for yourself. (Maya's the one with the pink top with a gray vest over it.)

She had no fear doing her little part and I really do believe that her participation last year in the youth theatre in Philipsburg is what gave her that amount of confidence she displayed here! The little girl on the very end -the last to speak -also participated in the youth theatre program too and she -like Maya -did a great job in her presentation too!

But anyway you cut it, this all makes me one very proud Grandma, and don't you forget it either!

Let The Games Begin!

2011-12-26T02:30:00.000-05:00

Today -Monday, the day after Christmas -begins what has to be akin to Black Friday, don't 'cha think?

It's time now for folks everywhere to flood the stores with returned merchandise and then, the opportunity to partake -of course -in those great, big "After Christmas" clearance sales!

I personally love these sales and usually do try to get out at some point to look over what's left, what's been marked down to a bargain basement price, that's for sure. But with all the stuff the kids got for Christmas, considering my closet it already filled to the brim (but of course, who can't always use some new duds, huh?), and cash is still a bit on the slim pickings side of things, I may pass on these golden opportunities this year.

Well, I say that today but who knows, by Friday -if the weather is decent -I might just have a change of heart too.

Anyway -if you like these bargain days, here's hoping you have happy shopping at 'em! Start the New Year off right with some good savings maybe?

Hope You Had a Merry One!

2011-12-26T01:57:00.000-05:00

The biggest events of the year are now history, aren't they? Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, that is.

Of course, if you are a believer in Christianity, Christmas -or the spirit -is or should be with us always. We may not see it that way at all times, but in reality that really is how things should be. It's a season where giving is what is the main thrust of the celebration and we, as believers, receive this gift on Christmas and have it with us and to share throughout the year, don't we?

And it is that giving should become paramount to all of us -not just at Christmas but forever.

Christmas -getting things ready -was quite a procedure here for me -a lot of baking took place and finally got to do a bit of Christmas shopping. Then, waiting Friday night till the kids -and Mandy too -were all in bed so I could get those few gifts all wrapped and ready.

When the kids got up Saturday morning, the excitement began to build for them when they saw the piles of packages sitting in some boxes and an empty laundry basket in the dining room. You can bet they were looking at tags on them to see whose name was on each present, that's for sure!

In an effort to try to ward off problems -mainly with Maya (who has a major obsession about equality in gifts) I didn't wrap the kids gifts individually. Instead, I found two fairly large boxes that all the items I had for them would fit into and then wrapped their stuff as one big gift for each child. That way, if Maya decided she had to check the numbers -how many items Kurtis received vs how many she got - I could point to the box and show her she got one big gift and so did he. (It also cut down a good bit on the usage of gift wrap paper too in that process -an added bonus when it was clean-up time, ya know.

Mandy had to work Saturday morning but I was able to keep the kids fairly well occupied with only some minor spats. I thought it was going to be one of those days when one or both of them was going to be roaming from one thing to another of getting into mischief when I got up, and there was Maya in the bathroom, rinsing her hair! A good bit of water splashed -of course -all over the bathroom floor and that sight didn't give me very positive vibes, that's for sure. There she was with her bathing suit on -of all things on a very cold morning -head over the sink, cold water running and a small container in her hand that she was using to collect the water and to try to rinse the obvious soapsuds out of her hair. I ended up turning on the shower and having her kneel over the tub and rinsing the suds out and admonished her with the fact that any more stunts like that today and Gram was gonna get on the phone and make a call to a very important number. After all, I informed her that she needed to remember I just happen to have Santa's number on speed dial!

Apparently that warning did some good because both kids were actually pretty calm after that start to my day.

Around 2 p.m. it was time to get ready for church as there was to be a candlelight service at 4 p.m. and the children from our church were going to be doing their little pageant at the opening part of that service. As such, they were doing a nativity scene and Maya had the honor of being Mary, while Kurtis was to be a shepherd. They were both thrilled to be in this pageant and therefore, there were no complaints about getting ready for church that day.

Here's the video Mandy did of the Nativity as presented by the kids at our church this year.

After church and back home, time to get supper on the table! I had fixed a ham, cheesy hash brown potato casserole, broccoli and cauliflower, along with cranberry-orange relish, Swedish Bondost cheese and nut rolls of various flavors all sliced up on a big platter. Considering how picky both kids can be about food at times and especially Maya where potatoes are concerned, supper went relatively smooth enough with Kurtis being the one who was doing a good bit of lollygagging around, playing with his food but finally finishing up.

We were going to wait to do our gift exchange till Uncle Clayton, his girlfriend, Elizabeth and her son, Ryan got down to the house but decided to preserve a bit of our own sanity, we would go ahead and distribute presents and then open those family gifts. Then, when they finally arrived, the kids got the excitement of watching them open presents so it lasted for a second round that way!

Surprisingly enough, both kids went to bed very nicely a bit later than their usual bedtime -around 10 p.m. -but no fussing over having to hit the sack that as both of them were pretty darned tuckered out by then. (They're both accustomed to a pretty firm bedtime of 8 p.m. so two hours over that time and yes, they were happy to head off to dreamland!)

They were up and at 'em though by 8 a.m. Christmas Day and this time, I think they were just about overwhelmed with all the gifts they received!

Both kids got an abundance of presents for sure! Mandy had signed them both up for a program run by a church about 18 miles or so from us that does a gift campaign for children and through that as well as a friend who enrolled them in the Toys for Tots program too, they had one fantastic Christmas, for sure! Lots and lots of new clothes and a goodly number of toys as well so both of them are very well outfitted now.

The rest of Christmas Day was a very lazy day as both Mandy and I spent the time relaxing while the kids enjoyed checking out their new toys with only one minor incident late today when Maya started to get ready to claim that Kurtis got more than she did but I was able to cut her off at the pass on that incident as soon as I saw it beginning to surface. Thank goodness for that small favor so the meltdown was avoided completely!

And now tonight, as I type this, I wish everyone could have a Christmas like ours was -peaceful, calm, food in abundance and more gifts than two small children really needed, for sure.

But as great as all that was to enjoy what I'd really love to see is people taking the opportunity to worship on this special occasion to recognize the REAL reason for this beautiful and very meaningful holiday. To share in the Good News that Christ, the King, came to earth 2000 years ago with the gifts of love, peace and goodwill toward ALL is the most beautiful present of all.

Merry Christmas! And, of course, a Very Happy New Year!

Rather Exhausting Week!

2011-12-22T00:37:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday I guess you could say -to some degree anyway -that the Christmas Season kicked off here in our little town.

Sunday morning was hectic as all get-out, trying to get both kids dressed and myself showered, dressed, hair-dried and finding my envelope box for the offering too -all to get out of the house and cover the 4 miles from home to our church and get there on time. But we made it and with only one close call of coming near to tears from Maya! Remarkable!

Pastor Carrie tried her best to have a nice children's sermon with the kids gathered around her but it was really obvious right from the start that Kurtis had his focus elsewhere and it was strictly to keep announcing to her, over and over, that he was "Gonna see Santa this afternoon at the Moose!" And yes, that was true enough as that was the game plan to take the kids to the Children's Christmas Party Sunday afternoon at the Moose -something that my Mom would have cringed to even think about much less allow me to go to such an event.

Of course, when I was a kid, things were different then. The day Santa showed up at the Moose meant you got in line, walked through and Santa handed you a box of Chocolate drop candies and out the door you went! Even with that brief amount of exposure though, that was something I secretly attended with other kids from the neighborhood and I don't think I ever mentioned to my Mom that I was going there to see Santa or told her that I'd been there either for that matter. The Moose, back then, at least in my Mom and my Grandma's eyes was the equivalent to a house of ill repute ya know!

But these days, the leadership in the Moose really does go all out to try to have a fun party for the kids with games, pizza, cake, candy and soda and yes, of course, a chance to see Santa!

Here's Kurtis -along with another little boy from our church no less -busy coloring as they waited for Santa's arrival.

And here's Maya, stuffing her face with sprinkles while she waits for Santa too!

This year there was a bit of a surprise with two extra special guests attending. The two reindeer here are local celebrities of a fashion around the towns in the area between Thanksgiving and Christmas and have been for many years now. Let me introduce you here to Rudolf and "Little Rudy." They had a pretty busy schedule Sunday as they had to make three appearances that afternoon and evening. I don't remember where the one place was they had to be but I did hear that when they left the party at the Moose they were on their way to participate in the Christmas Parade up at Irvona -which is roughly 40 miles from where we are located! Hope the sleigh was all gassed up and ready to roll for them!

Anyway, their appearance was quite the big thing Sunday -especially so apparently for Kurtis who was geared up to meet Santa but unprepared to have these two reindeer there two. As he was in line to see Santa, he told Mandy he didn't "Want those reindeer to touch me!" When he finally got to Santa, he wouldn't talk to him, but did eventually manage enough courage to give him a high five! Maya shook Santa's hand. Don't know if she actually spoke to him or not though.

So needless to say, by the time the kids (and Mandy and I) finally got back home we had two really hyper children on our hands -high on junk food and candy. The good thing was that they both went to bed quite easily that night as they were pretty well worn out and so was I!

Monday afternoon and early evening I started my baking for the holidays. Using a recipe from our church's new (and really neat) cookbook, I made nut rolls. The recipe had been contributed by the granddaughter of a lady who had lived about four doors up the street from me and who was known around the area for making a very good nut roll. So I decided to give the recipe a try and to my very pleasant surprise, it all went together quite easily for the bread dough. The recipe made enough dough to make 6 nice sized rolls and I filled two with apricot filling, two with almond filling and the last two with poppyseed filling.

As I was preparing the first rolls -with the apricot filling -Maya appeared at my side, asking what I was making and I told her these would be apricot-filled rolls. She asked me then what apricot tastes like and I told her to go ahead and put her finger into the filling and get a little tiny bit of it and then to taste that. I was surprised that she did that as normally, any suggestion to try something new is met with a turned up nose and a response of "I don't like that!" But this time, she really surprised me when she said "Mmmm. That's really good Gram!"

The rest of the evening while the bread was rising, she was badgering me, wanting to know when the apricot rolls would be done. Finally, when they came out of the oven, she was right there, waiting anxiously for me to slice some of the fresh rolls so she could taste it. I made her wait a few minutes to give it time to cool down very slightly then sliced her a piece which she took one bite -a bit tentatively -then pushed the rest of it in her mouth and announced she wanted more! Kurtis was watching all this and next thing I knew he was begging for a taste of it too! Then it became a contest of sorts between the two of them to see who could eat their slice of apricot bread first and beg for more! As a result, we polished off almost all of one loaf of the apricot bread before it had a chance to get cold!

And this mainly through two small children who prior to that evening would never have had anything at all o do with tasting, much less hogging away, anything with apricots in it! Go figure, huh?

Tuesday, I continued my baking spree and got about 6 dozen peanut butter cookies baked as well as 8 dozen gingerbread cut-outs and almost 9 dozen sugar Christmas cookies done too! I also got a batch of dough mixed up to make tiny tartlet cookies (some people refer to these as "Tassies") but they are still in the refrigerator, waiting for me to have time to press them into the special small tart pans that you have to use for them and also, I have to mix up the fillings for them too. (I usually make several with pecan filling along with some with a chocolate fudge-brownie type filling, pumpkin and sour cream and lemon filling too! Once in a while I also include a filling of cranberry-nut which is very good.)

Today, I got no baking done as I had a doctor's appointment at the cancer center -my monthly regular appointment to go in and have my port flushed. This is supposed to be done every 4 weeks in order to keep the port open and ready if the need should arise for the doctors to have to use it for some type of infusion or other.

After that, I went and did a little bit of shopping to make sure I have something -not much, but something anyway- to give to each member of my family come Saturday night. Nothing spectacular -just a little gift for the season from Gram.

Tonight, I worked a bit more on a tablerunner I nearing completion- -finally! Hope in the next two days I can manage to finish it as well as to do the rest of my baking -which will include making at least one, possibly two, more batches of the nut roll recipe! At least one of those rolls will be going to each of my kids for Christmas along with a container of cookies too!

We had a bit of excitement this evening in this area -weatherwise -as we had a powerful electrical storm pass through here! About 7:30, I'd just sat down to watch one of my favorite re-run programs -The Big Bang Theory -when the lights went off very suddenly, then came back on right away. It was just enough disruption of the kind that tends to scare the living daylights out of both kids who were already in bed but not yet asleep. So Mandy had to run upstairs as fast as she could to get to Kurtis and console him. The end result of a few more brief power outages was that both kids are now asleep downstairs -one on the loveseat and the other on the sofa!

And I find myself to be pretty tired now too -ready to turn in but with Maya on the loveseat, looks like Gram will be minus her bed buddy tonight! That is unless I want to risk waking Maya up and getting her to go out and get in our joint-custody bed ya know! As cold as my room is with very little heat in there, she makes for a darned good little furnace to keep one's feet warm.

Nite now!

Snippets on a Snowy Saturday Morning...

2011-12-17T11:15:00.000-05:00

Here it is, Saturday morning, a week to go before the biggest event of the year -in a child's mind anyway -and because I am doing my normal procrastination routines, I decided to add to that by writing a little post here too.

It's snowing -very lightly right now -here and I haven't watched any news programs this morning nor did I click over to the Weather Channel or nose around online at the AccuWeather site either so I have no idea if this snowfall is going to increase, much less if we are going to get any really noticeable accumulation today into tomorrow. I don't mind the flurries we're getting right now at all as that does kind of put me more in the winter and of course, Christmas, mood. But if it is going to switch over to heavier snowfall, that can put a big damper then on the good mood scene ya know.

I've been up since a little over 7 a.m. today -which is quite an early hour for me to be up and awake, especially on a Saturday morning to boot. The fact I gave up puttering around on the computer around midnight and simply went to bed then may have something to do with my waking up so early this morning.

Mandy had a bunch of errands she had to run this morning -one of them she had to be at a place in Clearfield at 7:15 a.m. to pick up a package there for the kids and after that, she had a few other stops to make before she would be ending up with Ken, working on painting the interior of a house a local landlord has up for a rental unit.

So that meant that it was just me and the kids and that hopefully, the kids would be in a good mood and willing to behave nicely to each other. That's always a bit of a dream here but thus far this morning, things have gone relatively smooth.

Note I said "Relatively smooth!" Not that there weren't a few blips on the radar screen so far today.

Kurtis came downstairs this morning, walked past me and gave me instructions "Don't talk to me!" Okay, Buddy -if that's the way you're feeling, a bit uncivilized, I can deal with that and thanks for giving me the heads up so I didn't speak to you then and really ruin your day!

A few minutes later I mentioned to him about maybe having some breakfast and he started to get ready to whine and then, apparently thought better of that idea as he announced he'd like some cereal. So off we headed to the kitchen where he picked out some sugar pops or some such cereal along that line. I suggested maybe he might like some oatmeal instead of the cold cereal but he decided against that so cold cereal he got while Maya and I feasted on some good hot oatmeal, cooked with a dabble of butter and a bit of brown sugar in it to flavor it up a bit! (I LOVE oatmeal fixed that way and so does Maya!)

While I was fixing the oatmeal though, the kids were playing -or at least Maya was playing but with her, it's more like just bossing Kurtis around. She does an excellent job at that! I don't know what the heck kind of game they were supposed to be playing but anyway, she told him he could call himself any name he wanted just as long as it wasn't a Spanish word or a "China word." Hmmmm. Wonder what brought that on?

Breakfast over, dishes soaking now and Kurtis brought some clothes down, asking me to help him get dressed for the day. He had picked out a pair of sweatpants -appropriate for the cold weather, yes -and a tee shirt. Not a matching set but close enough to suit me. The shirt was one I'd never seen before and honestly, it felt like it was maybe brand new so I asked him where he'd found it -thinking maybe he'd found a Christmas gift stash Mandy might have squirreled away upstairs but he said "I think Mommy gotted it at MallMart for me!" (Mallmart, in case you're wondering, is his version of Walmart! And no, I don't think she got this shirt there as it was a really nice, heavier cotten knit tee shirt!

Maya -always the very fashion conscious little girl she is -got dressed and appeared in the living room then, a vision of loveliness for sure in a white, light-weight cotton skirt with a hem that is all in points the whole way around the bottom of the skirt. With that, she had found a really cute little summer-weight cotton knit shirt in a pale pink item with little cap sleeves (very NOT appropriate for the weather today, but that's pretty much the norm for her!) and she's been busy now dancing in circles around the living room, taking time out only briefly to do a little peasant type summer dance routine for me -interspersed with a few insults tossed out to her brother and a few rules of the road for him to follow today.

The peaceful atmosphere ended though when he wanted to read a book and she insisted he couldn't read the one he wanted but rather had to read some other book. When I interrupted their little spat, she stormed away, tossing a bunch of insults back at him -mainly calling him bad and an idiot! When I reprimanded her for that, she then pointed at him and insisted he had just called her a bad word and that "it was the 'A-word, Gram and I'm not lying!" Hmmm. Usually any time Maya insists she's not lying means that she's telling a whopper! But anyway, I then asked Kurtis if he had indeed said the "A-word" and honest as the day is long little guy that he is, he admitted he had said that!

So, now the day is actually beginning to become what is really another "normal" -or more normal anyway- Saturday in this household.

Wonder how many timeouts will be required to keep me in my peaceful, rather tranquil mode today?

And, in case you aren't on Facebook or I haven't sent this little video your way, here's something to watch that might just make you feel really happy after watching it today!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ki8EcnVbd-Q

If nothing else, maybe it will put you in a Christmas mood! It sure helped me to make it through the first four hours of my day today!

Agitation and Worries...

2011-12-17T09:40:00.000-05:00

Right now, I am rather agitated and yes, very worried and concerned too about what's going to happen to me in the next couple of weeks.

