A Cue or a Clue?

Excuse me while I ramble a bit today but my mind's been and still is, more than a bit discombobulated, I guess you could say.



This song, one of my all-time favorites by the Beatles, really expresses a lot of what I'm feeling of late.

Why? I'm not really sure. Maybe it's the repetition of things about "younger days" ya know and the realization that I'm a long way from those days now. The aging process is not for the weak and weary nor the fainthearted, is it?

Most of the time, I have been able to deal with a lot of stuff in my life by simply putting it out of my mind. Stuffing it way in the back, filling that space with all kinds of other things that kept me busy, occupied and well, out of trouble in that respect.

But lately, it does seem that it keeps pushing forward, knocking all the good and positive moves and thoughts aside and totally crowding them out.

And, I confess that I really do hate when that happens.

It just totally buggers up the system, the works, the mind, the peace I like to have around me.

One thing that has been annoying me lately -a lot -is that as I move closer and closer to the end of my little line, there aren't many things I've often wanted to do that I have actually ever managed to accomplish.

Remember that great movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman -"The Bucket List" -well, that's pretty much what has been taking up a lot of space lately. No, not the movie itself, but rather the idea put forth in that movie.

Have a dream and go for it!

But how do you counter with that when those dreams are now totally out of reach?

I've accomplished only a couple of things that I think were probably on my "Bucket List" -if indeed I had one of those things way back when or even all along in my life.

I always wanted to get married and have a family and yes, been there, done that. I have three grown children who, most of the time, are pretty darned great. Yeah, every now and again there are slip-ups, issues here and there with this or that one, but for the most part, I have to say they are pretty good kids, considering how they were raised, ya know. The family was and still is more than a bit dysfunctional -what with being raised by a single parent. (One of the favorite lines often stated by all three of my kids is "How do you spell 'dysfunctional'?" And their standard answer to that question is "Ertmer!"

Now, I have exceeded my Bucket List with respect to having a family in that I now have three beautiful, very intelligent, completely awesome grandchildren -Alex, Maya and Kurtis -and I couldn't have been better blessed if I had put in a request for grandkids and had given directions as to how to make those little people be the best! They are, all three of 'em, the greatest, simply the greatest. I am truly blessed to have them in my life today of that there is no doubt.

One of the other things that I believe was on my early list was the desire to go to college, to get a degree in some field that was of high interest to me and one that I believed would also help me to reach other goals in life -like solid employment, for openers.

And yes, although it took me a long, long time to get myself into college and though I completed my degree in four years and am proud of that accomplishment, as things turned out, what should have been something that sparked me onward and upward, things never materialized quite in that manner for me. I was never able to get myself hired in any type of work that actually utilized my degree as such and that has always been a huge disappointment to me.

I don't know if my resume was such that it didn't call attention well enough to my strengths or if it was that I didn't know anyone to put in a good word here and there maybe for me, or if it was the tell-tale signs of my age that are difficult to hide in a resume at times, but for the nine years after my graduation when I responded to open jobs in my field, it sure seemed like I couldn't even have paid someone to give me an interview, much less hire me.

And you know, after a while, especially that amount of time passing by when you don't have all that much time to begin with then, it does become really depressing to try to combat those feelings that all point to a very low self-worth in the end.

Don't get me wrong now, as I don't really regret having gone to college, having borrowed student loans to get myself through school, having that degree to point to on my resume. Nope! Not in the least do I regret that as regardless of the outcome in terms of finding gainful employment, I still do have the education and no one can ever take that away from me! It's still there, lurking about somewhere in my pea-brain, just searching for a way to become a useful entity in my life.

Another thing I often had dreams about when I was younger -in those good old days -was the desire to travel, to see the beautiful country I call home, to see a few points around the world as well -like traveling to Sweden and Scotland for openers to see the lands where my ancestors were born. Always wanted to do that and today, I'd still love to see those places but unless I begin to play the lottery and manage to hit it big time, those dreams are never going to come to fruition. Not in my wildest dreams will they ever happen unless, lottery aside, I could get hired as some kind of paid companion to accompany some really nice, kind-hearted, generous to a fault, wealthy individual who thought my communication skills and sparkling conversations would be a skill worthy of their having me accompany them to places hither, thither and yon.

After surveying in my mind the people I know, the probability of ever encountering a soul such as the type described above, well we can write that idea off completely! Just ain't ever gonna happen is it?

Why though am I today voicing some of these things, these dreams that have gone bust, or thoughts that just keep coming forward and which seem to be hell-bent on ruining my quest for simple peace of mind?

Mainly because if I don't begin to talk about these things in some way, to bring them forward, they will keep eating away at my innards and ultimately, will erase any positivity I might have left in the back of my mind.

So, as I listen to George, Paul, John and Ringo in their song, at least the melody is cheerful and the words -well, they are pretty straight-forward and do describe my feelings much of the time to a tee too! Funny thing though but my favorite Beatles song was always "Yesterday" but that one while still high on my list of favorites, maybe is too melancholy for me to listen to and take any comfort from it at this point in time.

I dunno.

I keep telling myself something else I have often repeated over and over in my mind over the years -"This too shall pass!" And, yes, I still do believe that is the truth but maybe I'm just getting way too impatient today waiting for it all to pass.

Or then again, maybe it has -like my life -pretty much all passed me by already.

Gimme A Break...

This has been one of those week when I really wanted a break from the action around me!

First off, Monday morning I was greeted by a sight on my computer screen that I knew automatically was heralding really, really bad news and a rough time ahead.

One look at the message on my screen and I just knew that the MOTHER of all malicious malware had come to roost on my computer -again!

Trying to find a way to get my sick computer fixed, then actually working on this end with a technical person somewhere in cyberspace on the other end of my connection took away the better part of my day.

Towards the end of this issue, I also got an e-mail from a cousin telling me that her uncle, my oldest male cousin on my Dad's side of my family tree had died that morning.

Definitely not the kind of news I want on any given day but certainly not on the same day when I was so worked up with worry over the computer issues and how I was going to exist till my next check arrives on June 3rd after I paid for the repairs -well that was a little much to deal with those two things together.

Then, Monday evening I went on a bit of a cooking binge -of sorts. Nothing really drastic -well, not fancy, not difficult to fix -but anyway because of a project I am in charge of through our women's group at church, I was going to have a couple women from church coming to my home for a meeting Tuesday a.m. and Mandy asked if I planned on fixing anything to feed them. Her theory was if they were arriving at 11 a.m. and going to be here for who knew how long, if it were her going to someone's place at that hour, she'd definitely be expecting to be fed.

Good point, Mandy.

Actually I had planned on fixing something but unfortunately prior to Mandy's questions, I had gone pretty much brain dead about what to fix. Thanks to Mandy's suggestions then I fixed a small dish of macaroni salad, mixed up a container of tuna salad as well as egg salad and made a really easy but very, very tasty dessert called "Lemon Delight." I had this nice big loaf of Polish Rye bread that a friend of Mandy's boyfriend had brought back to PA from a trip to New Jersey in my freezer so I thawed that, sliced up several pieces of the bread and made up a plate of tuna salad sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches then prior to going to bed that night.

So when Tuesday morning rolled around, I was already for the ladies to arrive and for us to get to work looking over the information I had on hand about preparing a cookbook -which is going to be our women's group project now over the summer months. We didn't make any hard fast decisions -just reviewed cover ideas to get some ideas of those we liked, along with dividers and a few other ideas of how we want to proceed with this project. We want to try to dedicate a section of the cookbook to some of the many people who used to be part of our church community for many years and who had been well-known in the church for their great cooking and baking skills as well.

Wednesday morning, I was off to Clearfield for my monthly appointment at the cancer clinic there to have my lovely little port flushed. Anyone who's had chemo and who has "bad veins" and has had to have one of these things inserted in their chest will know what I am referring to there so no further descriptions -I hope -are necessary. Suffice it to say though that the nurse who did the flush this time was awesome! She stuck that needle into the port and I never felt even the slightest twinge of a pinch!

At last, something good besides the meeting Tuesday morning in my life!

Thursday though and things began to fall backwards when I got an e-mail from a cousin on my Mom's side of the family to tell me her sister, who was in Hawaii for a work related assignment, had become ill while there. Not the flu or something like that though. No! She'd had what was being labeled as a "cardiac event" and yesterday had heart catherization with bypass surgery scheduled for today! Seems at least three arteries or veins -not sure which -were blocked and when I say blocked, I mean really, really blocked. One was 100% blocked and two were 95% and 80% blocked! While two of her co-workers were able to stay on with her for a few days -one has to return home tomorrow (Friday) and the other, on Sunday, the company she works for had graciously offered to pay her sister's airfare to Hawaii to come out there and be with the sister who had the surgery! Sounds like things were coming together except for the fact that the sister offered the airfare had to make arrangements to have someone come and stay with their elderly mother while she would be in Hawaii with her sister.

