In the Olden Days

When I was born, in the bedroom of my parent's farmhouse, there was much celebration.  I was the first girl child born in three generations.  I am sure that is the ONLY reason my father had a child--to shut up his mother and grandparents.  After all, my parents didn't have another child for 13 years and she certainly wasn't planned.

Anyway, when I was born, the next day, our old neighbor's just to the west of our farm, came up the road, leading a Holstein heifer calf.  It was their gift to my parents for having a baby.  

That sounds odd, doesn't it?  I thought it was funny when I first heard about it, but my father soon stopped my laughter with his explanation, "You don't realize how dear that animal was to our neighbor.  That calf grew into a wonderful cow, one of my best producers of milk by weight.  She in turn calved and all her calves were heifers.  She turned out to be one of the best assets we had."

What a boon to my parents the baby Golden Girl (me) was.  Too bad he didn't put the money that cow brought in, into a trust fund for me.  Eh?  Oh well, the baby Golden Girl drank the milk and grew to be tall and strong and very healthy, and at my age now, that's more important than money.

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Can you see all the squirrel tracks on my driveway?  They are such well mannered little rodents--as long as I keep the Flaming Squirrel mix on the bird feeders and corn and peanuts in the squirrel feeder.

I think I see some bunny tracks in there too.

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At Christmas, my best friend Bethie gave me a gift card to the Rich People's store and today....I went there and got myself some treats.  I do love their deli salads--Antipasto, Crab Salad and Tuna Mac, cake, plus the biggest cinnamon rolls I have ever seen and candy bars.  I also got some cat food for the fur kids and a bag of potato chips.  I didn't want to waste my gift on more sensible stuff and besides that, those salads will do me for 7 meals!!  I'll be living high on the hog for the next week!  Thanks Beth--I love you!

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A lot of my blog buddies are posting such profound words lately.  Thoughts and feelings and ponderings.  I can't come up with any of that right now.  I feel so calm and relaxed and lazy that I am hard pressed to know what to blog about.

I have had 10 days straight of perfect sleep--no dreams, no monster nightmares.  It could be the little Melatonin tab I take at bedtime, but I think it is because I have practically secreted myself away from the world.

On Face Book, if I see a link to a story about cruelty to animals, I refuse to even look at it.  The same goes for missing children/adults/pets.  I refuse to read any stories of what is going on in the East and I truly try not to read anything political.  I also have quit watching the news.  I turn it on to get the weather report, just out of curiosity because I couldn't care less if we get a snow storm or blizzard of two feet of snow, then I turn to another channel to watch a classic movie or I turn it off and read.

I have only been out in my car, four times this month and that basically was to meet with friends or family and to get food.  I filled my car with gas on December 27th, and it is still more than half full.

The most excitement I have had all month is playing games on Face Book, reading your blogs and cross stitching the baby quilt.  There has been a bit of drama on my Soap, but there's supposed to be, LOL.

My "Stay-cation" is about to end however, as next week I have a dentist's appointment, and go to the food bank and doctor appointment and blood draw coming up.

This has been the best January I have had in a long time.  

  

Good Times

Excuse me for a moment.  I don't have Flo's e-mail addy, so I have to connect with her here.

The only way you can train a squirrel is with behavior modification.  This stuff not only is mixed in with my bird seed, but I also spray it on my copper silo feeder, that is just like yours.  You can buy it on amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Coles-FS16-Flaming-Squirrel-16-Ounce/dp/B003XR9QWA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421877693&sr=8-1&keywords=squirrel+away&pebp=1421877681178&peasin=B003XR9QWA

Once they wrap their little squirrel lips around bird seed treated with this--they will not come back to the bird feeders.  Actually, it's kind of fun to see them, when they first get a taste, fly off the bird feeder and try to cool off their little rodent mouths in the snow!!!  It doesn't bother the birds at all--they seem to like it.  

NOTE:  Wear gloves when you use it AND wash your hands after you take the gloves off OR, you will invariably get it in your eye, nose, mouth or, when you go to the bathroom and wipe--well, it is quite warming on parts of your body you don't want warmed!!!

The squirrels will really appreciate the corn and peanuts you put out for them IN THEIR OWN SPOT.  I see my squirrels look up from THEIR feed box and eye the bird feeders nearby, then sort of shake their heads as if to say, "NOPE!  Ain't going near there ever again."

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Maddie arrived safe and sound in Guatemala--thank you God.