This all has to do with my Social Security check and how much I may actually receive when I get the next couple of checks or so.

Because of the amount of income I receive via has been considered to be under the Poverty Level line, the state was paying my medicare payment. That is until the last raise Social Security recipients got about 3-4 years ago anyway. At that time, I got a raise that January but in April, when my check was deposited in my account, they (Social Security or the state?) had deducted $300 from the check as they said I was no longer eligible for the state to pay my medicare what with the increase I'd received in January to my Social Security payment.

Okay, I can understand that. There has to be a line of demarcation, certainly. But it sure would have been a lot easier to bear had they informed me first and given me an option to have them deduct what they said I owed in back payments -that $300 -by giving me a bit of an easy-payment plan, don't ya think?

I considered myself to be very fortunate in that my daughter and I live together (along with her two children) and as such, I do not bear the brunt of all the household expenses by myself but supposing I were living alone, paying rent and all the other bills alone, I would have been totally screwed to lose that much money in one fell swoop, for sure! Even making payments on that amount would have been difficult for a person on a very limited income -which Social Security is -but at least, it would have been easier to manage if folks were given that option.

A year ago this month now, when my Social Security check arrived, it was larger than normal and I got a notice that was because the state -once again -was paying for my medicare payment. Hmmmm. When did they change the rate for the Poverty Level then I was wondering. Apparently it had been increased but I'd never known about that however, I was not about to quibble with them as I sure could use that extra bit of money.

Now, about two months ago, when Mandy had to fill out papers again for the fuel assistance and food stamp programs, she of course, has to list my income too on her form and as a result, she got a notice that due to my income, we were no longer eligible for those two program and also, that I was -again -ineligible for the state to cover my medicare payment.

At least this time I did get a bit of a forewarning so I figured probably with my December payment, they would begin deducting the medicare payment again, but they didn't -much to my surprise.

However, Mandy had to go refile her papers for the assistance programs because they said there was an error on them and when she did that, the case manager then told her that yes, the medicare payment would again be deducted from my check but that was an error so it would be deducted but then, would be repaid to me.

Oh really? And what's interesting about all of this too is come January, we Social Security recipients will also be receiving another increase to our checks. Considering the last time this happened, I ended up getting $36 a month less that I had been getting prior to the increase that time -which took me back to the same level I'd been receiving 3 or 4 years earlier! I wonder what I'll end up with this time around?

All this stuff -the way they operate with their deductions, their Poverty Level that sure as heck didn't take into account that over the past 5 years our fuel bill alone is more than double what it normally had cost and that says nothing either about the increases to our electricity bill that is now at least 30 percent higher than before too but what the heck do I know about stuff like this.

I wish there were some legal recourse I could take to avert these issues but I suppose the only way I could do that would be something as outlandish as contacting someone like this -commercial litigation lawyer raleigh nc

- to get any recourse -if indeed any were available! It would definitely be something that would be totally difficult to procure assistance to right this problem, you can count on that for sure!

Needless to say, I'm really worried about how much they are going to clip from my check, when it will happen and if, they will ever restore that money and make me "whole" again -as the legal term is used there!

Should be interesting although not the kind of thing I'm really very "interested" in seeing ya know!

Deer Hazards?

2011-12-17T09:15:00.000-05:00

I tried to post this last night but couldn't get my computer and Blogger to cooperate so here it is now, a day late but at least the system seems to be up and running again!

I think I've mentioned this before about a program our church has for new mothers in our parish wherein we provide a full meal for the family of the new baby the day or day after the mother and baby come home and then again, the next day after that. Well, this week, our church family had a new addition with the birth of a beautiful little girl to a young couple in our church. And, as we've been doing for several years now, and as the one who administers that program, I had set in place for three people from church to provide supper for the new baby's family.

My daughter had volunteered to be the one to fix the entre and had made a nice meatloaf along with au gratin potatoes. Another lady was providing the salad and rolls or bread and a third was making a dessert.

I got the job of delivering the entre to the family -which I don't mind doing at all as it also gives the opportunity then too of getting to see the new baby too! Always a fun thing ya know.

But on the way back home, as I drove through the little village where the family lives, I got a bit of a scare when a big old deer ran out, right in front of my car!

Lucky for me in that I saw it in time and was able to slow down and avoid hitting it but it went racing across the road and across a yard there of a family who just so happens to have a fairly large in-ground swimming pool. I know that they have a pool cover on that but still it got me to thinking about the whole thing -the deer running at full tilt and what would happen if it would try to run across that covered pool? Would that cover withstand something like that or would the deer end up perhaps crashing through into the water and drown?

I'd sure hate to think something like that might happen to the poor deer, ya know! Although, if the family that lives there are perhaps deer hunters, they might appreciate that as a fast and easier way to acquire a buck or doe, in or out of hunting season and some venison that way too.

Allergies - Everywhere!!!

2011-12-15T19:37:00.000-05:00

Oh boy! Last week, Mandy had Kurtis over to DuBois to finish up the scratch allergy testings they wanted to do on Kurtis.

The results are in now and WOW, lots of changes gonna take place around here by the end of the month I do believe!

He has several things check on the food category that we will have to begin eliminating after Christmas. One thing checked is pork and that's really unfortunate because pork or things with pork in them just so happen to be some of the things the boy would actually eat without major hissy fits in the process! Wouldn't you just know it! He loves bacon, but of course, at least we can get turkey bacon and sub that for him. Sausage -I don't know is there any sausage substitute? We put off the food elimination till after Christmas so he can at least still have some Christmas ham that way because he will eat ham. New Year's pork and sauerkraut though is not on the problem list since he won't go near that to begin with.

We've been checking other items on this list too and things we're supposed to do with respect to other aspects in the house -like get plastic covers for the mattresses and pillows -thankfully, we don't have to worry about something like a latex mattress though!

I'd really be ready to go into cardiac arrest if we had to go buy a new mattress set for him right now.

I had to laugh a bit about this whole allergy thing tonight though as I was getting ready to cook supper. Maya asked what I was fixing and I told her, "Fish and mac'n'cheese -just like you asked for!" To which she turned around and told me "Just be sure it isn't Lake Trout though Gram, because Kurtis is allergic to that you know!"

She probably knows everything that's checked on that list better than Mandy and I do by now!

Remember This?

2011-12-15T19:15:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine -who recently had major abdominal surgery -and I were chatting a week or so back, comparing notes on our surgeries and such. We got to talking too about the surgeons we'd each dealt with and I told her the story about how I just about scared the living daylights, I think, out of the guy who had done my colo-rectal resection.

I'd gone in for my six-week checkup. The nurse had been in and taken my blood pressure, weight and those little preliminary things and after a brief wait, the surgeon came in, all smiles and happy.

"And, just how's Miss Jeni today anyway?" he asked.

I looked up at him and tried to put the fiercest glare I could possibly muster up in my eyes and in a very firm, angry voice, I told him, "Buddy, I hope your malpractice insurance is all up-to-date because I'm gonna sue you for malpractice and just about anything else I can think of as well."

I wish I'd had a camera with me to get a picture of him because the stunned look on his face was something to behold!

He stuttered and stammered around a bit, finally asking me what was wrong that I wanted to do that and I told him, "You told me before I had the surgery that I would lose at least 10-12 pounds, ya know." And, he nodded, saying "Well, how much weight did you lose?"

With that I started to laugh and told him "Two lousy pounds and no, you're not going back in for the other 10 that were left behind!"

I swear he looked about ready to break out into a cold sweat before I finally told him that last line.

I do love pulling stunts like that from time to time, don't you?

Toys, Toys!

2011-12-14T03:12:00.000-05:00

How do people keep up with all the toys on the market these days anyway?

I know I sure as heck have no clue about many of the things other people talk about when it comes to things like toys, that much is for sure!

The other day, I had to make a trip to Walmart and I had the pleasure (say that sarcastically, please) of having to take Maya and Kurtis, both, with me! Now there's an experience, believe me!

(Kurtis may have announced the other day that he doesn't like going into K-Mart because he doesn't want the blue light talking to him, but trust me, he has no fears, no qualms, whatsoever where Walmart is concerned!)

I had to get some prescriptions filled so had to kill some time till they were ready and of course, the kids wanted to look at toys. Okay, look but don't touch and don't drive Gram crazy over the stuff. Sounded like a decent game plan to me until Kurtis started announcing to just about anyone he saw in the aisles that he was going to get this item for Christmas and this one for his birthday and back and forth and so on went his little litany throughout the toy department. It was vaguely reminiscent to me of years back when his mother used to grab the Christmas Catalog and then mark her name by almost every item shown there to indicate to me that she wanted those things!

Like Mother, Like Son, I'm thinking!

At least when my kids were growing up I didn't have to try to figure out what various toys were for anyway though -like a wii sports resort for example! What the heck is that anyway? I have no clue!

Life was a whole lot simpler back then when my kids were growing up -Cabbage Patch Dolls and Tonka Trucks -now those things I understood.

But guess this just shows I am truly an out-dated old Grammie after all, doesn't it?

Shopping Spree?

2011-12-14T02:54:00.000-05:00

So, have I mentioned before that Miss Maya has an obsession? Well, actually Miss Maya has more than one obsession but the one she has that sometimes has been known to drive her Mom and me a bit bonkers pertains to shoes!

She is so much like her Aunt Carrie in this respect as she figured out -after we let her play on the computer a bit now and then -how to find various websites that have shoes for sale!

Just a darned good thing that she doesn't have a clue about how to order stuff online yet, that much is for sure!

But she has learned how to bookmark the sites she loves to look at and she does frequently click into them and likes to point out to us exactly which shoes she thinks we should order for her too!

Yeah and I stumbled on some of her favorite bookmarked sites recently too! Like this one that she had pointed out to her Mom that she really does need a pair -or several pairs actually -of easy spirit sneakers!

Nice try, Maya, but you already have two pair of sneakers that fit you just fine and dandy so I don't see that as being in your cards for a Christmas gift -at least not this year!

Of course, if she tells her Aunt Carrie about this major need in her life -more shoes -it's entirely possible that she will at some point in the future be able to con her aunt into getting her another pair -just so she has a different pair of shoes for virtually every outfit she owns, ya know!

That's an idea that Aunt Carrie would definitely believe is something everyone should have, judging by the number of pairs of shoes she already owns too!

One Really Lazy Day!.

2011-12-14T02:36:00.000-05:00

The day went fairly well -even though I woke up way too early, like around 6:30 a.m. Anyone who knows me knows that for me to be up and about at that hour it usually means I'm probably thinking about going to bed, getting some sleep and not being up and "at 'em" to start the day!

But that's how my day began anyway. No rhyme or reason for it, just awake so I had toast and coffee then with Mandy as she was getting ready to wake the kids up to get ready for school.

By 11 a.m. though, my wide-awakeness had disappeared. My feet were feeling very, very cold and when that happens, it also seems to send a signal to my sleep center telling it that a nap would be a wonderful way to warm the tootsies up and so I crashed on the sofa for a nice little snooze. I woke up a little after 1 p.m. and was going to go get dressed when a friend showed up at the front door -lovely, my greeting her in my pjs in the middle of the day, but what the heck, ya know. She stopped by to pick up a cookbook that our church women's group put together and we're selling plus, she purchased one of the Christmas tabletoppers I had embroidered too as a gift for her daughter for Christmas. Which reminds me I should send a Facebook message to a friend of my daughters who bought a whole bunch of my embroidered stuff last year just before the holiday and see if she wants to look at this year's accumulation of stuff I have completed. If I can sell a couple of these pieces it sure would make the bank account very happy!

But anyway, aside from that, it seemed every time I would think about going and getting dressed, someone else would show up before I had a chance to perform that task. (Yes, some days, getting dressed does seem like a task, a chore, to be performed, ya know and today was definitely one of those days!)

Another lady from church stopped by to pick up three of the cookbooks so I managed to sell four of 'em today with barely a flick of a finger. I like that! Keep that inventory level dropping is my current goal!

By that time, the next arrivals were at the door -Kurt's TSS and the mobile therapist who comes every Tuesday to work mainly with Maya but also has Kurt as a client in school too, so she often ends up splitting her time with both kids when she is here.

While they were here with the kids, I had to get supper started as the step-granddaughter was coming down today to spend the evening -supper and time with her siblings which Maya and Kurtis both enjoyed immensely. Mandy had a church council meeting and dinner at the Pastor's house with the council so she was fixing some special cheese-pepper biscuits to take to their dinner while I was cooking supper for the rest of us. Trying to figure out what to fix is always somewhat of a challenge here because the kids tend to get finicky at mealtime -a lot -but at least the chicken I fixed tonight went over quite well and there's enough of it left that we can polish it off for supper tomorrow now. (I especially like that deal since that means I won't have to deal with trying to come up with another meal to cook. Yippy skippy on that plan!)

After supper, the kids were supposed to be getting ready for bed and were in the bathroom to get Kate, the older sister, to help them when all of a sudden Maya comes out to the living room and announces to me that she has dog poop on her foot! What? How in blazes did she manage that?

Well, although Sammy, the mutt, is housebroken, every now and again, he doesn't come and let us know he needs to go out and well, seems tonight was one of those nights and he had made a deposit in the middle of the bathroom floor which Maya, in her gracefulness, had somehow managed to step in that nice gift! Although we do put down "puppy pads" on the floor in the bathroom for him in case of emergencies during the night, he had not aimed for that item -unfortunately. So as I was cleaning that little mess up, I was grumping to Kate about needing to find some kind of incontinence products geared specifically for dogs! Yeah, a nice thought, I know and one that wouldn't probably be something needed here if I had managed to get myself clothed adequately earlier in the day and taken Sir Muttley for a nice walk -something I have been extremely lax about doing much of that lately. I really do have to get myself on a decent schedule with the walking routine again! Just that I really haven't got myself accustomed to the cold weather I guess but since it's just going to get colder and colder here over the next 3-4 months, I suppose I best be biting that bullet.

The kids -thankfully -were both in bed or asleep (in Kurt's case, he was crashed on the sofa) by 8 p.m. and I settled back to work on a table runner I'm embroidering now. Didn't get much accomplished on that piece as by 9 p.m., I was asleep in the recliner! Woke up after about a 45 minute nap and saw Kate had apparently gone upstairs and crashed in one of the kids bedrooms. Mandy got home from her meeting around 10 p.m. and she too was beat, so she went to bed shortly thereafter too.

And there I was at 10 p.m. then, wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the old saying goes. Well, to be honest, really I was just awake -not exactly bright-eyed and definitely not the latter part of that expression either!

I remembered then that I had promised to e-mail a video I got earlier in the day from an online Swedish magazine site I read to the lady who had purchased the three cookbooks so I had to rummage through my facebook wall to find the website and url for that video. This particular video is almost all in Swedish -which I do not understand as I probably only know maybe 10, perhaps 15 words in Swedish at most but regardless of that aspect, I had very much enjoyed watching this piece this morning as the music is just beautiful! It's a concert filmed last year at a concert in Sweden in honor of, who else, St. Lucia! And how appropriate that this video landed on my facebook on my computer on St. Lucia Day too!

I had thought earlier in the day to e-mail it to a few of my Swedish cousins and one of them, my cousin Paul, had written back to thank me for sending it to him saying it made him feel very proud to be of Swedish ancestry. And knowing he'd enjoyed seeing that then made me feel really good too!

It's a long video -almost a hour in length -but I'm going to post the url for it here so if anyone is interested in hearing some beautiful music, sit back and listen to it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et_ZXk3zzpg&feature=related
I got so carried away listening to the music on this video that I spent about the next two hours tonight then surfing through more Swedish Christmas videos online and enjoying listening to the music of my ancestry.

A great way to end my day and who knows, maybe when I do go to bed tonight I'll have pleasant dreams about Christmas that will help give me a little more incentive to get some things accomplished over the next few days -baking, getting things in order in the house a bit for the holiday and such.

Maybe it will help me to not be quite this lazy again for a long, long time too!

Now there's a dream, for sure!

Stocked up

2011-12-12T21:29:00.000-05:00

Last week, I finally had a chance to make a trip over to DuBois where I could do a little needed shopping at the Joanne Fabrics store.

The need to go to either a Joanne's store or perhaps a Michael's crafts place meant I was going to have to make a trip either to DuBois or to State College because those two towns are the closest places to where I live where they have stores of either of these two chains. This tends to aggravate me a good bit because that also means it is about a 40 mile trip, one way, to get to any of these places so that comes to about 80 miles round-trip and with my gas-guzzling jeep, that comes to about 4 gallon of gas that will be used to do that amount of travel.

And yes, that comes then to a cost of between $14 and $15 dollars for the round trip and that makes it for me a trip I plan so that I can hit more than just one place, run more than just one needed errand, if you will, ya know!

I hadn't planned initially on going to Dubois the day we went there though but as it turned out, Clate's girlfriend had set up a plan to take Maya and Kurtis up to their house Thursday evening to bake and decorate Christmas cookies with her little boy, Ryan, so while she had the kids there, Mandy and I decided to make use of the free time to us and do a quick run to Dubois. Actually, Mandy did need to make a trip there although she'd been there earlier that day when she had Kurtis over to the doctor and he had more allergy testing done.

She'd done a bit of shopping at that time and didn't realize till she got home that an outfit she had found for Kurtis -which was on a sale rack at 30 percent off, that the set rang up at the regular price. So, she had called the store and asked about it and the clerk told her that if she brought the slip in, they would gladly refund her the $12 difference between what she was charged and what the actual sale price should have been, soooo -you see Mandy's and my logic then about going over there since she'd have to make the trip to receive the discount, since I needed to go to that Joanne store -well that savings she would get would cover, pretty much, the gas involved, wouldn't it?