Always something to muddy the waters, isn't there.

And speaking of muddy waters, it has rained every freaking day this week too!

But lest you think my week as been ALL doom and gloom, there are a few things here and there for which I am actually quite happy and very thankful.

Starting with the rain -which no, I am not a huge fan of the grey skies and wet continually coming down but still, I do recognize the fact that it is not just a fact of life that rain must fall but also, that as long as it stays within reason in the amount of raining ongoing -i.e. no flooding such as has been happening all along the mighty Mississippi and the Ohio rivers - then rain is ultimately a good thing. I did notice last night and today that already the lettuce I planted last week in my garden has begun to poke through the ground. And the starter planters I have set up inside the house -well those plants all seem to be flourishing under my care. (That alone is quite a coup for me since I generally have a tendency to kill baby plants you see!)

Although we didn't make any hard, fast decisions at our meeting on Tuesday, we did get a lot of information and ideas processed and have made inroads now into how we will proceed from there. That, plus all the tuna and egg salad sandwiches I made up came in very handy for supper, lunch and supper again, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Even the kids ate 'em and that's always a good thing!

And speaking of food and good things like the kids eating, I really hit the jackpot tonight with our supper apparently! I'm usually more than a bit leery about trying new recipes because in the past, anything new usually didn't go over very well with the two kids and I really am not a big fan at all of leftovers!

But tonight, I decided to live dangerously and I fixed a new recipe I'd found called Lemon-parmesan chicken and penne pasta. I figured maybe because this chicken when cooked up could maybe fool the kids into thinking it was some kind of chicken fingers type meal -which is generally something they will eat -and that with the penne pasta, sometimes I can also trick them into eating other pastas besides a steady diet of either macaroni or spaghetti noodles you see.

This dish, as it turned out, was actually quite easy to fix -the pasta cooked up nicely and while it was cooking and the chicken in the oven baking, I sauted a bit of chopped garlic with italian seasoning, basil and parsly and then, to that, I added some frozen snow peas to saute them too and mixed that in the with the cooked pasta, topped with the baked, breaded chicken breasts.

Either both kids were so starved at suppertime tonight that they might have eaten ANYTHING I put on the table or else, they are getting a bit more adventuresome about trying new things because they both ate the pasta, including the peas and the chicken like there was no tomorrow!

Now that was a very pleasant surprise for me and gives me renewed hope about cooking yet again tomorrow.

Finally, my day today ended on yet another high note when Mandy picked up the mail. Seems a friend of mine from my high school days -who lives in Colorado and is also a mega crafting nutcase a bit like me -had sent me a little present that she had stumbled across out in her neck of the woods.

It's actually supposed to be an embroidered lap top quilt but her theory on what I might be able to do with the kit is to embroider it all up -cross stitched flowers all over it -finish the edging and consider it to be a slightly larger tabletopper! The dimensions on this thing are 45 inches x 45 inches -which is considerably larger than the tabletoppers I often do but what the heck!

One thing for sure, I will really keep me very busy for quite a long period of time.

Of that, I am very positive!

So thanks to Nancy for thinking of me and my love for embroidery by sending this present to me. It couldn't have come to me at a better time as I really did need a good pick-me-upper today!

And that's the way things have rolled around here for the past four days now -a big mix of sad, worrisome and bad things intermingled with a few surprises and a couple good things.

Now, here's hoping the weather forecasters are on target for the nicer weather they say we'll be seeing over the weekend.

I, for one, can really use a very nice dose of sunshine!

How about you -how's the weather and life been in your neck of the world?

Trying Times!

To call the kind of day I had yesterday "trying times" would probably -at least in my opinion -be just a tad of an understatement.

Personally, I consider it to have been a day straight from Hell, sent to me, personally by Satan himself!

Last summer, I inadvertently got hit with this really nasty virus/malware thing that took my neighbor's son two days and two nights of working on my computer to remove files and folders to flash storage and any place else he could find for external ways to salvage my data and then, to root around, remove this, change that, over and over again, until he had finally removed the miserable little sucker that had my computer looking next to dead! I had accidentally misunderstood some stuff about that program and had been dumb enough to click on what actually opened a round-robin floodgate within my computer to screw things up.

Yesterday a.m. though, when I got up and went to check my e-mail, my facebook, my reader, and found the only thing I could access was my e-mail as the rest was giving me this error-alert-warning and this time, I didn't open anything pertaining to that stinking message but it still screwed up my computer for most of the day!

Luckily for me, since I couldn't locate my neighbor's son to see if he could fix my computer again, I did find a company online that I went through and the technician worked with me over the phone and doing the "fixing" via a remote connection, finally got the stupid problem cleared out. It cost me a lot more moola to have it done this way -seeing as my neighbor's son works quite cheaply but still, nice to know I had hooked myself into a company that was nice to deal with the tech guy -a very personable man who also explained things to me in simple English -no computerese -as we worked along and the whole process only took about 3 hours from start to finish too!

But now, that leaves my budget for the rest of this month pretty well shot in the behind too ya know!

And that means some of the things I had hoped to make payments on (like some of my medical bills) and oh, a few sales I will most likely have to bypass too of crafts stuff I'd like to order (stuff I really don't NEED but I do really WANT ya know) will have to go on hold a while longer I guess.

So thinking ahead to the next gift time coming my way -which doesn't arrive until my October birthday -I had kind of been hoping my kids would humor my likes and get me something that they will look at as being sort of football gifts because what I'd really like to receive for my birthday is a really nice, heavy and also, pretty sweatshirt -yes, you read that correctly -either a Nittany Lion sweatshirt or a maroon one that says Washington Redskins on it. And, please make it a hooded variety too, will ya?

I do have one Penn State sweatshirt now but I've had it for several years now, it's a bit faded and also been well-worn so time to replace that puppy and as for the Redskins, it's been many, many years since I last had a nice sweatshirt that designates that group as being my favorite professional football team!

Now if they really wanted to make me really, really happy, they could always take out a small business loan and get me tickets to either a Penn State game or a Redskins game but considering the costs involved in that, I'm more than happy to settle for a sweatshirt!

Fun Day!

Today was one of those days that had a lot of laughs in it -most of 'em coming from my grandson, Kurtis!

His vocabulary is becoming something to behold -always a surprise what he'll come out with next.

This morning, after my normal computer time to check e-mail, look at Facebook and read posts, check my reader and read more posts , then read the newspaper online -CDT, from State College and after all that, wash dishes left from last night.

Once I got through all that, I decided the kitchen was an absolute royal mess so started to go through papers laying all over the place and pitch them in the trash. Moved on to trying to neaten up the divider counter and the island top -a job that took me the bulk of the afternoon but I did make some headway with it.

Most of the morning, Mandy and Kurtis were away -off to Clearfield with Ken looking for stain for the deck, a new screen for the front storm door and who knows what else.

Then, this afternoon -after I got a lot of stuff neatened up, a little organized, etc., I decided to bake a pan of Strawberry Cheesecake bars from a recipe I had found on the Taste of Home recipe site. Got that completed and in the fridge to chill and it was time to think about supper.

While waiting for Mandy to finish up a few things, I was playing on the computer a bit -first break time I'd had for well over 5 hours of being on my feet, working away in the kitchen, and Sam began to bark incessantly. I was doing my normal thing of yelling at him to "Shut the hell up" and then heard a voice at the front door saying that the dog wants out. Say what? Turns out Sam was barking because my neighbor from up the street had stopped by to return two of my plastic food storage containers that I'd put some leftover lasagne in one and some ginger cheesecake in the other and dropped them off Sunday evening for Shirley and her husband Bo.

Not one to return something empty, seems Shirley had filled the one container with some great home-baked Snickerdoodle cookies too! Mmmmm, love those cookies, I do!

Kurtis was upstairs when Shirley came in but when he came downstairs and she spoke to him, I asked him if he knew who this was and he said that he did so then I asked him, "What's her name?" He really surprised me -also made me really happy too -as he replied "Is Shirley." Yep, it is Buddy Boy! So nice to see him recognizing people and remembering then too who they are. Just some more progress going on here ya know!

However, after having been in the kitchen all day already, not having anything thawed to cook either, I made Mandy and offer she couldn't refuse.

So, away we went for supper at the "Pumpkin House" -also known as the West Branch Diner. That's a bit misleading actually as the true name of the place is the West Branch Diner but most everyone around here refers to it simply as the "Pumpkin."