Karen and Mark went up to East Lansing to take Stephen out for supper and his first beer.  Karen said to the waiter, "You gotta card him to make sure he's old enough.  Today is his twenty-first birthday."

The waiter said, "Nah, he looks old enough."  Karen said she was trying to embarrass Stephen, but it didn't work.  At least he got his beer free.

Then they all went to the basketball game and Stephen sat, cheering in the IZZONE.  MSU barely beat Penn State--barely.

Karen posted this on Face Book.

Guess who's 21? Happy golden birthday golden boy! —

 with Stephen Rivard at Michigan State University.

I commented back and asked her what her excuse was for drinking a beer--"you're not 21."
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Dar came over last night.  She drove in and came in before she went home.  Semi hysterical, but more tired than anything.  I actually felt really sorry for her.  

She spent ten hours, registering her youngest son into an alcohol, drug rehab place.  I think he finally hit rock bottom, because he went in voluntarily.  He was drinking a gallon of Vodka a day!  How can you drink that much liquid--let alone alcohol?

His blood alcohol level was at 3.  When it gets to 4, I guess there is a great possibility you will die.  It's what caused his first heart attack, a year ago.

He is in a hospital for two weeks--where they give him alcohol, but taper off.  If he quit cold turkey, that could send him into cardiac arrest.

Then he will go to the rehab place for three or four months and then...he will go to live in a half-way house for a year.

She seems more relieved, than anything else.  She stopped enabling him about four months ago.  No one in the family will help him anymore--which is kind of what you have to do with people like that.  At Thanksgiving time, he had visited her brother and after he left, her brother found that an envelope he had with $600.00 cash in his desk drawer, was gone.

Her son confessed today that he stole it and used it to buy a "professional girl" for an all nighter.  He said it was a waste of money because he was so drunk he couldn't have sex so he and the girl sat up and watched TV and he fell asleep on her shoulder.  (I'll bet the girl wished she had more customers like that)!

Hopefully this time, it will work.  He has never tried total rehab before--only tried AA meetings and they did no good.

I also went up to Pearl's and got on the phone with the bank customer service and fixed it all nice and new so she can get in to check the balance in her checking account.  She was in a panic, because they get their SS today and she ALWAYS has to check and make sure the money was deposited.  

That's something I have never worried about.  I guess I just assume my SS will be in the bank when it is supposed to be in the bank.  I asked her if in 15 years it ever happened that they didn't get their money on time and she said "No."

So I wondered why she thought she has to check it out every month.  Who knows?

When I first arrived there, she and Merle were having a "discussion" about her latest on-line purchases.  So I just headed to the back bedroom where the computer is and stayed out of their way.

She's so nervous of how they are going to get along if Merle doesn't work this summer and/or doesn't get unemployment.  Instead of socking some money away, she just keeps on buying things she sees on TV or in a catalog.

I don't know and she and I have had "the talk" about her shopping, so...just like with her health--I ain't chasing those monkey's anymore.

Where Does The Time Go?

We got about 2 inches of snow during this night and this morning.  Pretty--it doesn't bother me, I like snow.  Merle quickly dispatched what snow there was on my driveway.

Here it is, 10 days until the end of January or 21 days into the new year.  Where does the time go?  How does it go by so fast.  It is all relative, isn't it?  When we are little, a year seems like such a long time--we don't even think about it, we aren't concerned with time at all.  Except, it seems a really long time between birthday presents and Christmas presents.

Even when I was married and having babies every year, it seemed time went as it was supposed to.  It didn't start flying by until the kids started graduating and leaving home--then I'd look back and wonder at how fast the years had gone by and that my kids, didn't seem old enough for all that was going on in their lives.

Now of course, the only thing that makes time drag is when something bad has happened.  It takes forever, to make it through the grief of losing someone we love.  It feels like we are in the dentist chair or the hospital for ages--when it might only be hours or a few days.  It feels to me, right now, that Jennifer has been angry with me for ten years, but it's only two years.

Then, I look at my Grand Babes and it all hits me--time has really flown by!  

This precious, funny, lovely Christian girl flew out early this morning to Guatemala.  She will be gone on a mission for three months.  Helping to build homes, create vegetable gardens, put in fresh water wells and teaching little children and helping in a medical clinic.