So away we went and Mandy dropped me off at Joanne Fabrics and headed to the store to get her refund. Even though the kids were with Elizabeth that evening we still didn't want to spend too much time out running around because the kids still needed to get back home and not be overly late in going to bed then either.

Which meant when Mandy met me back at the Joanne store, and I was about the get checked out, she was getting a bit antsy then as she saw what it was in my cart that I had purchased -embroidery floss skeins! And not just 5 or 10 of those babies either but a fairly large amount -like close to 40 of 'em! And of course, each one of those little things had to be run through the barcode scanner too. This usually is a fairly rapid job as long as each of those little things on the package show up with no hassles on that machine. Lucky for us, there were only 2 or 3 that the clerk had to stop and work with to get the things to scan but it could have been a whole lot worse, ya know.

But before I forget too, I have a funny little story as well about what had happened with Kurtis earlier in the day when they (Mandy, Kurt and his TSS) had gone to the K-Mart store in Dubois. Kurtis has been there before on numerous occasions with no problems but on Thursday when they pulled up there, he began to fuss and whine, saying he didn't want to go in there, that he didn't like K-Mart and such. So Mandy and Dawn began to question him about why he was having this little hissy fit now about K-Mart. His answer? You ready for this? "I don't want that blue light talking to me!"

Kids! You gotta love the answers they pop out with at times, don't 'cha?

Christmas Gifts?

2011-12-12T21:08:00.000-05:00

Just as the true reason for the season of Christmas is rapidly approaching, so too is that other aspect that stems from Christmas being a time of receiving a great gift -or in some people's minds -great gifts!

The older I get -and the more I see too of people going all out to get their kids EVERYTHING imaginable (or so it does seem at times) for Christmas, spending inordinate amounts of money too, the more I think of what it was like when I was a kid and yes, my cousins and I got gifts, but we certainly weren't showered with oodles and oodles of things either.

Gift-giving then was a lot more simplistic than it appears to be today.

Financially, I simply am not in a position to buy that much for my family -my kids, my grandkids -but in order to at least get a few things for everyone, I tend to do Christmas shopping all year-round too -watching for things the grandkids could use or would like -that wouldn't create an overload -and buy them when I see them on sale at good prices, even if it is in April or July or whenever!

This year though, I think the financial pinching began to really hit home with my kids too because they decided this year we would draw names between the adults and my older grandson -who at age 14 was deemed old enough to qualify for this lottery, of sorts. We're supposed to adhere to a limit of $15 for the gift for the person whose name you drew and then, not to worry about getting a bunch of things for the rest of the grown-ups in the family.

Sounds like a good game plan to me except for the fact that this past summer I had stumbled on a really good sale at Penney's and had purchased several t-shirts for the older grandson - some of them cute and funny but none of them were really outlandishly bad. I also had found several little shirts for Kurtis then too and each of them just so happened to come with a neat little hot wheels type vehicle attached to the shirt too. And, like most any little boys his age range, I know that those -along with those little cars or trucks -will suit his fancy to a Tee, won't they?

Maya, on the other hand -well, I don't have much lined up for her as yet because she tends to be -like her aunt before her -just a wee bit of a diva and yes, she's only 8-years-old and already things have to be specific colors, select items too, ya know! ARRGH! She -and her aunt -are gonna be the death of me in this department cause I just happen to still hold a bit of the old "tomboy" attitude I had as a kid in which a gift is a gift and it's new to me not does it meet this or that criteria.

Oh well, I survived dealing with this aspect this long, I'll just dig in and work my way through it again I guess!

Try Anything...

2011-12-12T20:21:00.000-05:00

Did I ever mention to you one reason -aside from the cold, snow, high fuel costs, bad road conditions -that I tend to dislike about winter -like dry, itchy, flaky skin?

Well, I'm telling you about it now cause it's a bit of a problem for me as well as for both my daughters too!

It can get mighty embarrassing too at times when your skin -especially on your stomach and abdomen, to say nothing of your backside, legs, arms -all over -begins to itch all the time. You can try all kinds of remedies to cure or at least curb this problem but if it in fact is caused by psoriasis in particular, good luck in getting any relief from this condition!

Mandy and I are both about ready to try anything we can get our hands on now to relieve the dry, itchy symptoms we're both dealing with now -including even going so far perhaps as to try something we'd never heard of before - seaweed powder!

I'll be honest and say I have no clue if this stuff works or not -the way it says it is supposed to do -but believe you me, we're both considering telling folks we'd appreciate this item as a nice Christmas gift and hopefully, we even get a tad of relief from this stuff in the process then!

Just about anything at times seems to be worth a try.

The Season Starts!

2011-12-12T20:12:00.000-05:00

Although in our church, the Christmas Season begins with the first Sunday in Advent -and yesterday marked the third Sunday in Advent in our church, but for me, the Christmas Season begins with the pot luck dinner and program we have every December on the Sunday the closest to December 13th.

Why December 13th? What's so special about that date that we have this special dinner and program?

Well, quite simply, because December 13th is St. Lucia Day and in Sweden, that is a very, very special day as St. Lucia is a patron saint of Sweden.

But, you say, Jeni -you live in Pennsylvania -born and raised there so why then is a Swedish Saint honored in your church?

It's a Swedish traditional thing and the founding members of our congregation were almost all from the same area in Sweden; many were close relatives or at least often distant relatives to one another and this is a way of paying homage to our ethnic roots.

And St. Lucia is a very endearing story about a young woman who actually was Italian but the first missionaries who arrived in Sweden more than a couple hundred of years ago told the story of this martyr when converting the Swedish people to Christianity and the story came to hold a special meaning then in the hearts of that community. So much so, that St. Lucia became a patron saint then in that land.

St. Lucia heralds light -as in Christ being the light of the world -and as such, this is indicated by the crown she wears of lit candles as she makes her way through each Swedish home in the wee hours of the morning on December 13th, serving coffee and sweet buns to her family. This is not a complete description of the story of St Lucia but rather my simplification of the tale. The task of portraying St. Lucia is given to the eldest girl in each family and in our church, each year for the past 31 years now, we have been selecting the oldest girl (high school senior usually) in our parish who will then portray St. Lucia in our little pageant with all the other girls and boys surrounding her as part of her court -attendants (girls) and star boys. It's a very traditional event -very pretty -and meaningful to most everyone in our church as well.

Yesterday was the big day for this year as we had our dinner followed by the St. Lucia pageant and our next door neighbor's younger daughter had her turn this year to be St. Lucia. Maya, my granddaughter, was once again one of the attendants in St. Lucia's court and this year she again was trusted to walk in the procession in front of St. Lucia, while carrying a lit (yes, an 8-year-old carrying a lit one) candle! She was so proud of herself that she actually got to carry a candle while it was burning!

As the youngest member of St. Lucia's Court, Maya was the first one to enter the Social Hall ahead of the three other attendants and of course, St. Lucia. You have to admit she does look pretty doggone sweet in this shot, doesn't she?

Here's Joan Fetter-House -the lady from our church who probably has coached every single girl who portrayed St. Lucia over the past 31 years -as she cues Kylie (this year's St. Lucia) as to when she should take her first steps forward to be welcomed into the Social Hall in her official role! (By they way, Kylie's mother, Deb, was St. Lucia in our first program/dinner event 31 years ago when we reinstated having this Christmas tradition as part of our Church Calendar year and Kylie's older sister, Alina, served as St. Lucia 6 years ago too! Both my daughters had the honor as well of portraying St. Lucia near the end of their high school careers.)

And here, is the whole court -St. Lucia for 2011 at Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lanse, PA -with all four attendants and St. Lucia.

From left to right -there's Sarah, Maya, Kylie, Rachel and Jenny! A lovely group, agreed?

The dinner was quite nice last night too. We had Swedish meatballs -of course -along with lots and lots of other dishes ranging from roast pork to various potato dishes, casseroles, salads and some really great desserts! I got a bit daring last night and made a traditional Swedish dish called Panakaka -which in essence is just a plain baked custard but is a bit of a favorite at church dinners in our parish, along with a big casserole dish of fried cabbage and noodles! Now that dish -cabbage and noodles, or Halushki as many know it around these hills, is not a traditional Swedish dish but rather is Slovak in ethnicity but the ethnic backgrounds of many in this region tend to be either Swedish or Slovak plus, I happen to dearly love Halushki and have a recipe for it that I got from the lady who used to own/operate the truck stop where I worked for several years so I figured why not mix in a little of the other ethnic foods along with the Swedish stuff too! Oh, and I also made a batch of Swedish Limpa Rye Bread too -from a recipe I got via one of my Mom's cousins who just happens to be one of the best bread bakers I know -and I could tell from the "feel" of the dough for this bread as I was kneading it on Saturday afternoon that it was going to turn out really nice. And, I'm really happy to say I was right in that it turned out beautifully -perfect texture, nice and high and browned just right too! It looked and tasted just exactly like my cousin Arline's bread which really made me feel pretty darned good for having that accomplishment!

And now that this program, the dinner, is history for another year, for me, it means the Christmas season is here now -beginning to make me feel like it's a lot more like Christmas around the house, around the village and in neighboring towns.

And, I sense that feeling has spread to lots of others around too because people -those well-known as well as strangers -all seem to have a friendlier spirit about them now too.

Now if that same spirit -the smiles, the joy, the anticipatory feelings one gets from being around little children as they talk about what they expect to find under the tree Christmas morning -dare I say it, even the love that seems to be so bountiful in the air now -if that same spirit could just spread all over the world, think of what joy that would bring.

Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men! And maybe some of it began with the simple lighting of some candles to show the way -to be "The Light of the Earth!"

I don't know about you, but it works for me!

By Comparison?

2011-12-03T14:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, so here it is, early Saturday afternoon, and just Maya and me here in the house. Quiet time, I think, and a good time perhaps for me to be able to sit and concentrate on the satin stitching (lots and lots of it) that I have yet to do to finish the tabletopper I'm working on now.

Seemed like a decent enough idea, a plan, for me.

However, about the time I started to stitch, Maya decided to have one of her whackadoodle obsessive rants!

This one came about as Mandy was driving up the road to take the teenager home, who was here this a.m. to try to keep the two little ones calm and prevent them from doing any mayhem to each other or the house.

Anyway, Maya plopped herself down on the sofa and began to twirl the largish pink plastic heart-shaped ring she had on her index finger around and began to wail and moan -in a voice that I supposed could be compared to the sounds made by Irish women, keening, at an Irish wake -maybe not quite as loud in Maya's case, but on a wave length that was definitely very annoying.

Occasionally, she would toss in a statement or two about the dire consequences that were now about to happen all because Mommy left already with Keeley and Maya didn't have a chance then to give Keeley this pink heart ring and wah, wah, wail, wail and moan some more, it is truly the end of the world as Maya sees it!

To say that I understand the whys and what-fors of Maya's obsession when they surface -such as this one today -would be akin to my saying and your believing that I know what an Asus Eee Pad is and what all one can do with such things. Fact of that matter is I haven't a clue -on what that item really is and can do nor do I have a clue as to what to offer to Maya to redirect her right now.

I will say this much with respect to Maya -these little spells or spats come on totally out of the blue so they tend to catch a person completely off-guard. Forewarned is forearmed, ya know, and had I but known the least thing about her wishes prior to Keeley's departure, you can bet your bottom dollar I'd have tried to get this set up so as to avert this issue!

But now, since she has subsequently found something -finally -on her own to occupy her time and mind and the mourning period, at least for the time being anyway, has ended, for that I am really and truly thankful!

Thirty to forty minutes of her whining, bemoaning, wailing and such (all with nary a tear either) is more than long enough to just about drive me to drink!

But since peace has -for now -been restored and I can return to my recliner, to my tabletopper, to stitching and listening off and on to the droning of some Christmas-type movie on the Hallmark Channel to kind of aid me in telling what time it is, that's what I'm gonna do now! The quiet will end soon enough when Mandy and Kurtis return home so I'd best take advantage of this now while I can!

Wishful Thinking

2011-12-01T03:21:00.000-05:00

When my daughters and my son were growing up, things were often a bit on the rough, sometimes wicked side even, in our home -especially financially speaking.

Raising kids is no walk in the park no matter what one's status might be -rich or poor -there are still always problems, often conflicts galore even in a stable two-parent home. But in a single-parent home, such as ours was, it was often like walking a tight wire at times. One misstep and boy, the pile of doo-doo you could land in!

It sure was not the kind of life I had dreams about when I was a kid, growing up, thinking about how someday perhaps I'd marry and have a family of my own -not the white picket fence with a little bungalow house necessarily -but a nice home and a life that included two parents were the main items I wished for in that home.

For a while, I did have the little ranch house that my ex and I built and the three kids, a dog (always at least one of those) and even a cat too! But then things began to fall apart and eventually, went the way of those nice dreams we have but we wake up and can't remember them.

And, as my ex and I were splitting up, that house went down the tubes and when my Mom passed away, the kids and I moved into her house, which had been my grandparents home and also, the house were I had lived most of my childhood.

My kids still deal with a lot of the aftermath of growing up with a single parent. For many years, they had virtually no relationship at all with their Dad as he moved out west and they rarely heard from him except once in a blue moon he might remember the existed and call them. Visits were even more infrequent then too.

Through it all though, over the years, when it was evident that things were going on in the kids lives, in their minds, regarding their Dad, I did try to explain to them that regardless of how infrequent his phone calls might be, no matter how obnoxious he might be when talking to them too on the phone, that they still needed to remember that underneath all of that mess, he still did love them, but that he was sick and didn't really realize it at the time. I told them that perhaps someday things would be different, that he would find a way to change his life and lifestyle and return to being at least some semblance of a caring parent.

It's something that did eventually happen and for the past 18 years now, he has managed to rebuild a fairly decent relationship with all three of our now very adult children!

I had hoped when my girls each got married that they would find the kind of happiness and satisfaction I had once wished for with a good husband and children of their own.

Sadly, that hasn't been the case as my older daughter has been divorced for several years now although, in her case, her son -who is now 14 years old -still has a strong and good relationship with his dad. I'm very grateful for that aspect in his life too as well as seeing that although his Mom and Dad still don't see eye-to-eye about everything, they both do work very hard to make sure their son, my most handsome grandson, gets a strong, well-rounded and very grounded too, life.

Younger daughter is in the process of getting a divorce and in her case, it really saddens me because I see so many of the same issues cropping up in her life and especially in the lives of her two little children too, with respect to their dad -her sometime-to-be-ex-husband.

What often makes it worse for those two little grandkids is the fact their Dad lives in this area and could still have a good relationship with the children but instead, he's running a track very similar to that of my ex-husband's -way back when -except in this case, he's providing way more drama, and a lot more heartache for Maya and Kurt than children should ever have to experience.

The actions he often chooses now are absolutely mind-boggling at times! The lies he tells these children are going to confuse them way more than they already are and that is so totally unfair to them as well as completely unnecessary as well.

Add to that a cast of characters he surrounds himself with and you have the makings of a major tragedy on the horizon.

To my ex-husband's credit, at least he did always provide for our children by paying child support fairly regularly. Not always timely, but eventually it would come through. Not always pleasant about having to pay that either, but he did at least adhere to the court's guidelines and pony up what the judge said was his dues to the kids.

My daughter is going to have one rough and rocky road ahead I'm afraid judging by the way her "ex" is acting which is to say he is being totally irresponsible about supporting all the children he has -which is two more in their teens as well as the two younger ones he has with my daughter. But, when you don't go out and find a decent job, don't take steps to keep a job when you do have one, paying child support becomes something he pays zilch attention to doing!

And, if someone had told me when they first married, when Maya and Kurt each were born, that he would come to being the person he is today, I would have never believed it could be possible for that to happen.

It's often said -although this is used in reference to other aspects -that history repeats itself. And, boy, my family sure can attest to that!

Tricks!

2011-12-01T02:47:00.000-05:00

Every Sunday, after church, I take a quick run up to the local grocery store to pick up a copy of the Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

I used to purchase the local Sunday paper -published by the Centre Daily Times -but when they stopped including a tv guide magazine thing and also, quite running a good Sunday crossword puzzle and stopped carrying either Dear Abby or Ann Landers column, I stopped buying their Sunday paper and switched to the Pittsburgh paper's Sunday edition.

They have a decent enough tv guide section that, combined with the one in our local daily paper in their Friday edition I can generally get a fair-to-middling idea of what is being shown on the channels available in our cable system. Plus, the Pittsburgh paper also has two wicked crossword puzzles every Sunday and occasionally, they also run a third crossword puzzle too. Unfortunately, they DO NOT carry the advice column but in truth, my main interests were in the tv guide and crossword puzzles anyway.

However, it has become an even more important purchase for us to make EVERY Sunday now because my daughters -yes, both of them -have become addicted to trying their hand at copying those shoppers on the "Extreme Couponing" program on tv! So, if older daughter happens to be here or is coming here for dinner only on a Sunday, I now have to buy two of the Pittsburgh papers along with the Philly Inquirer -just so my daughters have access to more coupons!

However, I had a little fun with them and their slight addiction recently when I told them I had come across this web site that offered not just regular but the best buy coupons you could get anywhere!

I'm just sorry that I couldn't see the look on their faces though when they opened that website as I was on my way out the door when I told the girls about that url!

Always nice to prank my daughters when I get a chance!

Thanksgiving Delayed!

2011-11-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

Last week, although I had planned -well at least thought at it anyway -to write a post about things for which I am thankful, I didn't get around to it. Didn't get around to doing all that much blog reading either, for that matter. I didn't realize until today when I opened my blogger account that my last post was a week ago. What the heck did I do all last week that kept me from doing a post anyway? Was I really all that busy?