We got there, got coffee and some root beer for Kurtis to try -his first time having anything other than milk at a restaurant and placed our order when Mandy commented to me about someone who had just come in the place.

"Mom! Aunt Carm just came in!"

My response was "Really! You're joking." And she assured me she wasn't joking and about that time, there was our old friend, my former next-door-neighbor, Carm!

I haven't seen her in several months and to prove how long it's been since I last saw her, she informed me she retired from the work force last October! WOW! Had it really been that long since that last time I'd talked to her? Guess it had.

So we invited her to join us and proceeded then to try to do a little catch-up in what's been happening in both our lives.

She was teasing me about my new hair style and then realized that it wasn't one I'd actually chosen but had kind of been forced into it when the chemo caused all my hair to fall out -back in October. And what little bit had been left behind, I had had the neighbor (Karen) come over and shave that tidbit leftover off!

But since late March now, the hair is slowly growing back in -thank you very much!

As usual, with Carm -who actually is not my kids' aunt but we refer to her and all her sisters and her brothers as this or that aunt or uncle,(makes life easier to identify then who we are talking about that way) we fell into a great easy conversation.

Carm's family -having been my next-door-neighbors from about 1951 until the early 70s when her parents sold the house next door to me to one of their daughters and her husband, so we still had a member of the Little family living beside us then for almost another 20 years! That, plus Carm's niece, who parents had purchased the family home, went on to marry my ex-husband's brother, so my kids then got in the habit of referring to Carm's Mom and Dad as Grammy and Pap because they heard their cousins calling them that. Again, just something that made life and identifications easier.

Although Carm is four years my junior, we've always been good, close friends. And she is quite a character too in her own right -very much fun to be around. She now lives over by Dubois but was down in our area to go up to the high school to observe the kids there on Prom night. One of her granddaughters was attending the prom as were at least two of her great-nieces as well. (And, Mandy and I later discovered that one of her great-nieces was the date of our cousin, Pj, too! Now, there's yet another small world kind of event, isn't it?) And after seeing pics on Facebook later of Pj and Carm's niece, I have to say they both have darned good taste!

Carm proceeded to tell us that on her way down the mountain, she'd stopped in Clearfield for some fuel for her car and apparently the kid working as an attendant at the station was admiring her. She is still one very good-looking lady, ya know! Anyway, their conversation got to the point where, after he had pretty much been trying to pick her up, she turned and asked him how old he is and the kid told her he's 25. At hearing that, and this is pretty much a typical response you'll likely get from her, she told him "Sweetheart, I have undies and the bottom of my drawer and shoes still in the floor of my closet that are older than you are!"

I sure would have loved to have seen the look on that kid's face though!

Kurtis was really wound up tonight at the restaurant too -jabbering about everything and anything! And being really cute too when Aunt Carm went to leave as he repeated to her all the last comments Mandy and I made to her. You know the usual -Good to see you again; take care, hope to see you again soon, etc. Yeah, he had his very own litany then of advice to her as she was leaving!

I have to say that today was a good day on so many fronts but especially that our decision to go to the Pumpkin House for supper really paid off in spades!

Just so nice to see Aunt Carm once again and to be able to share fun stories and get a little bit up-to-date with each others lives, ya know!

Now, it's about time that I get my self off to bed so I can get myself up early in the morning and hopefully, be ready on time to get to church, also on time! This may be something of a record setting thing if I do manage to do that as it has been ages since I managed to get to church two weeks in a row!

Wish me luck and say a prayer for me that I can do that!

And, as usual, I'll be saying prayers too for each and every one of you, my readers, too! (Yes, I do that!)

Nite-nite and Peace!

A New Food Group?

Friday night, for our supper, I decided to live dangerously and fix something along the Mexican line.

I do like to make things besides the standard fare from time to time -much as I too love Mac'n'cheese, which is by far and away my grandkids most favorite food item -I like to branch out now and again.

So tonight I had decided to give enchiladas a shot.

Trying something new here for supper is risky business ya know. Especially if I don't fix something else that is pretty much a guaranteed item that the kids will eat cause there can be severe wailing and gnashing of the teeth at meals with a new food substance.

Sheesh, the way these kids can react to a new food substance you'd swear they think way ahead of their capabilities -and of my cooking abilities too -and that I'm trying to poison them with extreme hgh or some other hormonal substance and such!

But anyway, tonight it was time to try the enchiladas and with great trepidation, we (Mandy and I) dished out a portion of the Mexican food onto each child's plate and then we sat back to eat and wait to see how quickly one or both of the kids would begin whining -or worse, screaming and crying -about the food on their plate.

But surprise, surprise! Nothing like that happened!

I was a bit astonished when after a couple of bites, I took a chance and asked Kurtis if he liked his food and he told me, quite plainly then too, "Yes, is very tasty!"

I asked Maya about her food and she wasn't quite as vociferous as her brother in making a comment and answered rather quietly that she liked it.

A double bonus! Both kids. Eating enchiladas! Amazing! Pinch me quick to make sure I'm not dreaming about this, ya know!

I do have to say though about this batch of enchiladas that they were a tad on the spicy side. When I ran up to the store to get the special things I needed to make them, the store didn't have any enchilada sauce so I purchased a store brand jar of salsa with the label reading "medium" pertaining to the heat/spiciness involved in the salsa and I have to say I'd consider that sauce as being labeled incorrectly. I love spicy food so things like that don't bother me but this stuff did leave a tad of a bite in the back of one's throat after a while! But to Kurt's credit, once that started to happen to him, he remarked that it was a little spicy and I said yes, a tiny bit but he soldiered on and ate almost every bit of the enchilada Mandy had given him!

Later on though, Mandy's best friend, Jenn-Jenn, came down to pick up Maya and take her up to her house to spend the night -a fairly normal thing for Maya to go and stay overnight with Jenn-Jenn and Nick-Nick and their family. We call Jenn Maya's second mother and her entire household is also Maya's second home!

While Jenn was here, waiting for Maya to get her stuff together, Mandy mentioned to Jenn about our supper and so Jenn questioned Kurtis about what he'd had to eat tonight. He scratched his head a bit, turning it up to look kind of questioningly at Mandy, then at Jenn and Mandy then said to him, about the stuff we'd had that he had said was "tasty" and finally, he pulled it out of the depths of his memory and spoke up, telling Jenn that he had had "En-cha-wawa's"

Needless to say, all of us -well the adults anyway -cracked up completely at his mispronunciation of enchiladas. I think we all probably had visions of someone chasing little Mexican dogs to catch them and turn them into the "en-cha-wawas!" But if that wasn't enough, a short time later, Kurt was still talking about his supper and then he told Jenn-Jenn that we'd had groundhog! Well, apparently he'd heard me talking about ground beef and just omitted the beef and tossed in the hog there on the end of that word. He does that a good bit now and again -after he hears something mentioned, he frequently then tries to use a word or several words in his own conversations but doesn't always get the words -or the context -right.

That's okay though. At least we know he's listening albeit it apparently really within his subconscious the way he brings things up later!

And at the end of the day, we know he's learning!

Boy, is he ever doing that!

Oh, The Memories!

This week -on Tuesday as a matter of fact -I had a very pleasant surprise.

My best friend from my working days in Washington, D.C. -which I left behind me in August of 1972 when my ex-husband and I moved back to my hometown here in Pennsylvania -phoned me!

Before Joan retired about two years ago now, we would talk on the phone, usually at most, once, maybe two times a year. The only exception to those calls were if something really drastic happened that we just had to share with each other and sadly, most of those calls were because someone we had both worked with back then had passed away.

But since she retired, we don't chat on the phone a whole lot more often -not something like every 4-6 weeks or so but we do call each other more than likely 4-6 times a year now and I have to confess, it is usually Joan who calls me. Although the old excuse we both had about not calling all the time was because of how much a call cost per minute and now, we both have unlimited calling on our phones, so there is no extra charge to either of us where our phone bills are concerned but nighthawk that I do tend to be, when I get the urge to make a phone call and just b.s. a hour or two away, it's usually gonna hit me about 1-2 a.m. and for some reason, I tend to think now that most people don't really appreciate calls at that hour of the night or more accurately, the morning!

Joan though (that's my friend's name) would tell you if she were to hear me make a comment such as the one above that calling at 1 or 2 a.m. never stopped me before and though that would be a true statement, I could clarify those actions today by reminding her that those were back in the days when I worked midnight shift and also, those were the days when I still drank too! LOL

It's always fun for me to chat with Joan though and its also inevitable that our conversations will cover most everything from soup to nuts and frequently even have a little bit of politics intermingled into the mix as well.

Then, for at least a day, sometimes several days after one of our phone conversations, I'll get on a bit of a tangent, remembering other things we maybe didn't even talk about but that were some of the funny things that often took place where we worked back then.