  Off she goes into her life and all Grandma has to worry about is: planes falling from the sky--hurricanes--earthquakes--kidnappers--rapists--snakes--typhoid--ebola and cholera!
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Today, her older brother turns 21.  He so wanted to grow taller than Grandma.  He was a chubby little kid all his life and then, suddenly at 15, he told his Mom, "I'm only going to eat when I'm hungry. I'm not going to eat snacks and stuff just because I'm bored."  By sixteen, he was lean and taller than Grandma and now, he's 6'4" and a pre-med student at Michigan State.

What do I worry about with this young man?  Not a darn thing!!!

Karen and Mark have instilled in their kids such strong Christian values.  Showed them how to always help people, by taking them to the Rescue Mission every Thanksgiving to feed people, ever since the kids were four years old.  By going into Detroit inner city and cleaning up junk filled vacant lots, every summer for the last four years.  By letting them explore and take risks.

I am truly blessed with those five Grand Babes, but boy oh boy, they sure make the swift passage of time--IN MY FACE!!!

Icy

It misted during the night, so the street out in front is a glaze with ice ruts.  We all thought this street would be clear all winter, considering the fact that the manager's parents live across the way--not so!  Just a little dab of salt would have helped tremendously.  It did get up 30 today.

At 12:45, who know who walked in my door.  

"Oh--I just remembered, you watch your program this time of day, don't you?"

"Yeah--it comes on at one."

"Well, I just had to get out of the house!"

Now usually I say, "that's okay," and I turn the TV off (because she has done this several times before).  Well, today, I was not in the mood, so I just muted the TV, as she took off her coat, lit up her cigarette and proceeded to tell me all about HER life.

At one, I clicked on my channel and un-muted the TV.  She got up and left.  and..........

I have felt guilty all the rest of the day.  It was so impolite of me and it was not at all nice!
====================

At two, I slipped and slide up to Pearl's to see if I could fix the mess on her computer.  She DID call the bank, and wrote down what all they told her to do, but, "I still can't get into my bank accounts."

I followed her instructions she had written down and that, of course, got me no where.  The bank was closed today, so tomorrow, I am going back and I AM GOING to be the one who calls the customer service and talks to the tech.

Merle wasn't home so Pearl and I had a chance for a long, heart-to-heart.  I have been wanting too, but afraid I would make her mad, but decided..today was a good time when he wasn't there.

"How's your new arthritis medicine doing?"  I asked.

"It started out helping, but now, it's not any better than the other one I was taking."

"How many pills do you take now?"

"Only three.  Twice a day. Celebrex, Tramadol and Advil."

"Gosh!  You are healthy as a horse!  No blood pressure medicine.  No cholesterol medicine.  Wow!"

"I'm not at all healthy!  I can hardly walk.  I will be in a wheel chair come spring!"

"Oh.  Are you looking forward to that?"

"Looking forward....what do you mean.  Why would I look forward to something like that?"

"Well, you keep saying that, like you are anticipating it and you aren't doing anything to keep from ending up there, so I just wondered.  Apparently you've made up your mind."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"Physical therapy."

"That probably would hurt."

"At first...it might, but in the long run--maybe six weeks, you wouldn't hurt as much.  The more you use those muscles and joints, the less they are going to hurt.  All you do is sit in your chair all day.  You've heard the old phrase, 'Use it or lose it'?  The less you use your joints, the more apt they are to freeze up and then you won't be able to use them at all."

"I don't just sit in this chair all day!  I get up and cook and do laundry and walk around the house."

"Do you go up and down stairs?"

"Look around.  You see any stairs?"

"I'm just telling you Pearl, because I am worried about you.  You aren't that old and yet...you've given up.  You think Merle is going to like having to take care of you?  He's not really that type of man, I don't think.  What if he were to die.  Are you going to a nursing home because you can't walk?"

"I know.  You've told me I should do therapy, but..........."

"Just ask Doc John.  He will get you a referral to a really good place.  You could go up to the hospital, I hear they have a good physical therapy office.  It's only half a mile away.  Now is the perfect time.  Go the rest of the winter and when spring comes, you will be able to get outside and exercise."

"Oh...I hate to exercise!"

"I'm not talking about going to a gym.  I'm talking about walking.  Walking is the best exercise---especially for people our age.  Start out walking twenty steps and then turn and go back home.  The next day, you walk twenty-two steps and turn around.  Every day, you add another step or two and pretty soon, you can walk down to the lake.  That's how I got my strength back after my surgery.  Remember?  I walked up here--fifty steps.  The next day you saw me go passed, fifty-five steps and then turn and come back to visit you."