I was pretty tied up between trying to get a tablecloth I was working on finished and finally, I did get that completed late Saturday night. So one mission accomplished and I was pleased too with the way it turned out so that was good. The craft company that I purchase almost all my embroidery stuff through sent out an e-mail on Wednesday announcing a big sale they were promoting for two days -their "Thanksgiving Sale" -for merchandise at extra low prices on Thursday and Friday. Although I don't really "need" any more kits, ya know, as my current stash has more than enough things waiting for me to pick up and take a needle to but, well ask most any crafter what their response is to a good sale for things in the genre they normally enjoy and most will say they can't really resist a good sale after all. I combed through their website and found a whole bunch of things I wanted but the logistics of my checking account did sort of force me to cut back a bit on my purchase powers. However, I couldn't resist ordering two more tabletoppers that I had been watching for a long, long time now and so they went into my shopping cart along with some terry towel kits with Christmas themes. All was well until I went to check out and somehow their website processed my order almost automatically, to take the payment out of my checking account and didn't give me a choice if I wanted to use that or my PayPal account to pay. Lucky for me, my account was stable enough to withstand that payment, but it irritated me a bit that I had not been given a choice in the matter. Then, the day after my little shopping spree, I received a new catalog from the company with a special coupon good now thru the end of December for free shipping! Sheesh! Wish I'd waited one more day cause then I could have saved at least another $10 buckaroonies on my purchases! Typical of my luck -a day late and a dollar short, ya know, as that old saying goes!

My kids and I had determined by last Sunday that we would have our Thanksgiving family dinner on Saturday as older daughter's work schedule -midnight shifts on Wednesday and Thursday nights -would have made it impossible for her and my older grandson to be here so Saturday was the most logical choice then for our day with the turkey.

While everyone around here it seemed was busy-busy doing all kinds of preparations for their respective feast, my procrastination skills were in high gear and I didn't begin fixing anything for our meal until Thursday night when I made a container of fresh cranberry-orange relish. Friday morning though, things went into high gear here as I had my own cook's version of Black Friday Rush! I started around 11 a.m. to try to get my equipment and materials all in order and out of their respective hiding places which also turned into an episode of reorganization of my kitchen cupboards -a task I hate and should have waited to do that but my obsessive-compulsive side took charge and said "NO! Do. It. Now!" And so I did which delayed my start on the actual food prep until about 2 p.m.

I started out by mixing up a batch of the Swedish Flat bread my kids and I love. It's called "Kaka" bread and I have no clue how that name for it came about nor have I encountered any recipes specifically for this bread on any ethnic cooking sites I visit from time to time, but it's a main staple for many in our community here amongst those of Swedish ethnic background. It's kind of ironic too that the finished product is a round but flattened loaf of bread which takes three rising (of anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes each rising) to get it ready to bake! Go figure, huh? As soon as I had that bread dough working on its first rise, I dug into making a big batch of pie crust -enough to bake 5 pies! Got that stuff done, pies ready to go into the oven of one each of cherry, peach and lemon and two pumpkin pies! After that it was time to make the stuffing -in between punching bread dough down and resetting it to rise. Stuffing mixed, next up was making a broccoli salad.

By the time I got through all of that and with the bread dough finally up to par in the rising department, my last task -after stuffing the bird and getting it ready to put in the oven and to slow roast overnight -I still had one last thing to fix to complete my cooking for that day.

I had to make meringue for the lemon pie! And this was something that was a first for me as, believe it or not, at age 67 and being a life-long lover of lemon meringue pie, this was the first time I had ever made it myself! I was a tad on the edgy side as I began mixing the meringue -something that always happens when I am trying to make something new to me in the cooking department, but when I removed the finished product from the oven, I was really pleased with the outcome as it looked beautiful! Really and truly, it did.

I proudly showed the pie to daughter, Mandy, who did a number of oohs and ahs over it -especially when she learned that under that coating of meringue was a thick lemon pudding that she too loves!

By this time, my kitchen clock was reading about 10:15 and I realized I had been on my feet, in the kitchen, since two p.m. -a bit over 8 hours -and when I sat down then, my back and legs were really talking to me big time, telling me in no uncertain terms that I had definitely pushed them to their utmost limits! I made a comment to Mandy that if she was really a good daughter and really appreciative of my efforts -especially the creation of this lemon meringue pie -that maybe she would see fit to doing a teensy bit of rehab efforts by rubbing my old and very tired feet now!

The family joke here now is that Mandy will do just about anything in payment for homemade lemon meringue pie -including rubbing Mom's aching feet and legs!

And let me tell you, for that gift I am very thankful!

Saturday morning came and with it, my final food preparations began -cooking sweet potatoes to make into candied sweet potatoes and peeling and cooking up the white potatoes for mashing. Removal of the stuffing from the turkey, deboning "Tom" and then making gravy and all that was left was for my son and his girlfriend, older daughter and the grandson to arrive and we were ready to eat!

Mandy fixed a box of Mac'n'cheese for the two finicky eaters in the family to allow the rest of us the luxury of indulging in way too much of the foods I had prepared without having to listen to lots and lots of whining and wailing from Maya and Kurtis about the various traditional food that they "don't like" and won't touch! And that little entry to the table did make a very big difference in their -and our -meal! There was a little whining at one point from Kurtis who tried to ignore the pieces of turkey on his plate, saying "I no like chicken" until I realized we had omitted our usually sure-fire method to get him to eat poultry -and Mandy grabbed the bottle of ranch dressing and placed some of that on his plate by the turkey and like magic, the turkey went right down then quite easily! Amazing isn't it, what a tiny bit of dipping stuff will do for a fussy five-year-old!

The pies all got sampled with one pumpkin pie being finished completely and several samplings -by small children -of the other flavors of pie on hand too. Also another big surprise there as normally pie is something those two don't hold in as high as position of respect as do the rest of my family! (Well, pumpkin pie is the exception to that as they both have liked pumpkin pie for a long, long time now but trying any thing remotely like fruit pies has always been totally verboten! Don't even think about suggesting that to them has been the motto here until -well until now -as they both indulged in at least a tasting of the other flavors!

Little things like that -progress it's called -in mealtimes with two small children with autism and boy that is something for which I am always grateful, very, very thankful as I see them becoming less rigid in their ways where food it involved!

Maybe one of these days we can actually have a meal of the things the grownups in the family all like without having to run a "family restaurant" in the house and fixing some separate entre for the kids! It does look like that has a definite possibility to happen sometime in the future anyway!

Now, on to Sunday -and church -and yesterday being the First Sunday in Advent, our family was the one chosen to light the first candle on the Advent wreath and give the reading for the day too. Mandy was the reader, as Maya, Kurtis and I stood by the candle and listened to her and watched then as Alex -the older grandson -lit the first candle. A very pretty ritual in our church and surprisingly enough, it went quite well too with no surprises from the two younger family members while doing that.

However, the service itself tended to be rather problematic due to a lot of interference coming from the people in the pew directly behind us! Those two -a lady and an 8 or 9-year-old who is a newcomer to our church and who was sitting with this lady (apparently a family friend) while her mother sat and sang with the church choir. That little girl also happens to be friends in school with Miss Maya and throughout the majority of the service she kept tapping Maya on the shoulder to get her to turn around and talk to her! And all that shoulder tapping and twirling around on Maya's part kept old Grammy's hand pretty busy then too as I was constantly turning Maya back around to face the front of the church and at least to be quiet and respectful of the service.

When church was finally over and I stood up to leave, the little girl behind us asked me -quite pointedly in fact -"How's come you kept making Maya turn around?" Hmmm! What to say and how to say it to keep my voice tone in check?

My response -and I tried to keep my voice very low and level -not tinged with the bit of anger I was feeling inside -was that I did that because in church, you are supposed to face forward, to pay attention to the service out of respect for that and to the Pastor too who is trying to speak. Kind of like you are supposed to do in school, you see. I'm not sure if she understood exactly what I meant there and I worry about having said that as firmly as I did for fear that her mother may take offense to my comments there and perhaps no longer come check out our church and become a member.

Little things like that can make some individuals really persnickety and sadly, drive them away too in the process.

But on the other hand, Mandy and I have worked long and hard to teach Maya and Kurtis about church and behavior that is acceptable while attending services you know. It's been a long hard road at times with the issues each of the grandkids has pertaining to social skills and appropriate behavior but for the most part, we've got them both now to a point where they rarely have any outbursts that are totally inappropriate for public behavior and I really don't appreciate having someone allow another child to disrupt what the kids have learned and are accepting of that process now!

I am however very thankful that with each of my moves to get Maya turned back around and not participating in the talking this other child wanted to do that she didn't decide to take the offensive with me and launch herself then into what could have worked up into a full-fledge meltdown -the likes of which we have not seen in church for several years now from her!

Once again -progress gained here and after all, as in the old GE ad campaign years ago "Progress is our most important product!"

Yep, and I firmly adhere to that adage too!

And so ended another Thanksgiving Holiday in our house -which ultimately reminds me that I should give thanks not just on one day out of the year but on a daily basis for those things I hold near and dear to me -my children and grandchildren, for openers. And for a house that may need lots of repairs and such, but is still way better than many others have for a roof over their heads; a refrigerator and shelves that are generally filled to the gills with more than enough food all the time; for fuel to fire the furnace and keep us warm; for things that entertain us -a tv, radio, computer and all kinds of other things that can and often do keep two small children occupied as well! Along with those things, there are friends here -friends scattered around this country and even a few world-wide as well who are always on my thankful list too.

And to keep all those things in perspective, I'm also thankful for being blessed to live in a country that has the freedoms offered to us by the government we have -such as it is at times, in my mind when I get provoked by some of the ways said government operates from time to time! It's kind of akin to lumpy gravy in my book -taste is still good, just the texture needs some help. I still love it all the same!

So all in all -behavior issues aside -it was a wonderful time to share with family a bounteous meal, lots and lots of laughter and knowing the love that exists between my family members and me -including and really, especially, those folks who are also part of my family through my church and my Faith!

Everyone should be so lucky to be able to enjoy days like this and to do it frequently too!

Now, if someone would just tell the muscles that are still stiff and sore and aching in my legs this and to get them to be a little more understanding of my occasional overuse of those body parts, life would be -dare I say it -perfect!

Hope you all had a Thanksgiving as filled to the brim with all the things each of us holds near and dear! And may we all enjoy many more of the same!

Learning Curve?

2011-11-20T20:28:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting couple of days here. Actually, in all honesty, I suppose I should say most every day around this house brings about learning something new for someone here -not always for me -but someone in the house obviously is learning something most every day.

Sometimes, when I learn things the grandkids are learning I am amazed, really shocked at times too though.

Yesterday -Saturday morning that would be -was one of those days!

I had assumed the "normal" position -that's pretty much what my kids refer to when I am seated in front of the good old computer -playing on Facebook, reading blog posts on my Reader, doing my e-mail -whatever it may be -but using the computer. Actually -truth be told -I have three "normal" positions -one is yes, in front of the computer. The second would be curled up in my recliner working on the embroidery project of the current day and the third would also involve the recliner too but would be me sitting there, semi-upright, but sound asleep with the tv blaring and usually with said embroidery project in my lap, waiting for me to wake up again and put in another stitch or two.

Now that I've explained that, let me tell you the first rather surprising thing I learned this weekend.

I was rather engrossed in something on the monitor -don't have any recollection right now what it was though -when Kurtis came running up to me and started telling me some story that was -to him -of the utmost importance. It had to do with putting stuff in your mouth and that stuff then goes to the stomach and it gets all smooshed out and then (this has to be said rather breathlessly, I might add -to get the full effect) from there it goes to the pipes below that and then it ends up coming out as pee.

Say what, Son? And where did the need to explain what I gathered was his explanation of the digestive process come from anyway? His statement to me came completely out of the blue -no one was talking about anything at the time, much less that -or what I interpreted it as being the digestive process due to his pointing to various areas on his body anyway.

What does one say to a 5-year-old who has just given you this explanation anyway?

Not knowing what inspired this little speech from him and being a bit stunned at his explanation of things -"how things work" in his mind anyway -I just gave him a sort of incredulous look and said "Really?"

To which he replied, "Yes, really, Gram!"

Okay. I'll take your word for it and then I'm gonna ask your mother if she gave him an explanation like that at some time or other recently that it was kind of, apparently, lodged in his brain and had reached a point where he felt he had to share that information with me. So when Mandy got home later yesterday, I mentioned this to her and she said she thought maybe they were discussing things like that in his kindergarten class recently.

Hmmm. That kind of had me wondering about the how and why-for they would be talking about things like that as early on as kindergarten but figured, whatever -apparently he is learning these things and maybe he can't absorb proper names and such for the digestive process but he did have a lot of the stuff in his own good order type of set-up anyway.

A little later in the day, Mandy informed me she had just received a text message from a former family member (to her -as in her Sister-in-law, soon or someday to be ex-SIL, ya know) in which it was stated that the sheriff's deputy -or deputies -had just picked up another former member of the family and had taken him off to the hoosegow for non-payment of child support. Hmmm. They had encountered him about a month or two back over the same problem but at that time, he had managed to get someone to pay whatever amount they were requesting at that time so was not locked up that time. This time, apparently things went much differently and he was now supposedly under lock and key.

A bit of really bad timing on his part -if what he had told me a week or so back was the truth -and that was that tomorrow he was supposed to begin employment at a new and legitimate job -not one that was under the table or anything like that and supposedly then, he would be getting back on his feet, getting financial "legs" again, as it were.

All of this brings up a question I have long had in my mind about people being arrears for child support and for which I've never been able to figure out -or receive from any one in charge of these things -what is the point of arresting someone, placing them in jail for non-support, not releasing them till the arrearage -or percentage of that figure -is paid which effectively only takes them off the job market then and if one is out of the job market, how then can they earn the money to pay that money of which they are in arrears? I'm not saying this in defense of the former son-in-law, just wondering about how this seems a bit nonsensical to me.

Then, today -Kurt's TSS was here this afternoon, spending a few hours working with him and at one point while she was here, Miss Maya appeared and told us something that kind of surprised me. I don't know what inspired her but she asked Miss Dawn and I if we knew what YDIJ means and neither of had a clue as to where she was going to take us with this question but eventually she informed us that YDIJ means "Your Dad's in Jail!" Another of those "Hmmmm" moments hit me then as I wasn't sure if she had just sort of picked up on that bit of news from overhearing any conversations here yesterday or what. So I asked Mandy about his too and Mandy said she had tried to explain to Maya that yes, this is where her Dad is at the moment but we figured then that the abbreviated form Maya used was something of her own doing!

I also inquired to Miss Dawn -who is with Kurtis every school day, all day long too this year if they were studying -in school -anything about the digestive process and she said no, not unless they had reviewed that at some point in time when she may have been away from the classroom for a brief interval or some such.

All of which leads me back then to wondering how, or from what source, Kurtis had managed to learn this description he had rattled off to me yesterday which was a semi-correct tale according to a 5-year-old's comprehension anyway, of the digestive system and the process food takes from ingestion to expulsion anyway.

Oh the things small children pick up and understand never ceases to amaze me, that's for sure.

I wonder now too about the Christmas a few years back when Miss Maya received three -yes, you read that number correctly -three guitars of varying degrees of "realness" as gifts that year. Two were definitely toy guitars, true enough, but one was an actual guitar and in my opinion, was way over and above her learning abilities that particular year since no one here has any knowledge about how to play a guitar nor did any type of beginner guitar lessons come with that instrument either. But that just makes me wonder now if there had been someone who knew a little about the basics of the instrument, or some kind of instructions that maybe someone here could have interpreted to her, who knows but perhaps we'd have on our hands today a budding little prodigy playing her heart away on a guitar? I dunno but the way she picks up on things on her own, it does seem like it could have had potential back then. At least it might have saved said guitar from being destroyed by her then at any rate -which is what ultimately happened to that instrument in the end, you see. (Lack of planning, lack of foresight -people need to think before buying gifts of that caliber for a 4-year-old in my opinion anyway. The toy guitars would have sufficed completely at that point in time!)

But anyway, later this afternoon, while Miss Dawn and I were talking and Kurtis was trying to play with a particular "coloring book" of Maya's -one that is actually a "painting:" coloring book that requires a special brush and paint set to be used on the special type paper in this particular book to make the colors appear and he was not using said book but rather a plain piece of green construction paper with that particular paint brush and paints -a rather futile effort then happening for him as nothing was happening with the paints and the brush on that kind of paper. So Miss Dawn and I were trying to explain that to him -wrong paper equals nothing with that brush and those paints.

And nothing seemed to be registering with him as to what we were trying to get across there.

This whole explanation went on for at least a half-hour with him until finally he looked at me and said something to the effect that this wasn't working was it? And I responded to him with a simple "No!"

And that's when he looked at me and said "No poopie."

I -in turn -looked at Miss Dawn and asked her if his wording there was actually paraphrasing one of my own favorite responses -that being "No S**t!" And she nodded her head to let me know that yes, it was.

Then a bit after that discussion, we had the drawing of names for Christmas gifts -just between the adults in the family. Maya was intrigued by this and made up little slips of paper on her own to devise a drawing of names for gifts too -but her listings included the names of all three of the therapist/TSS people who work with the kids as well as the names of all the pets in the family too. She made a big production out of that process, needless to say and was really excited to announce that Uncle Clate had drawn Pearl's name in that drawing -Pearl being the still a bit of a kitten in the household, ya see.

But she then wanted to know whose name each of us adults had drawn and upon asking her Mom whose name she had picked out of the mix, Mandy told her "Moron's" to which Maya nodded and said, "Oh, Uncle Clayton, huh?"

Yep! That would be the correct assumption and yes, she hears that when Mandy answers the phone and it happens to be her brother on the other end of the line as she invariably then addresses him as "Moron."

Isn't sibling love wonderful though?

And isn't it also really amazing though how small children pick up so many little things that are said and seem to know exactly what is being said, what is meant and how to use certain things they hear too?

Just saying....ya know!