Last night, while telling Mandy some other silly stories about Joan's and my working days together, I happened to think of something -and this was something Joan and I had not talked about nor had anything even remotely come up in our conversation that might bring this to mind, but for whatever reason, I started telling Mandy about one of the liquid lunches that I recall from back in those good old days.

For some reason -which I don't remember now though -I was at the lounge in the restaurant across the street from our office -The Holiday Inn -and though there had been several other co-workers along on that day, by 2 p.m., the dedicated folks had gone back to work and we diehards were still there celebrating something. I don't recall all who had been there besides Joan and myself but I do remember the guy who was the director of the division where we worked was there (I think he was the one buying, come to think of it) and his secretary was with us too!

Joan and I and the rest of the girls who worked in our section -doing keypunch -rarely went to lunch with this guy -old "Hose Nose" as we often referred to him in the office. And to have his secretary with us was even more of a rare occasion!

His secretary though was quite a character in her own right -a tall, very statuesque woman, probably in her late 40s, perhaps early to mid-50s at the time and she was also very aware of the intimidating aspect her appearance held too. She always carried herself with an air that she was above the shenanigans that our key punch crew often were known to pull off around the office, throughout the building, for that matter. Jane was above all that!

Except on this particular occasion when I think she maybe had been partaking a bit heavily of the sauce and may have been oh, slightly tipsy because some how the conversation in the lounge had turned to cigars and the next thing you knew, there was Jane sitting there lighting up and then smoking this cigar! Remember this was in the late 60s so for a woman to smoke a cigar was quite a rather shocking thing.

This was about the time that the Robert Burns Cigar Company -the one I had worked at shortly after I graduated from high school -had introduced a public relations type campaign with the tag line of "Should a gentleman offer a lady a cigarillo?" (Or was it a tiparillo? Now, I can't remember the ad precisely but it was one of those things. One thing I do know for sure that it wasn't an ad offering a Davidoff!)

But I remember that I must have had one really shocked look on my face watching Jane -this really prim and very proper appearing lady -light up that cigar, that's for sure.

I later learned -after I transferred out of that division at work and went downstairs to work in the Administrative Services area -that appearances can be very deceiving. My boss who was the director of that division then informed me that many people around work rarely ever saw that side of Jane but when she cut loose, he told me, she had one really wild sense of humor!

Funny though, isn't it, the silly things that stick with us in our memory many, many years after the fact!

Working at that place I have to confess that rarely did a day go by at work but what someone didn't do something goofy, silly, sometimes downright crazy and yet, amidst all the laughter that flowed quite frequently, we still got the work load processed in a very timely manner.

Just goes to show you that a happy, friendly, fun-loving, practical joking work force is also a very, very productive one too, ya know!

Yep! Lots and lots of wonderful memories associated with my old friend Joan and that employer!

Best ever!

Trouble with a Capital "T"!

I've never had this happen to me before but with the issues Blogger had yesterday, it seems they deleted posts put up on May 12th. It just so happens this post was written and published on May 12th (originally) and today, I discovered it had been deleted by Blogger. Lucky for me, I still had it on my reader so I did a paste and copy and here it is, back to life again! Thanks to those other bloggers who commented on Facebook that this error of Blogger's had happened or I never would have known my post had been obliterated!

Two questions here for you tonight.

First, have you ever seen the musical, "The Music Man" and if so, do you remember the song in that production that details how having a pool hall in River City means trouble and that trouble is with a "Capital T?" If so, then that may give you a tiny bit of an inkling that I didn't have the best of days yesterday.

And my second question is this: Have you ever witnessed the black screen of death on your computer monitor?

If so, then you'll probably understand completely why I was worried sick all afternoon yesterday, convinced I was going to have to go and apply for what I refer to as a "small business loan" or at the very least, find some places to go for some personal loans.

The problem I experienced began when Mandy and Ken decided they were going to power wash the deck on the back of the house, along with the siding all over the house too. Sounded like a reasonable idea to me until when they plugged the darned thing in and it blew a circuit breaker.

Well, initially I didn't think too much about the blown circuit breaker, cause that does happen every now and again -not frequently, ya know -but every now and again and yesterday, when it happened and the tv shut off, I figured it will all be okay as soon as they get the thing plugged in someplace where it will work okay for them.

However, I didn't realize it immediately that the blown circuit breaker was the item that was responsible for the black screen of death that was then appearing on my monitor! Hmmm. How can this be happening to me?

Because I am not a rocket scientist nor am I a computer engineer type person, my initial reaction was to go and tell my son's girlfriend -who is pretty adept about computer stuff -and she told me it sounded like I might have fried my computer!

Say what? Here I was thinking that it was some kind of issue with the monitor because there was nothing showing on the screen and the blue light on the was coming on so that told ME that the computer was working, just not the monitor but Elizabeth informed me it was actually just the reverse. She said the monitor is probably okay but the tower -probably not so much!

Sheesh! That's when my stomach really began to churn big time and the nerves came out of the closet where they've been hiding since the last time my computer went nutso-wonky on me by picking up a really horrid and nasty virus last summer. I was on the verge of, as my son so sweetly put it in a Facebook post, suffering through the "D.T's!"

But I finally pulled myself together and phoned a friend who lives on the street up the hill and behind our place and who also just so happens to be a bit of a computer geek/guru and within ten minutes he was here, gathered up my tower and took it home to have a good old "look about" at the innards of my computer.

Figuring I might be in for a long siege of computer withdrawal while our friend was working on my sweet baby computer, I got in touch with my ex-son-in-law who had "borrowed" my old computer and asked him if he would please bring it home to me when he came home from work tonight. He said no problem to that and about 7 p.m. or so, he dropped the old computer off on my desk.

Then I took one look at that tower and the mess of wires and such that all got plugged in someplace in the back of a computer and my stomach began churning all over again.

I didn't have clue one as to where any of these wires should go on my old computer and from what I could see, I had the sinking feeling that I wouldn't be able to hook up my old computer using the cables and such laying in an ugly black, tangled up mass on my desk because one thing I didn't see on the back of the old computer were any little USB ports! And I could see plain as day that a lot of these wires and cable and such also came supplied with just that -a USB port thingy to be inserted in of course, a USB port.

So I phoned my geek/guru friend and told him I had the old computer but couldn't make heads or tails out of this mess of stuff laying on my desk to be hooked up somewhere. So he said not to panic because he would be over in about 10 minutes or so to oversee things.

And much to my surprise, when he did arrive in yes, about ten minutes, he also came carrying in my lovely sweet baby computer, all healed and ready to be hooked up in a jiffy and fired up then, ready for me to use it until the next time -hopefully never -it breaks down again!

Seems the computer was pretty much in need of a very healthy dusting out inside and everything came back to life, nice as can be!

Thank goodness. Tragedy was averted for me. And trust me, a sick, broken computer to me spells Trouble with a capital "T"!

Winter Works!

I've been saying on several occasions here that one of these days I would get around to taking pictures of the crafts stuff I've done since the beginning of the year but never got around to doing that.

Well how lucky are you today now!

I finally finished the last project I've been working on for the past month or a little over a month, actually, tonight and decided it was high time that I got to taking pictures of these items.

If you're on Facebook, you can see them there in an album I set up and posted tonight. But since many of you aren't on Facebook, here's the accumulation of things I have embroidered since January 1st of 2011.

Yes, I've been a busy little old Grannie doing all this stuff but the thing is, it doesn't feel like work to me because I really enjoy doing the embroidery. It actually relaxes me very much, helps me clear my mind and not dwell on things that would otherwise upset me and make me very nervous and/or depressed.

So doing this stuff is really -believe it or not -very beneficial for me.

Anyway -here goes with the pictures!


"Blue Jacobean"
standard-size pillowcase set








"The Aristocrat"

Standard-sized pillowcase set






"Three Snowmen"

Standard sized pillowcase set







Single pillowcase
"Eeyore"
from the Disney collection








"Choo Choo"

Standard size pillowcase set






"Floral Path"
Tabletopper -32x32 inch









Closeup
"Floral Path" Tabletopper
32x32 inch






Tabletopper
"Winter Church"
32x32 inch








Closeup
"Winter Church"
Tabletopper
32x32 inch




Tablecloth
54x54 inch
"Bright Blues"






Four flowers in the center
of 54x54 inch tablecloth

"Bright Blues"






Corner Flower
Tablecloth -54x54 inch
"Bright Blues"





The entire "Bright Blues" Set!

Tablecloth -54x54 inch
Plus
6 very nice sized (large) napkins
that match the tablecloth!