"Yeah and in a month, you would walk so far that I kept looking out the window to see what was taking you so long to come back."

"I know you can't walk outside right now...it is way too slippery, but...physical therapy and then this spring....who knows."

"Yeah...I guess, but I need to lose weight first."

"You aren't going to lose weight sitting in this house all winter!"

"I might...a little."

"Physical therapy would also help you lose weight."

"Oh...I don't know."
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There are people that don't want to help themselves and there is not a dang thing you can do to help them.

I'm done.  

When the wheel chair arrives she can then say, "See, I told you so.  I was right."

  

I Love Monday's

Gray and colder

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I'm wondering.  Am I spelling "Gray" wrong?  I have noticed that most people, stories, writer's spell it "Grey".  Hm-mm.

I had a pleasant surprise this morning.  Not a big deal to anyone else, but a real accomplishment for me.  I wasn't paying any attention to getting dressed.  Buddy was sitting on the bed and I was standing and talking to him.  I pulled on my unders, one leg at a time and then my jeans and it occurred to me;  "I'M STANDING AND GETTING DRESSED!"

I usually sit on the edge of the bed to get dressed because, for many years I have not been able to balance on one leg to pull on my pants.  I wasn't even leaning against the bed or the closet door.  I was just standing there, pulled my knee up to stick my leg into my pants and then the other leg.

I whooped and scared Buddy.

You can be sure that I will now do this every day and take them off the same way every night!

YOWSER!!!
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I have a Dear Blogger Friend, Balisha, who is very sick with pneumonia.  I check her blog each day and when she doesn't post, it scares me.  A lot of my blog buddies post every day and when they don't, I so wish I had their phone number so I could call and see if they are all right.

This Blogosphere is a weird thing.  I get involved in lives of people I have never met.  I worry about them and their families, as much as I worry about my "real-life" friends.  

I can just imagine...someday there might be a big place--kind of like a garden--where we will stay for a couple of days, on our way to Heaven.  We will each have a cartoon-like bubble over our heads with the title of our blogs.  We will recognize blogs that we read and we will run to each other, hugging and laughing and jumping up and down, we will be so happy.

Maybe it will be on the Rainbow Bridge and our pets will be there too and we will say to each other, "Oh, there's Max.  I remember you blogging about him!"

Maybe?
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Oh, look at what I just found:
Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word, and both are used throughout the English-speaking world. But gray is more common in American English, while grey is more common in all the other main varieties of English. In the U.K., for instance, grey appears about twenty times for every instance of gray. In the U.S. the ratio is reversed.

Lovely Day

I had lunch with my Byron School Gal Pals today.  It was nice.  No one dominated the conversation.  We ate at a new place, and the food was really good.  I had a small pizza, with leftovers for lunch tomorrow.  I was missing my best friend Beth, however.  We worried about her.  She's having a hard time, after her son's death.  Who wouldn't?

After lunch, I stopped in to visit my little sis for a few minutes.  Surprise!  She had a lunch today and invited her Byron School Gal Pals.  I was so glad to see them!  Being 13 years older than them, I still think of them as kids.  They were such adorable little girls when they were five and they still are.  They chattered like they did when they were little.  I was using every one's phone or camera to take a group shot of them and I had to reprimand them to "Please be quiet girls.  Now everyone say cheese."
Such fun.  I didn't want to intrude with their remembrances and walk down memory lane, so I only stayed a half hour and came home.

We had a beautiful sunset tonight.

If that new house wasn't in the way,

I would have a nice view of the sunset through the woods!

  

I had a new baby squirrel at the feeder today.  Baby Boo.

I also started a new tradition that I forgot to tell you about.  On New Year's Day, your are supposed to lay a dime on the ledge over your front door.  That keeps money from going out of your house.  My door ledge isn't wide enough, so I just taped it over the door.

Now--let's talk pillows!  I have SEVEN sleeping pillows and...none of them are comfortable to sleep on.  I was going to sleep on Fred's pillow, after he departed, but it was an old, standard sized down pillow and quite in need of cleaning and re-stuffing or something.  He had it ever since he was 20, so it was a bit..............well, I got rid of it.

I had a Contour Pillow, that had always helped my neck, but it was going a bit over the edge, the foam had turned a darkish brown and the neck "ridge" was a bit flat.  So, I got rid of it.