Who's Calling?

2011-11-16T13:53:00.000-05:00

Boy, what a yucky day it appears to be today -rainy, getting colder too. Two things I'm definitely NOT all that happy about in my life. Doggone weather like this just sets my old joints in an uproar.

A few things on my mind today -not many, mind you -as my pea brain can't handle all that much stuff all at once these days ya know.

This terrible scandal at Penn State University is still upper most in the news -well at least in this area it is anyway. But that does stand to reason considering where I live is only about 35 miles from University Park/State College, PA so certainly one can expect this to be big news around these hills, can't 'cha?

But, the most recent thing I've seen that raises more than a few more questions in my mind about this whole mess is the news yesterday of this big interview some reporter for CBS news was supposed to have had with Mike McQueary, a current-but-on-administrative-leave-coach at Penn State, the guy who told the Grand Jury that he saw Sandusky raping a young boy, estimated to be about 10 years old back in 2002. If you've been following this story at all you will remember that McQueary also told the Grand Jury that he left the scene of the alleged rape, calling only his Dad for advice and then, the next day, he is supposed to have gone and talked to Joe Paterno, the now deposed head coach of the Penn State Football team and told Joepa then what he'd seen the day prior. And of course, as we know now too, Joepa in turn reported this story to his superior, Tim Curley, the Athletic Director at Penn State who in turn, brought the news to the head of the Finance/Police Services on Campus and then, from there, the report also went on to Dr. Graham Spanier, the then President of the University and from there -well, the report stopped there, apparently.

Anyhow, that's a rough outline of who reported what to who -sort of -but now, according to the very latest reports, Mike McQueary is supposed to have sent an e-mail to a friend just last week in which he said oh, but he had done something to stop the rape and also, he had gone to the police then and discussed the situation with them -so yes, he was the "Mr. Nice Person" in this whole scenario -at least according to his words in his e-mail.

I'm wondering though why -if he really did do something, anything, to stop this alleged rape he witnessed and if he did in fact go speak to the police about this all having taken place, why didn't he say that to begin with while giving his Grand Jury Testimony? It's a bit conflictual, don't 'cha think? Or maybe I am reading this wrong cause sometimes my eyes do deceive me a bit. But this story now coming out -after maybe getting a whole hell of a lot of heat from the general public as to why he did nothing when he supposedly encountered Sandusky in the throes of lust -or, doing what Sandusky apparently considers nothing more than simple horseplay -perhaps the heat in the kitchen was getting a bit too hot for McQueary to contend with.

Ya think? I dunno -just discussing here what I saw on the CBS broadcast last night of this supposed big interview with McQueary in which he really said NOTHING, and then, reading the latest blurbs about this e-mail and then, reading the supposed e-mail too -just leaves me with more questions, more confusion too in my mind as to what the heck really did happen that day back in 2002 anyway?

On a more pleasant note -well sort of, depending on how you view this -I have been after Mandy and Ken to take a bag along with them when they walk Sammy down the Peale Road here and wanting them to pick some apples left on one tree along that road to bring home to me. This particular tree of which I know nothing other than it is apparently a darned healthy tree because it has been absolutely LOADED to the gills with nice non-worm-infested apples which are very tart, cook up nicely and make excellent homemade applesauce too -well, I just wanted a smallish bag of apples -didn't bargain for them to fill a 5 gallon drum-like container with apples for me! Granted this would make a really big kettle of applesauce which the grandkids -all three of 'em -really love -but I'm wondering now too if my hands will withstand the pressure of peeling and then cutting up that many apples -all pretty much at the same time, ya know? Did I mention before that my joints in my wrist and in my hand and fingers also tend to stiffen up relatively quickly too these days? Now, if they would like to volunteer to help with the peeling and cutting up of those apples, I'd be more than happy then to cook the whole kitt'n'kaboodle down into some yummy applesauce which I could then freeze for future use!

That does seem like a really reasonable thing for them to help me with that many apples, don't 'cha think?

And finally today -before I depart the computer for a few hours to work on my current embroidery project -I have something really exciting to report too. Well, maybe it isn't actually that exciting but rather well, just different but also a bit confusing to me too.

I received a phone call shortly after noon today from none other than Newt Gingrich! WOW! I am sooooo very impressed you just can't imagine the excitement within me over having been chosen by good old Newt to be the recipient of a phone call from him!

Actually, considering my base opinion of Newt Gingrich is not really very nice. Truth of the matter is I pretty much loathe, abhor and despise him as politicians go and I do wonder how/why his PR team would happen to cull my name and number out and phone me to let Mr. Gingrich -in a recorded message of course -start off his litany of charming things (I'm sure that's what was in this message) about himself by saying "I love America..." I didn't listen beyond that because you see, Mr. Gingrich, I too love America but I sure as Hell don't love it the way you see fit to do.

In other words, go take your message to someone who might actually be interested in hearing it -like maybe a Registered Republican for openers!

But just as yesterday I was grumping about retailers who insist on skipping over Thanksgiving completely and rushing into promoting the Christmas season as early as October or early-to-mid-November -now I'm wondering what on earth good old Gingrich is promoting this early in the political time line anyway!

Isn't this just a tad early in the election scene to be hitting on folks with political diatribes? Especially those of us who are also NOT of that particular party?

Just wondering.

Now, it's time for me to move on to thinking of how I'm gonna cook the boneless chicken breasts I set out to thaw for supper and getting back to my comfy recliner, tablecloth in one hand and embroidery needle and floss in the other to keep the production line in that area moving!

Move It Along!

2011-11-15T11:59:00.000-05:00

There are times when I am really grateful that I don't go out of the house all that often -especially in the late fall and ESPECIALLY not to the various malls!

This year, as I have done in the past, I'm following in the footsteps of one of my favorite bloggers, Jim Sullivan AKA Suldog as he again begins his annual and very vigorous campaign to put Thanksgiving uppermost in our minds and hearts and celebrate it not just on the designated day but really, all year-round! But, his main thrust is to try to get people to acknowledge the importance of this holiday and also, that it is so often overlooked in the general scheme of things -particularly those businesses who feel the need to begin pushing us to buy, buy, buy everything imaginable to make sure we have the best holiday ever!

But my theory is without Thanksgiving first, we really can not have the beautiful Christmas experience we should have!

I hate seeing all the crapola on display in the stores as they begin, earlier and earlier it seems, each year gearing up for the Christmas Season.

It's bad enough when you go shopping in June looking for a nice bathing suit or some new shorts and tops and find winter coats on display and on sale. Or in December-January, you go looking for some nice warm clothing -sweaters, gloves to replace one that manages (always your favorite glove too) to get lost in the shuffle, or looking for a new winter coat because the one you've had for the past eternity has now finally bit the dust and what do you find in the store -bathing suits, of course!

Somehow I feel retailers must have a totally different calendar that they use that makes them operate this way.

But the worst offender in all this mish-mash of advertising and sales really would be -in my opinion -the ones where we start getting deluged with Christmas ads, music, displays, information -you name it -sometimes even as early as September!

People! Wake up! There's a whole lot of other very important things that take place before we should be forced into thinking solely about how much debt we're going to take on again this year so we can adequately celebrate the Christmas Holiday!

The one that really does get the short shrift in this advertising mania though has to be Thanksgiving and we tend to allow retailers to hammer that holiday down to being of very little importance in the overall scheme of things, don't we?

Thanksgiving Day has always been one of utmost importance in my family's celebrations. And I suppose some members of my clan have from time to time thought of it as the day before their big shopping event of the year as being the most important part of this holiday but even with that, I do think we all do stop and recognize that on this day we come together as a family, dine heartily for sure (okay, dine too much really), some of us (me, anyway) enjoy the Thanksgiving Day parades and also, some great football games too but it is the idea of stopping and giving thanks for all that we have in our lives that we treasure and want to give back thanks for having received these gifts.

For many years, well from 1979 until 5 years ago, so 26 years, my kids and I always went to my Aunt's home, which was my Dad's family homestead, and we celebrated Thanksgiving with our aunt and her daughter. For many of those years, my other aunt was still around and she would also be there with us along with -usually -her son, his wife and sometimes their children too. A nice family gathering and generally about the only time during the year that my kids and I would even see that cousin and his family.

For most of those years, my younger aunt always prepared the meal -everything from soup to nuts -and always it was a fantastic dinner too. Something my kids were extra thankful for because it meant they got a really good cooked dinner done by our Aunt Mike and yes, she really had a great way with putting a very delicious dinner together too! Early on, we often even had my older aunt's special Plum Pudding type dessert too -something that created other special memories in my kids' minds as rarely does a holiday go by now that one of my kids doesn't remember and mention the year Aunt Lizzie wanted to "flame" this dessert but for some reason or other, it just wouldn't cooperate. As a result, my Uncle Arch kept telling her to "Put a little more whiskey on it Lizzie!" and my kids just totally loved hearing him say that and also, remembering seeing the kind of dirty looks his wife -Aunt Isabelle -was throwing his way each time he'd say that.

Or the time my older daughter invited her boyfriend at the time to dine with us and thus, meet the extended family that way. He was a shy, quiet young man and had no clue as to the sharp tongue that sometimes existed in my Aunt Lizzie until he reached across the table for a little extra helping of something and in the process, the sleeve of his sweater got a bit too close to the flame of one of the candles on the dining room table and sort of "toasted" his sleeve a tad. When that happened, Aunt Lizzie -in her sort of growling way -chided him saying "That's what you get for being greedy!" The poor young fellow was mortified initially as he figured from her words and especially her tone of voice, that she was really meaning what she said. It took us the rest of that evening to assure him that was just her way of teasing him, trying to make him feel a full part of our a bit offbeat at times, family.

But that really has nothing to do with the ad campaigns that seem to try to obliterate the importance of this special day, does it?

There really should be lots and lots of ad campaigns and special programs and the like to call attention to Thanksgiving in a very meaningful way though. We should be deluged with blurbs about things we all have -and quite assuredly even during the worst of times, we ALL do have many, many things for which we can and should give thanks! For family, for friends, for fellowship we may have through various groups or organizations, for opportunities that simply abound for us but all too often, we get bogged down in our thought processes and overlook these things.

Of course, we should give much thanks for the food on the table before us -even if it's been a bit of a rough year, economically, most of us still manage to pull together a feed often fit for royalty, don't we? And we should take the time in the days leading up to this event to thank the farmers who produced the crops necessary for us to pick and choose what culinary delights we could afford to have available for our dining pleasure at least on this one special day of the year!

We should be shown promos of other things for which we often forget but which are very important gifts that we owe huge debts of gratitude and thankfullness much overdue -things like our government, our freedoms in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, for those who serve and protect us daily -here and around the world as well. We should give attention to those who don't have as much as we have too -and recognize that there are many who have even less -far less -than we have even when our table setting may look perhaps a bit on the sparse side at times. We still have more than so many others do and we should give thanks for what we do have!

Much of the time the past couple of years, due to work schedules and such by some members of my family, we don't actually observe Thanksgiving on the 4th Thursday in November, which is the traditional time for this event. This year is going to be one of those years but we will figure out a weekend as close to this date as possible when all of my kids and grandkids and I will be able to be together and will have our special gathering then.

And maybe sometime in December -after we've begun celebrating the Advent Season -which is the true precursor of Christmas -I will begin to appreciate seeing lights and decorations, hearing Christmas music to put me in a receptive mode for the Christmas Season to begin.

But it can't come to be until after we've had our Thanksgiving time together to stop and appreciate all that we have, all that has been given to us and getting mind, body and spirit refreshed and ready to welcome the Christmas Season.

Sorrow, Anger, Pride

2011-11-10T01:22:00.000-05:00

So many emotions running amuk within me today! Each of them creating thoughts within me as I try to regain some balance, some control over my life, my mind, my heart.

The sorrow in my heart comes from several sources today. It's been building up for the past several days as my mind has gone back repeatedly to events of a year ago today -November 9, 2010 -when I arrived home after having had my third round of chemotherapy -the result of lab tests after a hysterectomy back in July of 2010 revealed I had uterine cancer. I walked into the house and both my daughters were here to tell me that they had some very bad news for me.

While I was at the Cancer Clinic, my oldest cousin on my Mom's side had died! Her husband, who also was dealing at that time with a myriad of health issues, had called and told my girls that news and I was to call him as soon as I got home.

Although my cousin Nancy was also dealing with receiving chemo treatments last fall, and we spoke frequently -back and forth via phone calls, comparing notes with each other how the chemo was affecting us -she had been doing quite well dealing with the chemo, just as I was too. However, her passing was very sudden, such a shock, as she had suffered an aneurysm about 9 a.m. that morning and within less than an hour, she was gone.

And a year later, this is still something that is raw within me. She was the oldest of the grandchildren of my maternal grandparents and over the years as our parents, our aunts and uncles each passed away, she had become, in many way, the matriarch of this part of my family. I could always count on Nancy to pick me up when I was down about anything, to give great advice on just about any thing that was on my mind and I could always count on her, whenever I saw her, that she would have this big smile on her face that gave one the feeling that all would soon be well or right within our own little family world. Comforting. That was one of the words I would use to describe Nance and her ways -always comforting.

So, this weekend, my thoughts were frequently pertaining to memories of our family, of days in my childhood spent with Nancy and her siblings and their parents; of family reunions and laughter galore over 55 years of those events now in our past and of other sorrowful times too -when her Dad died suddenly, when each of the rest of that generation passed on, when her brother killed himself and we -the family -tried to recover from the shock and loss of David and we rejoiced too with the births of her children, my kids, other additions to our family and of course, the pure joy that comes with attaining grandparent status too! We shared memory after memory with each and every phone call over the past couple of years that had seen Nancy and I drawing closer and closer. She was one of the few members of my family who remembered anything at all about my Dad and who was willing to talk to me about him, to listen to me too as I tried to learn little bits and pieces about my Dad in order to learn more about myself in the process. We compared notes on how we grew up, how our lives were alike due to her Dad and my Mom having been siblings, what we remembered about our Grandparents and so many, many other little things about our lives.

Add to those thoughts of Nancy and the loss there, tomorrow -November 10th -also just so happens to be what would be my Mom's 102nd birthday. It was 32 years this past October 6th since my Mom died and though her passing isn't one that is still raw within me as Nancy's is, I still miss not having my Mom to talk to about many things and strangely enough what I find myself missing most about my Mom would have to be the arguments we had on virtually a daily basis! The relationship I had with my Mom was frequently a very rocky road to travel as I rarely, if ever (or so it seemed) was able to do anything that pleased her! Well, I thought that was how things were until my children were born and then, her acceptance, her love of my kids, her grandchildren, told me that finally I had found one thing I could do that she found to be my achievements in her eyes!

So here I was this weekend then already in a rather somber frame of mind when the news broke in State College, PA -home of my college Alma Mater, Penn State University -about a child abuse/sex scandal involving high officials within the University -including none other than Coach Joe Paterno, as well as high up possibly as Dr. Graham Spanier, the President of the University.

Each day the news reports grew and grew and became more and more atrocious, ominous too about the future of many aspects of this school and in particular, the fate of Coach Paterno and Dr. Spanier.

Tonight, as I write this, the news reports now are coming through about thousands and thousands of students gathering in downtown State College and the State College police as well as the Pennsylvania State Police being called out in force to try to maintain control over the crowds there and hopefully, to prevent any type of rioting type of situation to evolve.

This gathering is due to the news announcements tonight that Dr. Spanier and Coach Paterno have now both been fired, effective immediately, for their roles in how the sex scandal/abuse events were handled.

And it is this -the charges brought against the former Linebacker Coach -Jerry Sandusky -that he molested, sexually abused at least 8 young boys over several years and did this on the Penn State Campus too. According to the reports, this had been brought to Coach Paterno's attention back in 2002 at which time, he says he reported about this to Tim Curley, the Athletic Director at the University and apparently, he believed he had done what was required of him when he was made aware of what Mr. Sandusky had been doing.

It does sadden me to read about these horrific things having happened to these vulnerable boys and to think that somehow the people who were made aware of this did only the minimal in attempting to report and thus stop the abuse from happening again and also, to have it investigated thoroughly then and there and the perpetrators arrested, charged, tried and sentenced then too.

It angers me to think that one of the main things I learned through many of the classes I took during my time as a student at Penn State, majoring in Rehabilitation Education -i.e. Counseling -that ANY TIME there is even a hint of someone abusing a child, anyone working in any form of the Educational field is duty bound to report any kind of activity along those lines to the POLICE and yet, that rule or regulation -whatever you care to call it -was blatantly ignored by so many people along the way over the years which thus apparently then -according to the charges leveled against Mr. Sandusky -enabled him to keep on using and abusing these children!

I confess too that I was one of the many Alumni from Penn State who, over the years, admired Coach Paterno very much for his abilities as a coach -and a winning coach both on and off the field too as he was noted for his pushing the athletes in the Football Program at the University that their education was of the utmost importance and for them to persevere in completing that education and attain that all-important degree! And yes indeed, he did work long and very hard to try to see to it that as many of the players on the Football team did reach that goal. He and his wife were also huge benefactors to the University itself, donating millions over the years to various entities on campus. Those factors -many, many good things he tried to do, and that he did, over the years he served the University as head coach -do attest to his devotion to the school and to seeing things provided as often needed there but now, all the good the man did in his tenure is going to be totally overshadowed by his NOT being totally forthcoming, by NOT doing any type of follow-up on his reporting of the activities of Mr. Sandusky that resulted in what is still an unknown number of young boys being harmed.

It absolutely boggles my mind to think about all these things and how they intermingle, interact and the harm, the hurt, the pain, that those boys endured and still do -all because a few men didn't apparently feel this was important enough to push for more actions to stop Mr. Sandusky in his tracks!

It hurts me, deep inside too, as I think of how many people will regard this as a black mark on the educational capabilities of this school too now!