And, there you have it -the assortment of embroidered items I've finished since the first of the year.

Well, there are two other tablecloths I did in those 4 months too but I already posted the pictures of them when I completed each on since they were birthday presents -one for each of my daughters.

Now, to figure out which item in my stash collection I'm gonna tackle next. Another big tablecloth, maybe? Or will it be some tabletoppers or more pillowcases? Maybe even a dresser scarf to put on top of the mantelpiece over the fireplace? I haven't decided as yet what is next on the agenda there but one thing for sure is that I have a big old plastic tote container filled to the brim with all kinds of kits in those various areas to choose from.

If I get really brave and daring, who knows, I might even decide to tangle with a counted cross stitch piece too! Not sure if I'm up to that right now though as counted cross stitch does tend to make me more than a bit cross-eyed. (Also increases my blue vocabulary too as there's generally a whole lot of cursing going on when I'm working on counted cross stitch.

Oh well, time will tell and as soon as I figure out what I'm gonna do, you'll be second to find out. First will be my daughter Mandy and the grandkids!

Peace!

Not Your Average Day!

In about seven minutes from now, this Mother's Day will come to an end and a new day will begin the 24-hour countdown then.

As Mother's Day celebrations go, today was really one of the best in my memory of those events!

Although my older daughter -and her son, my older grandson -Alex -couldn't be with us since she works the midnight shift at a hospital in her area and also, she had work tonight too -and we all want those people who care for us in the hospitals to have been able to get enough rest to be there for us, to be able to be awake/alert too while doing their jobs, don't we now? But although we missed her presence, the card she sent me for Mother's Day did compensate a whole lot in her absence as her sister and I really got a great big chuckle out of that card!

Three cards for Mother's Day -one from each of my lovely children -and only one of the three cards was of the sweet, syrupy and very sentimental type. And that one this year was from my baby, Mandy.

Regardless of the tone of the cards, I loved all three of them very much and they helped make the day one that was really very pleasure-filled, for sure.

Neither Mandy nor I had to cook today as Ken (Mandy's boyfriend) had made two great big pans of his lasagne, which has to be the absolute best in flavor, with a great meat sauce and oodles of cheese! I did make a dessert for our meal today -made it last night -and it turned out to be a big hit too. It's called Ginger Cheesecake and it definitely fills the bill for all the requirements I have in a recipe. It was easy on the ingredients, easy to put together, looked like I had slaved for a considerable amount of time preparing it and best of all, it tasted great! I got the recipe off the back of a package of Betty Crocker's Gingerbread Cookie Mix and you can bet your bottom dollar this is one dessert that will make its way to our table again!

Not only was today Mother's Day but it was also a day for a birthday celebration too. My son's girlfriend, Elizabeth, celebrated her birthday today as she and Clayton were here for dinner and he also got her a nice little chocolate cake -which was a huge hit with Kurtis who loves, loves, loves virtually anything chocolate, ya know. Kurt was very psyched up about today being Elizabeth's birthday and spent a good part early in the day practicing, honing up on his singing abilities so he had the "Happy Birthday" song absolutely down pat!

We - Mandy, both children and I -all made it to church too Sunday morning! Quite a feat for me to accomplish this as I am not one to be able to "rise and shine" early in the morning as you may recall. But I managed to do it today, thankfully.

The Women's Group at our church have a special project going on right now and that's to ask members of the congregation to provide any -or all, if they can afford it -items on a list of things that will go into making up layette packages that will then be sent to various places around the country here or around the world, to be given to new mothers to help them begin the never-ending job of trying to provide as best they can for the basic needs of their infants. Today, we were to bring the items we had to donate to the service and then, during the Children's Sermon, Pastor Carrie had the children help her to collect those items which were then placed in the bassinette that our Group's President (Mary Kay) still had from when her son was an infant about 45 years ago! Mary Kay had trimmed the sides of this infant bed with loads of flowers so it looked very pretty and believe me, those little ones sitting around the altar rail with Pastor Carrie were quite proud and happy to be able to help Pastor Carrie collect the items and put them in the bed for babies in need, world-wide.

As we were leaving church, I made a comment to Mandy to invite Pastor Carrie and her mother to come down and join us for dinner at our house. Pastor Carrie's mother is visiting here till mid-June and they accepted our invitation. We had such a fun mean as the more I am around Pastor Carrie and her mother, the more convinced I am that somehow, someway, we must be related because listening to them tell stories about the rest of their family -all back home in Wisconsin -and her Mom and I compare notes about child rearing, it always gives me such a great feeling inside to know I'm not alone in having raised kids who where quite the characters when they were small and still are to this day! It made for a really fun meal, filled to the brim with some great food and lots and lots of laughter! Both things that are great to have when you have a family plus friends meal!

After dinner, when it was just the kids, Mandy, Ken and I here, as I began the job of putting leftover food away, I decided to share some of our bounty with some neighbors of ours. I packaged up a big serving of the lasagne along with a couple pieces of the dessert I had made to take to our neighbor lady three doors up the street from us. She is a very nice -excellent neighbor actually -single lady in her early 80s now and she's been my neighbor all my life. Then I also fixed two containers -one with two slices of lasagne and the other with a couple slices of the cheesecake to take up to give to my good friend, Shirley and her husband. I also took along the tablecloth and napkin set I have been working on for the past month now to show to Shirley. ( I should be working on right now so as to finally get it completed as I only have about an hour's worth of work left to go on this set and it will be done, done, done! But I also know if I don't write this post now, by tomorrow, I probably will have forgotten several little minor details to relate here then too.)

When I dropped off the little "care" packages to Shirley and Bo and then, showed her my tablecloth set, we got started chatting -just like we always do when we get together and before you knew it, I'd spent well over an hour there then talking with her about all kinds of things -not just embroidery.

I told her though that Pastor's Mom had told me about a store near to where she lives in Wisconsin that sells a little bit of everything but it's apparently one of those salvage type places where they buy up all kinds of extra inventory from other firms at dirt cheap prices and then, resell the stuff but also at very, very low prices too. She said this place has a separate section though that is nothing but crafting items and she has often purchased things like pillow case sets for as low as $1.50 for the pair -already stamped and ready to be embroidered. Hearing that had me drooling big time at the dining room table and I remarked that perhaps Shirley, her sister, Kate, and I might just have to organize an excursion of sorts, for the three of us to travel to Wisconsin just to visit this crafts corner in that store.

I mentioned this idea to Shirley who just howled laughing at that idea, saying the very last thing she needs is to purchase more craft things but I know -just as I'm sure she knows too -that were it possible for the three of us to finagle a way to make a trip like that, Shirley and I would both come back home all loaded down with, yes, more embroidery kits. And I am pretty doggone sure we would do just that because when it comes to stuff like that, we both lose our "need vs. want" theories and the "Want" one would take precedence! Even though neither of us really has any more room to spare in which we could store such things, kits like those at really great prices are absolutely next to impossible for either of us to ignore.

While visiting with Shirley she also told me a really fantastic but true story on one of my favorite type of topics: the "Small World" theory about life. It's a great story that I would love to share but won't do that today because it would make this post way too long and right now, it's already about to my mini-version of War and Peace that I tend to write in my blog.

So I'll spare you that story tonight but will try to keep it all in the forefront of my memory to write about it soon as it is a really great story, in my opinion.

And now, as Mother's Day has officially ended here for 2011, and I'm still basking in how great the day was for me anyway, I'm gonna close out now, go finish that tablecloth (so I can then begin work on yes, another tablecloth. What else did you expect?) And then, I'm gonna go crawl into bed with my little sleeping buddy, Miss Maya and be off to dreamland in probably three shakes of a lamb's tail, as my Grandma used to say.

Here's hoping all of you -my readers -who share the status with me of being a Mom, have had a day even half as excellent a day as mine was for me today!

Peace and Happy Mother's Day every day!

What's In the Future?

You've all read plenty here by now of the various embroidery projects I have completed. I know, I know -a lot! I've done several things now thus far this year too but have only put pictures of two of the projects I have completed since January 1st on either my blog or on my Facebook.

Why is that -considering I have completed two large tablecloths (those were gifts for my daughters for their respective birthdays and those are the two items I have photographed and posted about.) But in addition t them, I've also completed three sets of pillow cases, a table topper and am almost finished now with a slightly larger tablecloth that comes with a set of six napkins too -but I've been really lazy about photographing them.

I think I mentioned a long, long time ago my plan -such as it is or was -was to do these embroidered items and then, set up an Etsy account to try to sell these items on that. Well, I opened an Etsy account oh, about two years ago now but have never got around to activating it completely.

Why? Because I don't feel I have enough items in an inventory nor do I have the needed information about shipping stuff either, in order to complete the activation process.