I decided to buy a really good pillow, so I got sucked in to the AS SEEN ON TV, My Pillow--for $70 bucks.  I had to fill our a questionnaire to get just the right fit.  My height, the fact that I am a side sleeper, queen size.

I never could get that thing to mold right for my neck and head

The instructions that came with it, said to wash and dry it after three months time.  I did.  It got so heavy with water that my washer could not spin it out.  So I rinsed it in the shower, squeezed as much water as I could out of it and put it out, on the porch, in the sun.  Three days later, it was all wonky and the case was covered in brown spots.  I took it from the porch and threw it over the railing into the garbage pail.

Back to an old king-sized pillow I had BEFORE I got the contour one that I liked and had thrown out!

One day, while at Art Van's, they had pillows on sale.  They had me lay down on a bed and "fitted" the pillow to my head and said it was perfect.  So, I purchased it--on sale, only $49.95!

It had an indentation where your head rested and neck support,

and a little embroidered heart that says, "I love my pillow:

So Sweet.

It was made from some kind of inner material that keeps it cool.  It got so cold on my head and neck that I'd wake up.

Do you know that you cannot return a pillow?  Even if you only used it one night?  Once it is out of the plastic wrap, it's yours!  It resides in the top of my bedroom closet with the rest of the pillows.

Last summer, Karen told me of a set of pillows she bought for them at Costco's.  "They are perfect for side sleepers.  We really like them."  So, she picked up a pair of queen size ones for me.

I thought we had hit pay dirt.  $30.00 for the pair.  (Why can't you buy good $10.00 pillows anymore?)

I was pretty comfortable sleeping on them, but my neck and back hurt every morning.  By November, they were not very supportive and rather squishy.

SO--I went on-line and found the same Contour Pillow I had purchased 15 years ago.  Another AS SEEN ON TV--queen size.  Perfect--with the roll to support my head, the indentation where my head lays and support when I sleep on my side.

Another "World's Most Comfortable Pillow"

It felt really hard and stiff, but it did support my neck.  My neck felt better in the mornings, but my shoulders ached, as did my back.

So...here we are.  All pillows reside on the shelf in the bedroom closet AND I am sleeping on an older one that is mushy and I just wad that dang thing up, put a ridge under my neck and squash the rest of it up to put my cheek on when I sleep on my side.

Perhaps I should go back to sleep with no pillow--like I did in my 40's?

Any pillow advice would be appreciated!!!

January 15th

Three years ago today--it was a Saturday.
Fred was going to celebrate his 70th birthday.
We looked over a couple of places and chose one in Brighton, to have his birthday party.

I made the invitations and decided to mail them out on January 2nd--a Monday.

His family from Florida was going to make the trip. His Michigan kids and all my family too.

I had checked with everyone to see if they could make it and had mailed out "Save the Date" cards in mid-November.

The room we rented at the restaurant had a fireplace.  White linens on the tables, a really nice place.

What no one knew was, they were in for a surprise.

Fred had asked his minister friend in Ann Arbor if he could also attend the party.  We were going to be married.  All our family members would be in one place at one time--perfect.

So I wouldn't forget, I put the invitations in the mail box early New Year's morning.  Shortly after I came back into the house, the phone rang.  It was Fred asking if I could come down to the hospital as soon as possible.  There were things he wanted me to bring from home.  

He wanted his own Bi-Pap machine that he used every night, because he couldn't sleep with the hospital one.  He wanted his cough drops, a new razor blade, his slippers and his sweater.  He said he thought he might be coming home on the third.

Well, you know what happened 90 minutes later on that New Year's day--2012.

When I got home that afternoon, I remembered to pull the invitations out of the mail box and as I walked into my home, I threw them in the garbage pail.  

The next day, before I went to the funeral home to make the arrangements, I called the restaurant and canceled the room for the party.

Oh, what might have been.

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.  I will see you in a little while.


He played softball 3 nights a week

Shortly after he moved in.

May 21, 2005            

His two daughters who live in Florida, their hubs and his three grandchildren

His two Michigan kids                                                                                 

His Michigan daughter and his grandson                  

June 21, 2005
Our engagement photo
Yes, we had a ballgame and afterwards, left for Wisconsin to visit his Mother.

His 15 year old Black Water Spaniel, Tootz.

 Christmas, 2011--a week before he died

One day, we will be near each other again--forever.