And yet, I know that the institution itself -the school -will continue to operate and offer the same type of quality, first rate education to those who matriculate there -just as it always has done. I've always held Penn State University in the highest esteem for providing the caliber of education it has given to anyone who was enrolled there, provided of course, the student did the studying needed to keep on track! I'll go a bit further there and state I loved this University for many years before I was fortunate enough to be accepted to attend school there -much later in life than the average college student -and that I managed to complete the coursework needed and received my B.S. from this fine university in 1994!

I am still one very proud graduate of Penn State University -and I'm not ashamed in the least to proclaim that as I did that! ME! The person who my own mother never believed I would follow through if the opportunity to acquire a higher education were ever made available to me and yet, I did it! No one can change that or take that away from me and I acquired that degree, that knowledge and understanding of the field of my choice at a fine, upstanding, excellent University -PENN STATE!

And I will continue to believe in the University -this place, PENN STATE, as being one of the best in this country and also, around the world as well -for the caliber of professors it employed and still does, for their ability to impart the necessary knowledge and skills for me to acquired my degree there. And for its ability to recover from the events that have come to light over the past few days that should not ever be taken away from what the University stands for -ultimately!

This all is still very jumbled in my mind -this mix of sorrow and anger -but I am relieved that the Board of Trustees voted to fire both Dr. Spanier and Coach Paterno -to let them know that their actions were not just illegal but also immoral and to show them too that even those who rise to these levels of power can be cut down for their lack of empathy for the victims in all of this mess as well, apparently, for their lack of knowledge of that one simple rule -that ANY and ALL actions that result in even a suspicion of child abuse or molestation, much less rape, of a child, are to be REPORTED immediately to the POLICE!

Now, having said all that, easing my mind perhaps a little bit anyway, I'll still proudly wear Blue and White and believe too that God must be A Penn State fan because after all the sky is blue and white, isn't it? It is going to take time, certainly, for many to accept the good that exists within this wonderful school and it is that aspect that allows me to go forward and hold my head high to proclaim WE ARE! PENN STATE!

(Just under new and hopefully,very improved management!)

Apply Bribery Liberally!

2011-11-09T12:44:00.000-05:00

One of my issues -among a whole lot at times -that I complain about frequently is that my feet and/or legs ache. Anyone else have problems along these lines?

But when the feet really, really bother me, I try to convince either Maya or Kurt to be nice to old Grammy and rub my feet with various types of creams or foot creams, in particular. Sometimes they are nice and do that for me fairly willingly -at least for a short time span anyway.

But lately, Kurt's the only one I can cajole into doing this to make my tootsies feel a little better. Because this is something that has been a problem -sort of -for many years and one my kids often used to get roped into doing for me, they would probably say that Maya is exhibiting a lot of superb intelligence in refusing to be Gram's little slave there.

But I've recently come across something that makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I can use something I came across to convince her to rub Gram's aching feet after all.

Maya, you see, is a little Diva and as such, she has a major affinity for lots of things along the "beauty" products lines. One of these is fingernail polish. And that is something she dearly loves!

Gram is not one inclined to things like that -mainly because as soon as I try to do my nails, with some pretty, fancy color, for some weird reason my fingers then feel very heavy and I will almost immediately begin the process of scraping, peeling or getting out the nail polish remover and making sure then I have just removed every last bit of polish. However, I did learn last summer when Maya wanted to polish my toe nails that nail polish there doesn't bother me sooooo -I'm thinking if I were to splurge and buy nail polish in some of these really snazzy shades and then give the stuff to Maya as part of her Christmas present, it might just work to get her to do a little foot massage then in return for poor old Gram's feet!

Desperation does breed some strange bedfellows at times ya know and I'm thinking if that would work, it might be a very worthwhile investment for me.

Think it's worth a shot? I dunno but I might just give it a try.

Acting Lessons?

2011-11-07T20:53:00.000-05:00

This is along the lines of a bit of advice for our minister, Pastor Carrie, after the response she got in church Sunday from my Granddaughter, Miss Maya. I rather think she has already figured this out, but just in case -to be on the safe side, ya know -I'll reiterate this to her now to be very careful what questions you pose when giving a children's sermon and asking questions of the kids you are trying to whom you are preaching!

Yesterday, we were having a baptism as well as an affirmation of baptism service at the service and so, Pastor Carrie had decided to teach the children a little bit about the Rite of Baptism then.

That sounded like a good topic to me and one that also should be fairly innocuous too with respect to the kids involved in the children's sermon yesterday as well. There are a few kids in our parish -my two small grandchildren often fall in this number -who do at times make some really off-the-wall commentary during various sermons Pastor Carrie has had for the kids in the crowd. There are also twin brothers who also are known for some of their often pointed remarks too though.

Yesterday, apparently was Maya's day to be the unintentional comedienne though.

Pastor Carrie started to explain a bit about Baptism and how it usually takes place saying that most of the time, Baptisms involve babies but that the service yesterday was going to involve two people who are far from being infants since both of them are in their early twenties.

That being said, she then said that normally there is a baby being presented for baptism but in doing that, normally it is the baby's parents then too who bring the child up to be baptized and since she wanted to show the kids, step-by-step, what takes place she then asked for volunteers to play the role of the babies' parents.

Maya's hand shot up immediately to volunteer to be the Mother and Noah, one of the twin brothers, volunteered to be the Dad. No problem with that scenario thus far.Then another little boy -Logan -who is Kurt's age -offered to play the part of the Minister in this little play and with that, Pastor thought things were ready to proceed then.

So she asked if everyone was ready or if any of the kids had any questions thus far to ask her.

And that's where things went off-course for a few minutes as Maya spoke up, saying that she was ready but she just wanted to make sure of one thing first. That one thing she wanted to know?

"Do we have to kiss?"

Needless to say, it was a few minutes before the congregation stopped howling in laughter over this question from her!

When she came back to the pew to sit down beside me again, she whispered to me then, "Why did everyone laugh when I asked about kissing?" I'm not even sure what kind of answer I gave her to that -if indeed I gave her an answer at all as I may have just motioned for her to sit down and be quiet as I didn't want to get this whole thing back in her mind again!

Kids! Needless to say, Art Linkletter sure was right in that they do sometimes say/do the darndest things, don't they?

Besides that little comedic number at church, the past couple of days have been every bit as hectic as I had said they were going to be in my last post from last Wednesday.

I spent the bulk of the day on Thursday baking bread -three different kinds of breads no less. I made four loaves of Swedish Limpa Rye bread; four loaves of Whole Wheat Challah bread and 6 loaves of Swedish White "Kaka" bread -all of it planned to be donated to the church women's annual Fall Bazaar which we held on Saturday. In addition to baking breads, I also baked cookies for the bazaar too -a batch of bar cookies called Rainbow Blonde brownies (with mini-M&M baking pieces in them), a batch of Gingersnaps and also, a big batch of Snickerdoodles too!

Friday, I was busy making spaghetti meat sauce to use in the two pans of lasagne I had promised to prepare for the dinner at the bazaar on Saturday too! So, yes I was pretty much locked into staying in the kitchen most of the time last Thursday and Friday.

On Saturday, We had all the tables all set up, baked goods, homemade candies, craft items, etc., plus the nice and pretty brand new cookbooks our women's group had compiled this summer were on display and ready to be sold then too!

We had a very good turnout for the bazaar this year and the cookbooks were really almost seeming to be flying off the table where I had them displayed as folks were buying there almost like hot cakes for quite a while! I don't know the exact number of books we sold on Saturday but as of right now, our treasurer, Kate, and I figure we must have sold about 1/2 of all the books we ordered thus far anyway! If that's true, then we've now probably sold about 150 of the 330 cookbooks we received.

Not a bad number of sales is it plus I have orders on my e-mail for at least 30-35 more cookbooks that are just sitting there waiting for those who pledged to purchase a cookbook to hurry and get a check sent to me in the amount of the sale of the cookbook plus shipping fees! Once those checks start arriving, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we then manage to sell at least 60-70 more cookbooks between now and the upcoming weekend!

The hectic pace is going to continue here at least over the next few days too first because tomorrow morning, Mandy is taking little Miss Pearl, our sweet little kitten, to the vet where she will then have surgery that will keep our family count intact at one dog and two cats and no more! Yep! We're having Miss Pearl "fixed" in more ways that one -first a hysterectomy on the cat and then, to have her declawed then too!

I pledged to work at the polls in the next township over from ours tomorrow too from 11 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. as an act of support to my young cousin, Pj, who at the tender age of 18 and who is in his first semester at Penn State's Dubois Campus is also running for election too for the office of County Commissioner!

This is kind of a bit of deja vu within my Dad's family with Pj running for election because about 60 years ago this November, my Dad's younger brother, my uncle, the late Archie Hill, also ran for election as a County Commissioner and won, too! The biggest obstacle I think Pj will have to surpass is probably going to come about his age and what many voters are referring to as being his "lack of experience." I saw where the news crew from Channel 6 in Johnstown, PA interviewed Pj today and I thought he did a great job of answering the question about his age, his youthful status as it were when he responded that age, to his mind, is just a number! So true Pj and I hoe those voters who had not yet made a decision on whether or not to caste their vote in his direction will be swayed then in his direction as he really is a very smart, very knowledgeable youn man and also, very ambitious too!

So, tonight I wish cousin Pj all of the luck in the world for a good clean victory tomorrow and for the surgery on Miss Pearl our sweet little purr ball to go off without a hitch too so that I can go over Wednesday morning and bring her back home then to recuperate!

Then, I can sit and relax and work on the new tablecloth -size 52x70 inches -in a Christmas Wreath design/pattern on it to try to get as much done on that piece as fast as possible so I will then have time to do a little more stitching then of a different type as I want to make a jumper then between now and Christmas for Miss Maya to wear too in the very near future!

Now, I just need to find a light-weight jacket to put on overtop of my sweatshirt to hopefully warm/defrost my fingertips so I can then hold a needle and thread and get a bit more work done on the embroidery project just as soon as possible!

Now say a nice little prayer for my young cousin, Paul "Pj" Monella Jr in his bid for a job as our County Commissioner!

Hectic!

2011-11-02T13:11:00.000-04:00

If anyone asks me for one word to describe my life, right now, that one word would have to be "HECTIC!

The past couple of days have been extremely that -very hectic!

Last Friday, there was the rush to get the kids ready for school and get their Halloween costumes into their back packs or a separate bag so they would have them at their fingertips to change into and be able to participate in the Halloween parade at school. Don't tell Maya and Kurtis but Mommy and Gram were running really late and were also starving so stopped at a little local eatery for a bite to eat and our timing wasn't the best so -we ended up finishing our meal and skipping attending the parade at school. Not that we didn't WANT to be there -exactly -but just that it's usually so crowded that getting a seat where you could even get a glimpse of your kid up on the stage -well, next to impossible. Since we saw their costumes on them earlier in the week and would get to see them again Monday night when they actually went out trick or treating, we figured we could slide on the parade plus, the kids would never know (unless we -or some other big mouth in the vicinity) told them about being absent. I know -bad Momma and Grammy, huh?

The weekend was one with Mother Nature turning into a trick or treat (depending on how much a person loves -or hates -winter) with the snowfall we got on Saturday into Sunday. Sheesh. Enough already!

Sunday morning found all four of us rushing around like crazy people -Mandy, Maya, Kurtis and me - trying to get ourselves all dressed and ready to go to church because it was a big day for our family there. My older daughter and grandson were here too but they went next door to our neighbor Deb's house to shower and get ready to be at church on time. We were almost ready to leave when Mandy went out to start my jeep and her car and came running right back into the house in a bit of a panic because, well -both my jeep and her car doors were all frozen shut! Tighter than a drum!

So she had to do a quick thaw process (hot water on the doors, ya know) to get them open and pray that both of them would also start up with no added problems.

Here's what Mandy's car looked like when after she finally got her doors thawed enough to open 'em!

After she got things squared away with her car and my jeep, she told me to get Maya and for us to head out to church so that Maya, at least, would be there on time for her big event that day!

This past Sunday was Reformation Sunday, which in all Lutheran Churches world-wide, is a very important day on the church calendar as it is in honor of Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Thesis way back when in the 15th century! Martin Luther as you may -or may not -already know is credited with beginning the reformation of the Catholic church and separation from the Vatican with his posting of those edicts a long, long time ago.

Reformation Sunday in our church is also now the Sunday when we welcome those children in the parish who have completed instruction in First Communion and this year was Maya's time when she took the instruction and on this past Sunday, she and three others her age all got to take their First Communion.

She looked so doggone beautiful -all dressed up in her white fancy dress, with the flower in her hair -and she even announced to her TSS yesterday when I was showing Miss Britt the pictures we had taken at church that she "looks like an angel!" (No conceit in our household cause Miss Maya's got a bit of an overload of that commodity!) But, I have to agree with her on this instance. Here's a couple of the pictures from Maya on the occasion of her First Communion.

Here she is holding the Bible given to her by the church -which she asked on numerous occasions throughout Sunday afternoon who this book belonged to anyway! We had a heck of a time getting her to understand that it is HER book because it has, after all, her name written in the very front of it!

This is Maya with our minister, Pastor Carrie Anderson, after the service Sunday.

And here's Maya (again) with Pastor Carrie and another First Communicant, Megan Anderson, granddaughter of our neighbors, Daryl and June (Force) Gurbal.

And this was Maya as Mandy was trying to finish getting her dressed at the house Sunday morning so we could leave and get to church on time!

After church, we had a big meal here at the house of Stuffed Cabbage Rolls and baked Ziti and Cheese. When Maya had seen me making the cabbage rolls the day before, she asked me what I was making and I told her these would be "Pigs in a Blanket" mainly so as not to mention that there would be cabbage involved in this food item. Any mention of cabbage in front of her or her little brother would produce an immediate reaction of "I DON'T LIKE THAT!" and an adamant (guaranteed) refusal to even taste them. So when I was dishing up their plates, she had told me that she would like to try a little of the Pigs in a Blanket and I cut one in half-giving half to her and half to Kurtis -and also, cut it up into tiny bite-size pieces too in hopes of getting her to eat a bit more of this then. After dinner, she did come and tell me that she had liked the filling in the Pigs in a Blanket very much but that she didn't "care for the blanket!" Gotta love that girl, don't 'cha!

Monday found me running around like a chicken with my head cut off because the cookbooks I had slaved over for almost two months this summer had arrived at our church! All twenty three (23) cases worth! Actually there are only 22 cases of the big cookbook and a smaller box with 30 little booklets of special cookie recipes that the publisher included with our order! A little appreciation gift from the publisher to our Women's group, ya know!

After all the things I've said back in July and August about this cookbook and the preparation that went into getting it done, here's a couple preview pics of the cookbook so you can now see what I was talking about during that time!

This is the front cover and in case you can't read it all -it says "A Bountiful Legacy -A history of Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church through Food." It's very pretty -very regal looking actually and inside this book are 586 of some of the best, tried and true recipes you'll ever find anywhere!

These two pictures below are something I am really pleased we could insert in our book. The top photo is of some events in our church over the past couple of years -and the top photo on the right hand side are of one of the courts at one of our St. Lucia Day celebrations -a big event honoring the patron saint -St. Lucia -of Sweden. Because our church originally was founded by Swedish immigrants and we still have quite a few members with a Swedish heritage, it is a tradition we have kept and celebrate every year on the Sunday closest to December 13th, which is the actual St. Lucia Day. (This year, our celebration will be on December 11th and will be a nice big pot luck dinner with a very pretty pageant and the arrival too of our St. Lucia -a teenage girl from our parish! It's a big deal in our church and one I as well as my kids too all enjoy very much!)

This photo though is the one I take great pride in having it in our cookbook as it is a dedication to many of the women who once served our church during the 127 year history of our parish! Yes, there is one photo on this grouping of a woman who was a member of the earliest church -the one that stood in the now ghost town of Peale, PA -and that would be the woman in the first row, coming down the page to the fourth photo and it just so happens to be that is my Great-Grandmother!

(My Mom and my maternal grandmother are also pictured on this page along with my maternal grandfather's baby sister too! And I don't know why, but I can't get the hyperlink thing to turn off on my post right now. Go figure!)

Yesterday -that would be Tuesday in case you forgot -I spent most of the day cursing my lovely, handy-dandy filing system here in my house. Mainly because I have NO actual system with respect to where I file -or hide -things! I was hunting for the copy of the deed to the house which I need to take to one of the county agencies tomorrow so we can apply for funding for some much needed repairs to this old barn of a house and finally, after about 6 hours of going through all my hiding places for papers, I ended up calling the courthouse and speaking someone in the office of the Registrar of Deeds to see about getting a copy there of the darned deed! Took me about an hour though to find the phone number for that office because, in our lovely telephone directory provided by the wonderful telephone company, there are no individual listings of the various offices housed in our courthouse! How nice! I ended up speaking to a secretary in one of the district magistrate's offices to get the number of the Registrar's office!

And today looks to be just as hectic as the previous days have been for me! Starting with a young woman from the village who stopped by the house today and purchased seven cookbooks from me! (Lucky for her I had brought a case of them home to get ready to ship out and fill requests I have on file from people around the country who want to buy one of these lovely books!) Then I had to run out to church and grab yet another case to take with me this afternoon when I go see the oncologist for my monthly appointment and port flushing. I called and told the receptionist to alert the rest of the staff that I would have cookbooks with me if any of them wish to purchase one (or maybe even more!!) today when I come in for my appointment!

Tomorrow and Friday are both going to be zoo days here as I have to make 2 big pans of lasagne to take to church Saturday for the dinner part of our annual bazaar! In addition to that, I'll be baking a couple batches of Swedish breads and probably some cookies or a cake of some type too that I will take out for sale on the baked goods table at our bazaar too -along with a few of my embroidered pieces that will go for sale on the crafts table as well!