One thing for sure is at the snail's pace that I work on the embroidered stuff, I won't need to worry about needing any barcode scanners to track my inventory or sales! That is definitely for sure there!

Granted, as speed with embroidered work goes, some of my friends here who also enjoy doing embroidered work, think I am a bit of a speed demon. But trust me, if you are trying to make things that you might like to try to sell in an online market, I am still really slower than slow, for sure!

I had thought about putting some other hand-made items I have completed and stashed away here in a make-shift sort of inventory but, although I found the photos I had taken of those items, be darned if I could remember where in blazes I had stashed the box where I had put the things!

These were about 30 handmade baby bibs I had sewn a good while back and a couple close friends of mine had seen them and had liked them a lot -enough so that they had me make some more that they then purchased as great little baby gifts or for use by their grandchildren.

Well, I sure as heck couldn't very well open an Etsy sales site showing these photos of these cute little bibs though if I couldn't find my already made stash of 'em, could I?

Although I thought I had hunted high and low, scoured every known hiding place I thought I had for those darned bibs, do you think I could find 'em? No. Sirree!

Until that is, last week when I was actually on a search and destroy mission for a pair of slide sandals I've had for about the past 8-10 years now and well-worn as they may be, I still love 'em and wear them most of the time during the summer months.

While searching for those sandals, I came across a box I hadn't spied in my earlier searches of the boxes shoved under my bed and lo and behold, there were all those darned bibs I had been on the major search and destroy mission for a few months back.

This may or may not mean I will soon be activating my Etsy account but at least, it does bring the possibility of that ever happening just a tad closer!

Glare in the Square!

Yesterday, I took Sammy out for our regular walk but that walk ended up being far from "regular" as those things go for me -and for him!

We headed down the road towards Peale and right after crossing the little bridge that goes over the Moravian Run -always/often referred to by locals here as "The Sulfur Creek" -I did something I've never done before on any of our walk-abouts.

We left the roadway!

We went off to the left of the road, crossed over a rocky drainage ditch put in last year with the big mine reclamation project that extends from Cooper Two across the mountain to where it ends, just about at the beginning edge of Peale. And, we followed a little road, of sorts, that probably came about for the company that did the reclamation to build and use to get their workers back up on that end of the mountain and to get their heavy equipment maybe moved up there via that route as well.

What's so unusual about this part of our journey is that I have only ever gone off the beaten track in my walks on two other occasions -both times, my grandson, Alex, was with me too. One time was when we went exploring what once was the park that existed for many years in Peale and the second time, was a walk Alex, the dog and I took out along Cooper Two Road.

I don't like doing that -leaving the road -because I am actually terrified that if I wandered around the woods like that, I am increasing my chances of encountering something I truly would loathe, abhor and hate to see in my walks -a big old snake of the rattler or copperhead type, ya know! They'd probably hear me screaming for miles around if that kind of encounter have happened to me!

But anyway, yesterday was my day for feeling quite adventurous -apparently. And an adventure it was too, trust me! A long one - a very long, hard pull walking up that road, up that hill to see what I could see.

But, once I got to almost the top and to the beginning of that edge of the reclamation project, the view there was awesome, truly awesome and beautiful! So it was well worth the aches and pains then -and later -in my legs and back and the huffing and puffing to arrive at that point too!

Although I did take some pictures along our walk at the top of the hillside there, only a couple of them are really decent enough to post.

The reason -or what I place the blame on anyway -that several of my shots are buggered up is the darned glare on the little square -that screen on my camera!

I was thinking that with the sunshine yesterday, not only would some nike sunglasses be a good investment for me but if some kind of "sunglasses" as it were could be fitted on my camera some how so that I could see what I am trying to focus on with the camera and not be blinded by that glare so much so that I have no clue if what I'm trying to photograph is even within my view-finder at all, that would be really awesome. Well in my book anyway and yes, we all do know by now how convoluted "my book" is though, don't we?


I did manage to get two pictures though of an area in the reclamation land that I think might possibly be the tippy-top of what used to be the old bony pile out by Cooper Two.

See that kind of greyish-black mound sort of in the center of this shot? That's what looks to me like it could be the top of what used to be the old bony pile. And if it is indeed that, then finding what could be left now of that old bony pile made this little walking jaunt all the more worth while for me!

It used to be one of the most hated sights around our lovely little village -at least by my Grandmother's standards of nice or not so nice things to see. She absolutely hated that thing -found it to be ugly, gross and flat out disgusting! And I suppose depending on how one would have viewed it, day in and day out, from our kitchen window, as she could plainly see it from there while doing dishes or trying to prepare meals for the family, maybe it was what she saw in it there.

For a long while, I too sort of shared her view, her opinion too, of that thing.

But guess what?

Now that it is pretty much dead and buried by the ground being moved around and over top of it, I find I kind of miss not seeing it there!

Ugly as it may have been, it was also a major part of the town's history and that's the part I miss today!

The Overlord Wishes...

One of my favorite bloggers - Bud, at Older Eyes - recently passed on an award to me - The Overlord -and if I understand the rules (other than that you have to write a post and pass this award on to other bloggers who you believe would not just follow the award rules but also, who conform to the status of being an actual Overlord, here then is my take on this idea.

My interpretation of being an Overlord is that it would be kind of akin to being King (or in my case, maybe "Queen") for a day and getting one's wishes, regardless how outrageous they might be, granted then.

Oh, to have such power!

When I went to bed last night, I had this award and thoughts about what I'd want done on my mind, thinking a good night's sleep might open my mind to thoughts that were great, mighty and worthy of the status of being an Overlord.

Before I could even get into my bed though, my thoughts were totally disrupted by the fact my bed buddy -Miss Maya -had the covers all so darned twisted up that I practically had to remake the bed before I could even lay my body down there.

So my initial thoughts about what I'd want were to never have to do something and then, redo, redo, redo things! Okay, with a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old always around, getting into things, making messes and never being willing to even help clean up, much less listening and doing it by themselves, that is a pretty powerful thought there, don't 'cha think? Unlikely, but were it possible, very powerful and okay, it's still one of my dreams just as it has been for oh, the past 44 years now, pretty much! (Boy, if my kids read this post and pay attention to this paragraph, I'm liable to get a whole lot of grief from then over this thought/theory! Might just ruin my Mother's Day gifts for sure, huh?)

I thought too about trying to remember some funny, pithy things that would be good for an Overlord to have, to us but as often happens when my brain is challenged along these lines, I had a massive dose of "chemo brain deadness" strike me so, we'll cancel out the idea of anything that is cute or comical then I guess.

Instead, because this has been on my mind a lot this week, in view of the world news of Sunday night, I decided to focus on something that I seriously would like to see, would like if I had the power, to use it then on people the world over.

And that would be that all prejudices would be automatically wiped out, erased, done away with and that peace would then reign supreme -as it should be!

Think about the events of this Sunday though for a moment and remember back to just after the 9-11 attacks when the news broadcasts were showing photos of people, mostly in the middle east, who were dancing in the streets, celebrating the loss of those lives from the attacks and how horrid it made us, as a people -a nation -feel to see people elsewhere celebrating the senseless loss of life. Then think about the scenes shown Sunday night and Monday of people in this country reveling in the killing of Osama bin Ladin. Is there a difference there between those doing that in 2001 and today?

I think not!

What I see here, what I also fear here too that will most likely happen, is that through the elimination of Bin Ladin and those pictures of Americans celebrating that fact, it will only create a new, perhaps even larger rift in the international society of people to provide yet another reason, excuse, for even more -perhaps even greater violence and so, the revenge factor lives on and on for more generations yet to come.

And, do we all really want that for ourselves -for our children, grandchildren?

There are those who will no doubt take my words to mean that I admired Bin Ladin but I don't. He was, in my opinion, a very despicable man, to be sure. But, regardless of what our feelings were about him, death is never a thing to be celebrated except within our own religious beliefs that the person has now entered eternal rest. Please remember, just as we were offended by others celebrating the loss of lives on 9-11 and the pain that caused in our own hearts, so too does his death leave his family -wives and children, brothers, cousins, etc. -grieving too and we should at least have the decency to give them that much respect.

In doing that, being respectful of the dead, it makes us the better person/people in the end. I suppose my logic is a bit convoluted here -which is, let's face it -generally the way my logic always tends to run. I am as relieved as the next person may be that Bin Ladin is no longer able to orchestrate more violence towards our country or any country for that matter but I still don't believe it to be acceptable to laugh, sing and dance with glee over his death.

Now, to my other wish as Overlord -and this is really important too -I would make it mandatory that Donald Trump get two things - a sense of humor and a much needed decent hair cut.