Then, Saturday will be the real test of my endurance! I will be manning the cookbook purchase table and will have as my "assistants" (using that term very lightly here) will be Maya and Kurtis! Yes I will have to take them out to church with me to stay by my side while I try to help people get cookbooks and other things and hopefully, I can find enough coloring books to set them up at a little table beside me where they can keep busy and out of trouble while I work at the Bazaar. To say the least, that day will sure be interesting!

Got an e-mail too from a cousin who lives down in Indiana, PA telling me she will be coming up here Saturday to come to our Bazaar and will be bringing her Mom and her niece with her too! This really excites me too since I haven't seen those cousins in almost 18 months now so will be great to get to see them again!

And there you have it -the things that will be keeping me very, very occupied for the rest of this week now!

Hope you day -and the coming days ahead are full but maybe not so jam-packed as mine are gonna be the next couple of days!

Some new things!

2011-10-31T23:55:00.000-04:00

I've been so engrossed in so many things the past couple of months that I kept putting off taking some pictures of some of my favorite stuff -things I've finished embroidering!

I have an album on my Facebook page that had about 9 items in it that I had embroidered between April and June but since then, although I have done a few things along those lines, I just kept procrastinating taking photos of the stuff and posting it here on my blog.

But tonight -I finally broke down and got pictures taken of all the rest of the stuff I've completed since June through tonight!

So, if you're ready -here goes with a string of pictures for your viewing pleasure -or at least I hope it's a pleasure for you to take a peek at these items. Some of these things will go this weekend to our church for sale at the crafts table at our annual Fall Bazaar while the rest will be here at the house, waiting patiently for someone to come along and decide they really like, really need this or that particular item!

This first item -and the last item shown in this listing -is a tablerunner -about 44x14 inches. My apologies in that my background on these two pictures and two other pictures of another tablerunner doesn't do much in the way of showing the design very well because I have a red table cover on my dining room table right now. Oh well, such is my luck, ya know -and timing too! LOL

This is the second tablerunner -Christmas floral design -and also is about 44x14 inches in size.

The next three items -six or seven photos though -are each tabletoppers -about 32x32 inches in dimension. All are done in cross stitch. The first one is really a very pretty, rather dainty floral display.

This one I really thought was cute and I liked it much better than a similar Christmas tree tabletopper I did last year -because this one the trees are smaller and the colors are more muted -makes for a very pretty cloth.

Here's candles and tree ornaments shown with an evergreen spray background -also 32x32 inches.

Next up -Terry cloth hand towel sets -here's some strawberries for a cheery little towel.

Maybe some pretty little lavender colored flowers?

Like cats? How about a pair of 'em?

A pretty Christmas wreath to trim your kitchen maybe?

O how about some holly berries too?

Angels -always a great thing to have hanging around your house!

And this is a set of three terry cloth hand towels each in a different Christmas design.

Want a neat pillowcase on which to rest your weary head and have some whimsical dreams on whimsical pillowcases then?

And, finally -the full view of the Christmas church in snow scene of the first photo at the top!

And that's what I've been doing this summer in addition to spending roughly two months that I normally would have been doing other embroidery projects but I took that break in order to compile the cookbook for our church women's group!

And surprise, surprise -our cookbooks arrived today and so I even have a photo or two that I can share here -in a "Sneak preview" of the cookbook we will be selling starting this Saturday at our Fall Bazaar at our church (at Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lanse, PA -starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, November 5, 2012!) The cookbook sells for $12.00 per book and shipping charges run an additional $4.95 for 1 book -multiple orders have a higher price of course, for shipping but it also reduces the per book price too. (A package of 2-4 books will cost $10.95 shipping and a box of 5 or 6 cookbooks will cost $14.95 in shipping fees.) Overall, it really is a decent price though for a great book, full of all kinds of different recipes from old Swedish traditional things to even some great Slovak traditional foods and a whole lot of other stuff in between -to the tune of 586 recipes in all! And I love it! It's gorgeous!

And, here's what the cover to our three-ring binder cookbook looks like too!

If you see anything of the above craft items I have pictured here that you're interested in purchasing, drop me an e-mail and let me know and I'll post prices on items then. Same goes for the cookbook -so if you would like to order one of them or a bunch of 'em for Christmas gifts or a birthday present or just a nice cookbook for yourself -e-mail me and I'll tell you who to make the check out to (WELCA) and where to send it -to me -and I'll pass the check along to our treasurer and will ship your cookbook out within 1-2 days of receiving the check by first class, priority mail!

And now -I should go to bed but want to try to write yet another post tonight -if I can stay awake that long, that is.

On second thought -I think I'll go to bed!

Peace!

Nut Space for a Nut Case?

2011-10-27T00:45:00.000-04:00

Almost eight years ago now, my son decided to move back home.

Initially, he stayed here with us in the "family homestead" but that summer, he purchased an old house up on top of the hill here in the village. The house itself is definitely nothing fancy, does need a lot of work done to it in terms of remodeling, and he's been doing a few things to improve it -at least somewhat- on the inside of the place.

He's actually been very lucky with respect to some of the upgrades and changes he's made as a lot of people simply gave him things that they no longer had any use for -including even kitchen cabinets and counter top that he used which did a lot to improve the kitchen of this old place.

I don't remember now when the garage came into being at his place, but that too was something that came about quite inexpensively. A neighbor of his had also purchased an old house up on the hill and lived in it while building himself a nice, new split-level place and once he moved into his new place, he wanted the old house torn down and in spreading the word around town about that, he offered that anyone who tore the old place down could have whatever lumber was still usable at now charge- a token of his appreciation, if you will, for getting the old place razed.

At that point in time, my former son-in-law was still functioning fairly reasonably and he thought it would be a great way to get materials that he and my son could use to build a garage at my son's place without having to go get a big loan for the lumber and stuff. So the SIL took on the chore of pulling the old place apart and also, he and my son then designed a garage that the SIL then built too behind my son's house.

The garage itself is nothing fancy either but it is stable and workable but there's just one slight problem with it right now.

Seems my son needs just a bit more room -more space -in the garage so he can then put his non-running vehicles that he plans to work on -someday -and get them operational -plus he needs extra room to be able to store his old, but functioning, pickup truck because it's not a good vehicle to use during the winter months. Plus, Sonny-Boy doesn't want to have that truck sit out in the weather over the winter months and possibly begin to rust out or some such like that as it is a bit of a collector's item. It's a 1971 Chevy pickup, painted a bright yellow, very low to the ground (which according to my son, makes it even more valuable, at least to him I guess. I have no clue about things like that.)

Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, there's no old houses around waiting to be torn down that he could scrounge for the needed lumber to add on to his garage and there's definitely no extra funds available in his budget to allow for purchasing the material or even for trying to erect a metal building that could be attached to the garage he already has.

Now, normally something like this would be of little to no interest to me except that right now I really wish he did have a nice, decent sized out-building up there, and it would be outstanding if it just so happened to have a solid floor in it -like concrete maybe?

Now I suppose you're probably thinking why in blazes would I be interested in a garage type building with a concrete floor to boot, aren't you?

Well, my reason is actually quite simple.

You see, yesterday Mandy's boyfriend went down over the mountain to some place he knows about where there are loads and loads of black walnut trees and those trees just happen to have oodles and oodles of black walnuts just laying around on the ground -free for the pick-up and taking of 'em! So, he loaded up -so far -two big 10 gallon containers filled to the brim, each one, with black walnuts! Brought them up here and parked them out in my front yard now too, he did!

I'll be honest here and tell you I had never before seen black walnuts! I also had not a clue either as to what is involved in getting these things opened and getting down to the nut meats deep inside them either. So, to improve my knowledge base a bit, a Google search was necessary.

Seems that getting the top cover -if you will -off these nuts and getting down to the shell that then must be cracked to reach the nut meats is quite the laborious project! Indeed it is!

Just to get the top layer off these nuts -which by the way, in their current state they are roughly about the size of golf balls. (My estimation there.) And it says that one needs heavy-duty yellow rubber work gloves, plus a wire brush and a very hard surface on which to place the nuts and then, you either take a sledge hammer or some such equipment to 'em or, you can also drive a vehicle over them in order to break the top layer open!

Now, I do have a nice big parking pull-off in front of our house here however, it is not cemented or paved with macadam -just the dirt with a bit of gravel over top of that which would not make for the kind of hard surface needed to open these darned nuts!

Plus, once the top layer is cleared off, there are certain methods one must use to dispose of that substance or else, some elements in that stuff can poison the ground wherever it happens to get dumped! That, plus the fact that once you do get down to the shell itself, those things are rock-solid -or damned near, according to what I read about these nuts, and it takes a hammer or chisel or somethings along those lines in order to open the inner shell then. And after that, the nuts apparently have to be "cured" (so-to-speak) which is a process that takes roughly 6-8 weeks before the danged nuts are actually really usable!

The way things are shaping up here now with these two big old containers filled with those black walnut balls, I definitely understand completely why the price of black walnuts is so expensive!

Now, if only Ken could find something else that is free for the taking and that would be good to have, useful, etc., and not requiring major construction to use or major labor to get to the substance, I sure would appreciate that.

A nice winning lottery ticket would fill the bill for me!

Halloween Party!

2011-10-24T23:54:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday -the 23rd - Mandy took both kids up to a Halloween Party at our local Moose.

This was the first time both of them had a chance to go to something like that and they had a blast! Even got to go on a Hayride too!

I had to go over to Walmart on Saturday though to pick up a long-sleeved shirt -in black -for Maya as well as a pair of tights (black) that she could wear under her costume. She looked so doggone cute all dressed up for this event! (I was thinking that sure would have been wild if I'd been able to find her some really sexy bodystockings to wear with her costume but she doesn't quite have the figure to fill out anything like these, at least not just yet!)

But anyway, here's Maya yesterday ready to head up to the Moose for the first of what I'm sure will be many Halloween parties in the years to come!

Doesn't she look great though? I think Mandy did a fantastic job with the face painting on her and Maya was really pleased and very excited over her "new" look!

She's definitely quite the little ham, isn't she? Now, this coming Friday, we get to get both of them decked out again for the school's Halloween program too and that should be a fun event!

Helping Hand

2011-10-24T23:38:00.000-04:00

A little over a month ago, a young lady and her husband -both are friends of mine and Mandy's -had her fourth child. They had three little boys -ages about 7, 5 and not quite 2 and now, this beautiful little girl! She had posted on Facebook about two weeks ago that she was looking for a stroller that would hold two little ones -used, in decent enough condition and at a reasonable price.

I mentioned this to Mandy referencing a dual-type stroller that Carrie had brought up here and put out at our yard sale this summer that maybe our friend would be interested in that piece of equipment. So Mandy contacted her and a couple days later, Bets and her husband -along with the two younger kids -came down and checked the stroller out and when they left here, the stroller went with them!

It's not a Bob stroller but it is very similar in design and though it is used, it is in very good condition. Needless to say, they were very happy with this piece and Mandy and I were also very pleased to have found a new home for it -one where it will get put to lots and lots of good usage too and make Bets' life a whole lot easier to manage going different places with a little baby and a toddler in tow!

Makes me feel good -really good -to be able to help someone out like that!

And the best part of the whole deal was that we both got to see the new baby as well as their youngest little guy -and THAT really made my day and Mandy's too!

Lost Things; Found Things!

2011-10-20T21:44:00.000-04:00

Strange things happening here this evening!

Beginning with earlier in the day -late afternoon, it was -and I went into the bathroom where, what did I find but a sight I am still not sure of what was going on there but there was Kurtis, standing by the commode, holding a hand towel and one whole end of said towel was dripping wet!

Although I did ask him initially what he was doing with that towel, I didn't get a real answer from him on that question. I did however then ask him if he had that towel in the commode and he did answer that question with a somewhat meek "yes."

At that point, I grabbed the towel from him and tossed it into the dirty clothes pile. I asked no further questions as to why he had the towel and had been, obviously, dipping it in the commode water mainly because I was a bit afraid of what his answer to that question might have been.

It is true you know -especially with small children -that the less you know, the better!

Shortly after that episode, I decided I'd best run up to the grocery store and get another package of the generic cold tablets to try to alleviate some of my head-sinus-nasal misery (stop the flow as it were, ya know) and also, to pick up some milk too since we didn't have enough milk in the house to last the night out if Kurtis should happen to have a night consisting of several wake-ups which only some chocolate milk can possibly sooth him back to sleep. So off I went.

Enroute, it dawned on me that it probably would be a wise idea if I would also pick up another container of tooth powder glue -that is, figuring on the off chance I might want to eat supper, I'd probably need to replenish my supply of that product.

I was actually quite well-behaved, spending wise, at the store as I got the items I had on my mind to purchase and only splurged on two other things. First I got a nice bag of fresh oranges because my mind said "Oh, oranges! Vitamin C! Good to have to deal with head colds! Buy it! And after that, I saw the store also had 10-pound bags of onions on sale -nice sized onions, not huge, just nice sized -and although we weren't in dire need of onions, I figured at that price, 10 pounds for $3.99, compared to the prices I've been paying of 2-pounds for a whopping $1.89 -well, I could easily store this many onions in a cool area of the cellar and they would keep nicely there until I needed them and it just made me feel much better knowing I was only paying 39 cents a pound for those babies, compared to the usual price of 95 cents per pound!

Back at home, I emptied the bags of my few purchases and began to finish fixing supper. About mid-way into the cooking routine, I thought about that packet of cold tablets I'd bought and that perhaps it would be a good idea if I open that and took one of those capsules. Sounded like a good game plan in my mind anyway.

And, in theory it was a good plan but there was just one small problem with doing that.

I couldn't find where I'd put the container of tooth powder and the package of cold tablets!!!

While supper cooked, I hunted all over the kitchen, in the dining room, in the living room too but to no avail. Couldn't locate those two items! Periodically, after supper, I would go on another search and destroy mission, checking out all my potential hiding places -you know, those areas where in a hurry you will stash something just to put it up so you will know later where you have it -and still, no luck in finding those damned things!

By 8 p.m. I asked Ken to do a walk-around the kitchen, dining room, living room too figuring maybe a fresh set of eyes --not ones that are all red and blurred from the ravages of a head cold -maybe those items would just sort of "jump out" at him and they'd be found. But that plan didn't reveal any wayward cold tablets or tooth powder either!

By 9 p.m. I was really getting very frustrated, very confused too, as to where on earth I could possibly have placed the darned things so I decided to sit down at the old computer and write a little post here about my searching skills that I also seemed to have misplaced too. As I sat down, and glanced up at the monitor, something caught my eye!

There, behind the monitor, sitting neatly stacked on a stack of floppy discs which in turn were neatly placed atop a couple cookbooks from my time for over two months of typing in recipe after recipes for our cookbook project, there were those two items I'd spent by then well over 4 hours searching for the darned things!

So, thankfully now, the mystery of the missing tooth powder and the cold tablets has been solved! Much to my relief, I must add!

And it reminded me of how, years back when my ex and I were still married and the kids were pretty small, I was always putting things "up" -the higher up the better to keep little fingers from getting into whatever things I felt I needed to keep away from them, and my logic then was that I was putting these things up so that I would then know where I had 'em when I actually would need them.

And to that logic my ex would say, "Well, let me know two years from now where the hell they were when you do find 'em!"

Beyond Fixing?

2011-10-20T15:52:00.000-04:00

It really was a very nice, extremely pleasant surprise I got last week when a check arrived -one I'd been anticipating its arrival since early September -and just a small token payment for allowing people to have access to the property behind mine, which mine abuts. I do wish there would be checks like this every month -oh heck, even once a year would be great too -but I know that's not going to be the case. Just still basking in the light right now that says I can pay my normal monthly bills this month as well as making some payments on my way overdue medical expenses too!

It would be nice to be able to get things on a decent equilibrium and maybe get some credit repair finally at least a bit under way here.

After doing my regular blog readings this morning, I got to thinking about various things while Sam and I went for a little walk. We only walked a little less than a mile, round-trip, and it was a bit on the futile side too as all he was interested in doing was checking out every leaf, blade of grass, tree truck, rock -you name it -to do a bit of watering but apparently had no inclination whatsoever into making any deposits of a fertilizing variety. Rats! That means that sometime again today either Mandy or I will have to venture out into the cold, raw air -with a fine mist falling too -in hopes he will get the right idea and leave something of substance behind so as not to have to feel the need to drop those goodies late tonight either in the bathroom, on the floor directly in front of the commode or -worst case scenario -put a deposit on the carpet in my bedroom for me to unwittingly run the risk of stepping in when I go to bed tonight. I don't mind surprises, mind you, but those kind of surprises are the kind I most definitely can do with out!

But anyway, my friend Bud at Older Eyes was talking today about what things we seem to be adept at doing and wanted to know what we, his readers, thought our skills might be that may surprise other people.

I mentioned that this past week, after my older daughter and her fiance had brought up a base telephone and a cordless unit to go with it (that they no longer need since they no longer have a "land-line") and they were tired of trying to carry on conversations with me on the phone I had here which was at the point that very rarely could I hear conversations on it without the chat being peppered with me asking people to repeat, then repeat again and again, what had been said. The volume on that phone was absolutely atrocious and that, added to the fact that I do have a few hearing problems to begin with, well it was a maddening thing for sure!

But over the weekend, I couldn't get anyone to hook the new phone up for me so Monday morning I decided to try to tackle the project myself. I disconnected the old phone very carefully, noting where each wire had to go and then, finally disentangled the wires from all the other wires behind the computer and got the new phone system hooked in and voila -it was working!