To conclude this little post, I now am supposed to pass this Overlord on -in the effort to make this award and posts a viral thing -on to other bloggers who, for various reasons, I think write some darned good stuff and would have some really great requests if they too were able to be an Overlord for a post, a day, week, lifetime perhaps.

And the winners from my perspective are:

Mary Anne at A Place I Call Home -for her ability to see things and put a really great perspective to work in her writings.

Dianne - at Forks Off The Moment -another blogger who doesn't fear voicing her opinions and often quite strongly too! But at the end, as she always says, "We still have Hope!"

Sandy McBride -at Holding Patterns -for all her insights on life and for a blog where you can listen to some really great music while reading her great stuff as well!

Magazine Man at Somewhere on the Mast - who though he hasn't posted anything in quite sometime now, writes some awesome stuff when he does get around to blogging! I'm willing to bet the family farm that if he were to have Overlord status,he'd have some really terrific wishes to bestow, for sure! Just take the time to read some of his posts for the sheer enjoyment of his great writing. You won't regret it!

Terri -at Into The Mystic - Because she's my avid bowling friend from up north in Minnesota who always has some great thoughts and good things to say!

Jocelyn -at Oh Mighty Crisis -a blogger who is truly a wordsmith of the highest caliber. Currently on sabbatical from her college professor work as an English instructor, residing for a few more months in Turkey, she's got some wild, wacky and yes, often profound stuff to be found at her place!

And finally -to my old blogging buddy, now in "retirement" from blogging but maybe an award like this (considering how he always LOVED to get awards) would bring him back to life for yet another post -Suldog! He's one blogger who really is quite deserving of an award like this -a great writer and one who would probably love nothing better than being an Overlord and able to put his wishes out there for all of us to see. Worth a shot to see if I can get him to come back to life for at least one more post, ya know!

And now, having done my duty, so to speak, I'm finished here for the moment anyway. Off to do some other stuff -walk the dog, housework, get ready for the Friday afternoon fights to begin when the grandkids get home from school, cook, embroider and oh yes, read a bunch of posts waiting on my reader now too for me to tackle and see what great things are happening all around blogland!

Cheers -and Peace!

Quick Changes...

Boy, it is just amazing how quickly babies grow from that tiny, tiny helpless infant to a toddler and from that, it's just a hop, skip and a jump till they are in school and then, just learning more and more every minute -not just every day.

Or so it seems, anyway.

Maya's abilities never cease to amaze me. Nor do Kurt's for that matter!

Both of the come up with some of the wildest, funniest things at times though and it makes a person wonder where the heck did that come from anyway?

Tuesday morning, Mandy was getting Kurt ready to go to his therapy appointment and directly after that, she would then take him to school and drop him off there. (He would then be brought back home on the van.

It was just a darned good thing though that Mandy decided to look through Kurt's bookbag to make sure there weren't any important papers in there that she may have overlooked on Friday otherwise, this piece of paper would have gone to school with Kurtis and his teacher would have received it this little note below.



Thank goodness, Miss Erin has seen Mandy's penmanship before though and I'm pretty sure she'd have known this was a forgery!

Expanded Walks?

I started this so-called exercise program of walking our dog, Sammy, a year ago this past December mainly because of two things. One, the dog needs to go out to do his business and has be on a leash and walked to do that and two, because my doctor told me I needed to get off my butt and do some exercise in order to tone up muscles, my heart rate, lower my blood pressure and yes, lose some weight!

And I've found that I do really enjoy doing this walking -a lot. Even when it does some days cause my ankles to ache, it's still something that has more benefits to me than it has downsides. Usually the aching part I've discovered has more to do with changes in the weather -humidity factors, as it were -that tend to affect my joints a lot more than the actual walking does.

But I have a confession to make too about my walking.

While I do walk around the village where I live and down to the wooded area of what used to be the now-ghost town of Peale or out along another back road to Cooper Two, where there used to be a big mining operation, most of these walks consist of walking on an area that is relatively flat. Oh, there are a couple places along the way where there is a little bit of a hill to climb, but for the most part, it's actually a pretty easy walk way.

However, there are a few other parts in the village that I avoid walking there -like the plague!

If I were to walk up the street to the four-way intersection in the middle of town and take a left turn there, I'm quite sure I'd be well out of breath in very short order and probably would wish I had some Leki Hiking Poles to use to kind of pull myself along a bit!

No, it's not craggy rocks and crevices along that particular route through town but it is a pretty steep hill to climb, that's for sure!

How our lives do change over the years though. I remember from grades 1 through 6, I walked that road every school day, up that hill, sometimes even running and skipping along too. Things that today, sixty years later, my legs and back along with my lungs, would definitely be in major pain if I even tried to climb that hill at a very slow pace!

Maybe someday, if I ever get the notion to think my system is up to the challenge, I could then walk up that big old hill and surprise the living daylights out of my son -who lives at the top of that hill -as I'd come into his kitchen and collapse -most likely -of a coronary!

I think I'll keep my walking along the routes I've been using and leave the climb up the mountain to a ride in my jeep!

Spiff It Up Maybe?

There's so many things around this old house that could stand improvement -way too numerous to talk about in just one post, I think. Of course, to do all the improvements we'd like to see done, either Mandy or I would certainly have to be really lucky and hit one of the Super Jackpots on the lottery, I'm sure.

We were discussing some of the features in the house earlier today and she mentioned about the old fireplace in the living room. I know this wasn't built as part of the house originally but was added on when the family expanded the downstairs -or redesigned the layout is probably a more accurate description. And I'm not sure what year they did that but it was sometime before the 1930s as near as I can ascertain from old photographs.

So the fireplace, although it's been here a long time, it's also something that has rarely been used too.

At some time after it was added to the house, one of my uncles discovered something about the way it was built that caused a lot of alarms to go off with my grandparents and the rest of the family. Seems the firebox to the fireplace is situated in such a manner that it rests on some of the house's main timbers! And the few times the fireplace had been used early on apparently the heat from those embers in the firebox charred those main timbers a bit.

So the fireplace in this place is pretty much just for show, definitely not for use!

I remember one time, about 1955 or 1956, when my Mom had to have new grates made for the coal furnace we had back then and of course, as luck would have it, while the new grates were being made, we got hit with a really nasty cold spell. This was in October of whichever year was involved and so, we had no heat at all in the house for a time. This kind of forced my Mom to take a chance and build a fire in the fireplace but she was one nervous nelly the whole time that fire was burning there.

It even set my Grandfather off on a tangent too.

At that time of his life, his mind was deteriorating as he had hardening of the arteries and his thought processes were far from what they used to be. So, when he realized there was a fire in the fireplace, he took off and went down the street to his brother's home where he announced to Uncle Erik and his daughters, Edith and Hedvig, that my Mom and Grandma were trying to burn the house down.

This kind of worried Uncle Erik initially cause you never knew exactly what stories Grandpa was telling and how much accuracy might be contained in them -if any. So to ease his mind, Uncle Erik made one of his daughters walk Grandpa back home and while here, figure out what was causing Grandpa to believe people were trying to burn the house down.

It did provide a little bit of laughter at the time but was also one of those humorous things that are tinged in sadness too as it makes a person see the wasting of the mind and how someone who once had been a very intelligent man was now a shell of his former mental self.

But anyway, Mandy was asking me about the mantlepiece over our fireplace -how old it is and such. I don't remember what year Mom and Grandma had this made as I can't think of any other events surrounding that to be able to tie in a date to it but I do remember my Mom mentioning when they brought it home that it was probably gonna be one of the most expensive decorative things in this old house then anyway.

At the time it was made, I doubt Mom and Grandma had a bunch of mantel designs to look at and choose from but I do know this one is made from solid oak and because I know I was in grade school when they got it, then it has to be probably around 55 years old, at least.

It's still as beautiful today though as it was back when they had it made but right now, it manages to serve as a bit of a "catch-all" for things that get put up there in a hurry to keep them handy to us but out of reach of little fingers that like to mess with things, ya know.

What it really needs now though is a nice table runner/dresser scarf item to put on top of it to keep it a little protected too. With all the embroidery projects I've done over the past two years, I've done very few things in that type of category so maybe, if ever I run out of tablecloths and tabletoppers or pillow cases to embroider, I can tackle some pretty item to dress up our beautiful mantle, can't I?

Pick a Pretty Posie!

Surprisingly enough, as I look over the so-called flower beds in front of the house, I see there are a couple of success stories on going there.