My kids are not accustomed to my doing things like that! Anything involving wires and computers -although I am and have been a pc user at home for 12 years now and have worked around and on computers for well over 40 years -off and on -the thing is, I never had to work with actually hooking anything up! Friends and neighbors here who don't often understand about computers and stuff, and who have known me for many, many moons tend to think because my experience goes back that far in time that I also have lots and lots of expertise in the computer field. They don't realize that all I really know how to do with a computer is to turn one on, turn it off too to get things to reset themselves at times, and to type! I can use several different computer programs but that is merely utilizing software, not necessarily understanding how the system itself works!

But needless to say, in thinking about things I can do that maybe are surprising to others the aspect of my connecting the "new-to-me" telephone is one thing I'm happy I gave it a shot and that I got it done without irritating any family members to get them to do that minor job for me! It also got me thinking about how, for a good many years after my kids and I moved into this big old house that had been my grandparents home, then my Mom's and now mine, how when I was a kid, things would go awry in the house and around the place and somehow my Mom always managed to get things fixed. Not by hiring someone to come in and do the work for her, but rather, she frequently would do many of the needed repairs around here by herself! It used to really irritate me greatly to realize how many varied things that woman could and would do and how the heck did she ever learn those skills anyway?

My Mom would tackle anything -well almost anything -the exception being anything involving electricity as she was scared s******s about messing with that, but she could and did do carpentry, plumbing, masonry and landscaping stuff, gardening too, right up there with the best of 'em! Knowing that she had known how to handle these various types of tasks and I knew nothing about any of them, it gave me a very inferiority complex for many years until my one aunt told me one day that my problem was simply that I had never had the luck of having three brothers who each knew a great deal about those things and who could and would and did frequently explain how to go about doing these things to my Mom and what she would need, etc., and then, she would set out to do the work herself!

So, if anyone would like to take on the unpaid job of being my quasi older (or younger) brother -which I never had -and try to show me how to tackle some of the many repair jobs needed around this old house, feel free to list your abilities and when you'd be able to show up and give instructions! Keep in mind, I don't follow written directions very well as I am much more of a visual, hands-on, kind of learner.

Or perhaps at this stage of the game, I'm not quite up to the task of becoming a do-it-yourself kind of person!

Sneeze, sneeze! Cough, Cough!

2011-10-19T21:50:00.000-04:00

It's been over a year since this last happened to me and I was beginning to feel pretty darned self-assured, downright cocky, you might say because I had managed to evade a head cold for that long!

Sad to say, that little bit of a record came to an end Sunday evening when I began to notice the familiar kind of tickly-pain starting in the back of my throat. Nah, can't be a cold I told myself -just those stinking seasonal allergies, that's all it is.

I'll dig around in the cupboard and find some nice cold tablets I ALWAYS keep on hand for just these kind of emergencies and by Monday afternoon, this will be all gone. History, ya know!

Well all I found was a packet of Mucinex DM tablets -an over the counter medication that normally I swear by but this time, these tablets did nothing for me!

By Tuesday afternoon, my nose was running like a broken water faucet! My eyes -let's just say that reddish, puffy eyes don't look all that great, definitely not a good feature, ya know! Mandy did find some other cold tablets -the regular kind -and I started to take them but they barely seemed to scratch the surface of this cold!

And, to make matters worse, of course the weather also decided to make a change so if the watery effects I was seeing through my blurry vision inside the house wasn't enough, the outside world was one that also was very wet! And according to the weather reports tonight, it's going to get even wetter before a little dry spell takes place!

Wonnerful, wonnerful -as good old Lawrence Welk would have said!

Not even close, is what I have to say about this whole thing to which I quote Bill Bendix in the old Life of Riley series from the 50s -"What a revolting development this is!"

Heat It Up!

2011-10-19T21:36:00.000-04:00

I think it's going to be a long, hard winter ahead!

I've got not scientific reasoning behind that statement other than the price of fuel oil is still ridiculously high and Mandy's going to be cracking the whip around here to keep the temperature in the house as low as possible without freezing icicles off our noses. All of which points to the fact that my bedroom -which is the coldest room in the house too, I must add -I share with Miss Maya, my granddaughter.

Granted we have several nice heavy quilts to cover up with when we go to bed, but it's just that initial shock of crawling into a cold, cold bed that gets to me. Don't like that feeling one bit!

A friend of mine suggested that I get a nice heated blanket for one of our covers and that would keep Maya and me all snuggly warm while we sleep. And you know, that is a nice thought alright. However, I think I'd rather have a heated mattress pad that would provide some really nice warmth along those creaky old bones in my back and maybe keep a few of the joints and limbs from being so stiff and sore when I get up and try to begin moving around.

Then again, maybe that wouldn't be that great an idea either though as nice and comfy as I think that would possibly be, I might never want to get up and out of bed again!

Just Around the Bend!

2011-10-19T01:57:00.000-04:00

It's coming, folks! Just around the bend, the next corner, breathing hard down on us!

What's coming, you ask?

WINTER!

Don't bother asking me if I'm impressed because, well I'm not! However, I don't have much choice in the matter but to sit back and accept whatever it may be that Mother Nature decides to drop on us, do I?

The weather forecast tonight was down right depressing -from my point of view anyway. Seems the forecasters think there's a darned good possibility that we may see some of the lovely white stuff arriving tomorrow night or by Thursday some time. No word on how much there will be so I'm hoping if we do get some snow it will be like what we had on Sunday, October 2nd, when we got a little over an inch of snow on the ground.

But I know too there are folks around this neck of the woods that will be wanting to get ready for the outdoor snow fun-activities they enjoy -cleaning off the ice skates, polishing up the Black Diamond Z-poles, tuning up the sno-mobiles and such.

To that I say, knock yourself out.

All I care about is where the heck our snow shovel might be hiding! And, hoping too that Ken's snow plow holds up fine and dandy once again too!

A Couple of Hams!

2011-10-19T01:47:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays are always a wild and crazy day here for us.

For openers, Maya's TSS is usually here to work with her and also, Tuesday is when Miss Randi, the therapist who works with both Maya and Kurtis, is also here. Makes for a lot of activity to say the least with and for the kids! And a lot of fun for Mandy and for me too as both of the therapists are a lot of fun to have around as they work with and observe the kids and also, for the side conversations that often take place between all of us too.

Maya's therapist had picked up a pizza for us for our supper tonight since she would have to drive right past the Pizza Hut on her way here so Mandy ordered it and she delivered it then to us. Mandy had asked Maya what kind of pizza she wanted for her birthday supper (since she had said before leaving for school she wanted pizza for her birthday meal) and she had said she wanted pepperoni pizza but then she added "You better get a cheese pizza too for Kurtis because he doesn't like pepperoni!"

Nice, but also a bit scary when Maya starts showing concern for her little brother and his taste buds though!

So anyway, we had pepperoni pizza which Kurtis promptly picked off the pieces of pepperoni from his slice. Miss Randi tried to get him to eat the pepperoni -just to taste it, try it -so to try to bribe him, they suggested he try it by dipping it in a bit of ranch dressing. (Now, I'm not so sure that I would like pepperoni dipped in ranch dressing but Kurt's tastebuds and mine often don't agree and he seems to at least be willing to do a taste test sometimes if offered some ranch dressing to dip in.) Well he did that and ended up deciding he still didn't want, didn't like pepperoni because in his opinion, it tasted "sour." Go figure!

But today, Miss Randi had brought a treat with her in honor of Maya's birthday. (Boy the celebration of this event just goes on and on, doesn't it?)

Anyway, she had made some homemade chocolate cupcakes and iced them with a really thick, creamy pink frosting. She had used oversized muffin pans so these cupcakes were humungous! They were so large that there was no way to take a bit of the cupcake without getting icing all over your face and mouth in the process as you can see from the pictures of the kids munching on these cupcakes -and Kurtis, being the total clown in the process too!

Don't you think if the kids each had on a pair of Bolle sunglasses they would have really shown off what a couple of hams -future stars, maybe -they are?

They're both definitely ready for clown stardom, in my opinon!

Little Star!

2011-10-19T01:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was actually Maya's 8th birthday although we had the party celebration for the big event on Sunday.

She's been totally wound up for some time leading up to Sunday and although we were a bit concerned as to how things would go -because with her and Kurtis too, things can change in a heartbeat, ya know. That worm can really turn at the speed of light and what one second was a fantastic mood and attitude can do a flip faster than all get out.

But thankfully, nothing like that happened at the party and for the most part, things have been relatively smooth for the past two days as well. Oh, a few little snags here and there, but nothing major - no huge meltdowns -and that's always good to be able to have days like that!

Tuesday morning, Miss Maya was all slicked up to go to school in her leopard print skirt, a cream colored top and black shrug over that. To polish off her outfit, she had on the new black boots Momma had found and got her for her birthday so she really did look slick! The only thing she could have added to the mix might have been if she had a pair if Black diamond earrings (tiny post ones, ya know) to really set everything off completely!

Don't believe me? Check out this picture of her and see for yourself!

Monday was a bit of a rough day for Kurtis though. He got home from school and within about 15 minutes after he got home, this is what he was doing.

Yeah, he did a major "Crash and burn" in the recliner but then considering what he'd been doing Sunday night and Monday morning, it's no wonder he was wiped out.

He was up several time during the night Sunday night. One time, he woke up and had a bit of a hissy fit because he needed a Kleenex and insisted on waking Mandy up to tell her that. (She wasn't very impressed by his request.) Then about a hour later, he came downstairs, peeking around the door at the foot of the stairs, he very politely informed me that he was "very, very thirsty" which meant "Gram, go get me a cup of chocolate milk" because ya know, chocolate milk cures everything (or almost) in his book! (That was about 3 a.m. -shortly before I went to bed.)

Then, sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m., I woke up and had to go back to the bathroom. On the way past the staircase, I noticed a couple things laying on the floor at the foot of the steps but didn't pay that much attention to them as I entered the bathroom. But when I came back out, I glanced up the steps and saw there were several different types of things, ranging from some toys, to papers, even some socks and underwear on the steps plus, at the landing at the top of the steps, there was a big box parked right in the middle of the landing filled with clothes hangers and papers and junk! What the heck? Then I heard the pitter-patter of little feet coming down the hall and there was Kurtis, leaning over the handrail with this big silly grin on his face.

I just stood at the foot of the steps and glared at him, watching his smile change to a look of slight alarm as I think it registered to him that maybe the stuff in the box and the things tossed around on the steps hadn't been one of his finest moves. I asked him then what the heck he was doing throwing things around like that and also, why was he up at that hour anyway.

His answer to me was priceless!

"I be house cleaning, Gram!"

Now how in blazes can you stay angry at a comment like that anyway?

Telling Time?

2011-10-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago, I saw this item on sale in a recent Avon book and it struck my fancy for several reasons. (Sorry -no photo available.)

It was a neat little wristwatch -available in a choice of three colors -white, black or red -and there was no metal involved in the watchband or the face of the watch! The band is a bit like a wide and sort of thick rubber band which is ideal for me because I have a problem with metals of most any kind used in jewelry in that I am allergic to the stuff and I end up with contact dermititis. So, since my dear daughter here is now also an Avon Lady, I ordered one of these puppies from her!

I really do like this little watch and have no issues being caused to make my wrist break out from any part of it touching my skin since there is NO METAL involved with it. However, one thing about it is a problem for me and that is the buttons on the back of the face that you have to use to set the darned thing are so small that my fat little fingers can't work them properly. As a result, I have to have someone else set the thing for me.

Now, you'd think that when the watch is set, initially, that takes care of the issue but apparently somehow or other, I must have bumped on or both of the buttons that are used to set the time and date while taking the watch off or putting it back on because now, those things are all messed up and I can't get it reset!

Bummer! At least I'm hoping that's all that is wrong with it! When Maya's TSS, Miss Britt, returns here this week to work with Maya, I'll have her try to reset the thing again for me as she's the one who figured out how to work with those buttons in the first place and she has a lot more finger dexterity than I do to work with it too.

It that doesn't work though maybe I'll have to consider looking at some Michael Kors watches or some other brands to see if anyone else carries something in a material like this that I could get and be able to wear and use without it causing me to itch like crazy then!

Ah, the silly trials and tribulations of life with these darned little allergies, ya know!

Great Party!

2011-10-17T12:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we celebrated Maya's 8th birthday with a big party at the Social Hall at our church in Lanse. Mandy had a theme of an Ice Cream Sundae Social for Maya and many of her friends and classmates and boy, it all worked out great!

There were balloons galore all over the hall and the kids had a great time grabbing at the cords to them and seeing how many they could each collect.

Here's Kurtis, Emmy Jo, Hunter and Maya capturing some balloons early on at the party!

Here's the guest of honor standing in front of her "self-portrait" as the kids all got a chance to play "Pin the Bow" on Maya -a little remake of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey!"

Then there was a hectic game of Musical Chairs and Maya and Abby -the little girl in the print dress -were the last two contestants. On the last round though, Abby came out the winner!

This was followed by a Limbo contest and you can see there were some good contortionists present yesterday.

Here's Kurtis doing his interpretation of the "Limbo Swim" as he insisted he had to lie down on the floor -regardless of how how (or low) that pole was, and then, "swim" under the stick!

After the games, came the cupcakes and "make-your-own" ice cream sundaes! Here's Mandy and Maya's TSS, Miss Britt, scooping out ice cream and helping the kids put their choice of toppings on their ice cream then.

Here's Jessika, Khandace and Maya lining up to get their cake and ice cream. The kids really did seem to enjoy the opportunity to experiment with their toppings on the ice cream a bit. (There were no complaints so that's how I came to that conclusion!)

Here's Maya and several of her girlfriends enjoying their cake and ice cream -Jaden, Sydney, Jessika, Tayla, Maya and Khandace.

Some of the guests at the party....

Cousin Alex (my older grandson), Maya's big half-sister, Kate, Uncle Clayton and his girlfriend, Elizabeth.

This is Aunt Kathy, helping Ashlyn and Carlea with their treats.

Anyone need a therapist? We had three there -Miss Randi and her little guy, Mason, Miss Dawn (who is Kurt's TSS) and Miss Renee (who Kurtis long ago nicknamed "Trouble") all came to help Maya celebrate the occasion too!

Then, it was time for the presents and here's Kurtis, supervising Maya as she opened her gifts.

The tie-die kit got a little extra interest from Maya's TSS, Miss Britt, as they did some tie-dying of shirts one day this summer for an indoor activity -one that met with lots of approval from Maya and she's keen on the idea of doing more of that again!

From books, to cds and dvds -music, movies -plus cool toys for the "artist" side of Maya,a fashion doll, clothes, some fancy boots, and a snazzy bag, even an IPod Shuffle, there was also this -from the four therapists! (Mandy's not sure if they got that for Maya to enjoy or for her to curse them once she gets it going and doing the Karaoke thing! Earplugs will be a new item on the "to purchase" list, I think!)

But the main theme of the party was that everyone was to bring a food item, non-perishable things, and those things would all be taken and donated to the local Food Bank.

Judging by the amount of food items given, I'd say that there was a darned good bit of merchant financing that took place! This morning, Mandy and Ken took the food to the Food Bank and the stuff filled a cart to almost overflowing, causing the attendant there to comment "You got all this from a birthday party?"

Yep, we sure enough did! How nice it was that people who came brought those food donations and for Maya to learn there is a very good gift that comes from giving, not just receiving!

Here's all the guests -except for Hunter and his little sister, Mikayla (who had to leave before we got a picture of the group). From left to right, there's Ashlyn, Carlea, Khandace, Sydney, Tayla, Maya, Jaden, Ana, Jessika, Abby and Bradley and there's little brother, Kurtis, seated on the floor in front of Maya.

What a great bunch of kids they were! Played together so nicely, and from the squeals of laughter, a good time was enjoyed by all. Many thanks to the parents who brought these children to share the occasion with Maya and her family -for all the gifts and especially for the donations to the Food Bank too!

All very much appreciated!

Homework Tantrums!

2011-10-14T00:58:00.000-04:00

This evening proved to be quite interesting here for quite a while tonight!

Notice I said it was "interesting" but didn't say it was all really enjoyable though, did I?

That's because one small child here decided to be not just a little bit but VERY contrary and refused to do her homework.

Her homework assignment consisted of reading a book for a minimum of twenty minutes -nothing more to the assignment than that -and usually she's fine with that kind of homework. But tonight? Not so much!

Mandy, Maya's TSS (her support aide) and I all tried our level best to find ways to redirect her, to get her attitude to change and "loosen" up a bit about her refusal to sit down and read but all was to no avail. You can not imagine the amount of whining, wailing, a good bit of screaming and even the throwing of a book or two around the living room as she refused, flat out, to sit and read!

Finally, Mandy's patience level had peaked out with trying to be reasonable with Maya and she told her she'd best go upstairs, go to bed and in the morning, Mandy would send a note in her backpack, as well as make a call to her teacher too, to explain why Maya's homework was coming back, unsigned, which means it was not done!

Well, then she started having a hissy fit about how she couldn't go to school without her homework being done and she would get an "infraction" then (part of the school's disciplinary methodology) and well, that just wouldn't fly.

Her reaction to Mandy's order to go up to her room and go to bed was almost like she had just turned on a reverse osmosis system as her attitude changed so quickly then it really made my head spin!

Mandy let her suffer a bit with the thought that she would have to go to school in the morning without having her homework finished till after supper was over and done with before she relented and told her again then to go do her homework and this time, she followed those instructions quite nicely!

If you'd seen her in action with the tantrum before supper and then seen her afterward, when she went and picked up her book, sat down and read it -along with another book she had here -you'd have thought you were watching a totally different child!

This type of behavior from her used to be almost an everyday type of event but thankfully -for Mandy's and my nerves as well as for our hearing systems too -they don't happen all that frequently any more. Still need to see a lot fewer of these meltdowns but I'm just thankful they don't come about on a daily basis anymore!