One is this -excuse the crappy picture please, as Sammy probably moved as I snapped it thus causing it to be a bit blurry -but the focal point of this picture is that I see two of the peony plants my neighbor down the street gave me last fall to transplant have taken hold and are now growing.
This one is on the right front flowerbed -as you look at the house. The tulip plant beside it has done nothing thus far this year.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the front flowerbeds, there's two tulips blooming around the other peony plant which appears to be coming up very nicely. The poor little hyacinth plant though -that pretty pink thing shown -is now looking really beaten down and very bedraggled thanks to the strong electrical storms we had here two nights in a row this week.

Getting those peony plants transplanted and seeing that they have taken root really makes me very happy. The neighbor who gave them to me thinned them from the bushes in the flower beds in front of her house remembered that those plants had been there when she and her husband purchased the house and that the house had belonged to my Grandfather's older brother. So she had called me and asked if I'd be interested in some of those peony plants since more than likely they had originally been planted by my Great-uncle Erik. I have so many memories of being around him and his family, of playing in that big old house and around the yard and barn at his homestead too with cousins when we were growing up, and being the sentimental slob that I tend to be much of the time, I was really happy that she thought of me and offered those plants to me then. It will really mean a lot to see them blossoming in the near future as it will provide a very tangible memory for me of Uncle Erik, his children and grandchildren and good times from many years long passed.

I didn't take any pictures as yet of my azalea bush out front, which usually blooms quite nicely, but I saw yesterday that my neighbor has one that they just transplanted and it blooming away. Just gorgeous! It's kind of tempting to keep from sneaking over there and snatching some of those pretty flowers to make up a bouquet, ya know. Sure would make nice flower gifts that could be really easy on the budget, huh? Of course, I doubt very seriously if my neighbor would be too happy with a plan like that.

Mandy got a couple packets of seeds -pansies and one with assorted flowers. The pansies need to be started inside first so guess we'd best get one or two of those little plastic starter holder things to try to get some of those flowers going. Trying to grow flowers is quite the experiment for me since I tend to have a black thumb, not a green one.

But who knows, maybe this will be the year my thumb starts to get a tiny twinge of green in it!

Miracles -or should I say "Miracle-Gro" could happen!

Ideas Galore. Money, Not So Much!

Sometimes I think the Home and Garden Television channel should be removed from our cable company's channel listing!

Why?

Simply because that channel is Mandy's favorite to watch and there are times when the inspirations she gets from watching the programs there would be better served if she had a big, big income. Come to think of it, from seeing some of the stuff on that channel once in a while, I've come to the conclusion that those who can take advantage of most of their offerings have to have income in the six figure brackets.

Her latest dream now -or a continuation dream or whatever it is -involves a total re-do of our kitchen. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. Definitely not in my lifetime.

She informed me she wants a kitchen with an island that also has a warming drawer -whatever the hell that is -plus stainless steel fixtures with undermount sinks and a granite countertop with solid cherry cabinetry. And that's just for openers!

Oh well, At least it costs nothing to dream, does it?

And I have to confess that I wouldn't mind doing a little dreaming about a whole lot of things around this old house that would be nice to see changed too.

Color Your World...

Mealtime here can be a variety of things -from struggles with either or both kids to get them to eat things they normally profess to like to episodes that are calm, peaceful and fulfilling with respect to the body's needs of food intake.

And, on many occasions, it can also provide some great conversations too. Some of them also can cause the adults around the table to just crack up laughing.

The latter is pretty much what happened at supper here the other evening.

I don't remember now what the menu du jour may have been so I have no clue if there was something about the food that perhaps triggered Maya's question for me but I think it was one of those things that just came to her out of the blue.

Maya: "Did they have color a long time ago?"

Me: "What do you mean, did they have color? What are you referring to?"

Maya: "Well, were there colors then or was everything just sort of brown? Back in the early 80s?"

I don't know if she had perhaps been snooping in some old boxes or something and came across a bunch of old, old photos of our ancestors or if there'd been a TV show on that was filmed in a way that makes everything a brownish shade or what but needless to say, her questions sure did make Mandy and I both crack up laughing. Especially her reference to the "early 80s."

I told her that color has always been present but often, back when I was a child, people only used black and white film in their cameras.

I still don't know if that was what she was wondering about or not but my answer seemed to satisfy her needs, at least for the time being.

Color my world pretty shades of bright greens and yellows today as the sun is shining brightly, causing everything to look really pretty and just plain alive!

A pleasant switch from so many days that have been on the gray side, often with cold temps and lots of rain to go with that coloring.

Whatever color your day is, just remember if you're still above ground, it's still a darned good day!

Doctor's Orders!

I'm trying to keep myself on a little bit of a routine here with the exercise, such as it is, with walking the dog but boy, some days, I really wonder if it's as good a deal as it's supposed to be.

The last visit I had to see the oncologist, we were discussing my trying to lose a few more pounds and such and I mentioned to him about my attempt to work on that issue by going for walks down the road from the house, checking out the woodsy scenery there and such.

My physician broke into a very broad smile when I mentioned doing this and told me that women who have had abdominal surgery, particularly of the reproductive orders, would all be very well-served if they would take up walking for some exercise. What really surprised me about this conversation though was when he said that although many women these days are doing a lot of running or jogging, he said that kind of exercise is actually pretty unhealthy for women to be doing because it tends to harm the internal organs quite often, to say nothing about the damage that can occur to the feet and knees, in particular.

I laughed though and told him that there was no need to worry about my indulging in that kind of exercise but that I do very much enjoy the walks with my dog -and sometimes the grandkids even go with me too, when I'm not planning for a really long walk that is.

Well, apparently my walk yesterday -which was roughly three miles, round-trip -was a tad more than my old ankles were up to because boy, tonight my left ankle in particular has really been throbbing away! I'm thinking I might have to invest in some protective gear and try using some aircast a60 stuff-provided I could get the purchase of that approved by Medicare, ya know!

Either that or I'm gonna be investing in a lot of Ben-Gay!

I'm hoping this was just a fluke thing -maybe because yesterday was the first time so far this year that I had walked that far or it also could have been because of the really strong storms we had tonight as well as last night too.

Darned rain -and especially when we've had as much of it as we've had in the past month here now -likes to settle in and annoy me by making my ankles ache, swell and even bothers my back a lot too then.

But once I get my system back on track to walking a little farther than I have been doing, and hopefully soon, the weather will be more of the warmer stuff, with loads of sunshine, then I'll be following doctor's orders much better once again.

Alternative TV Programming Needed

Something dawned on me recently that we seem to be acquainted with a lot of folks who are adding to their families!

The old joke used to be -when the news would come through that this couple or that one was having a baby -be it a first or fifth -or maybe even more -that they apparently hadn't been watching Johnny Carson.

But there does seem to be an inordinate number of folks who are friends (and even some family members too) who have recently had a baby or who are currently expecting a child. In the past three months alone, two cousins of ours have had additions to their family, and three friends of Mandy's are due within the next 3-4 months now too.

I'm thinking either the people adding to their families have changed their television viewing habits or perhaps they have jobs -or maybe they've invested heavily in stock purchases of baby shower invitations!

But the truth be told here whenever I learn that a friend or relative is having their first child or maybe adding yet another child into the mix, I really do get very excited for the parents regardless of the circumstances.

And besides that, baby showers are always a heck of a lot of fun too!

A Side Business?

Back in the day -well not the far, far distant days of my youth, that would be the dark ages -but back in the days when I used to be employed at a nice firm over in State College that specializes in forecasting the weather, I also used to do something else when I worked there but that was not part of my employment, per se.

I used to bake a lot!

Cookies of all kinds, cakes, even used to often bring in bunches of leftovers too from meals I'd fixed at home and shared those things with my good friend and supervisor, Scottie. Yeah, those were the days, for sure!

I really enjoyed doing that extra baking too simply because of the great response my co-workers would provide when they'd see me coming through the doors with a Tupperware container of some sort, holding lots and lots of cookies and/or other goodies and then, the vultures (aka co-workers) would seem to come out of the woodwork and swoop down on the package I would have by then deposited on a table in the break room for any and all of them to have something to nibble on then while doing their work.

Some of them, now and again, would refer to me as mrs fields although I don't think the things I brought in could possibly hold a candle to this stuff. But it was nice to hear the people I worked with pass along a bit of a compliment and thank you to me in that way.

Sometimes, I have thought about trying to do baking at home and seeing if I could have just a tiny market for some of the things I like to make. But then I think of all the legal mumble-jumble and rigamaroo one would have to go through in order to be allowed to turn your own kitchen into a work place and I think, Nah, not worth that much of a hassle.

I'll stick to baking a few things now and again now just for family, friends and neighbors once in a while or to take to events at our church -pot luck dinners or our Fall Bazaar sponsored by the Women's Group at church.

Doing that gives me just as much pleasure ultimately as I used to get from feeding the flock at the old work place!