The Chronicles of Nani - First Story Time Part 2

And so the story continues… OK, so my brother is expecting twins and they found out a week after I got my new car. So once again the 1994 family glory returned to him. It took me 16 years (yeah I say 15 in the video, but the correct number of years was 16 because our "teen sitting" trip was March 2011) but I did get even for stealing the thunder of my new car. LOL 

I adored those twins from the moment they were born and we’ve done so many things together their whole lives, but that weekend in 2011 was just awesome on many levels!

The Hodge Podge That Made Nani Cry

After the Spring Break hiatus, Joyce at From This Side of the Pond is back with Wednesday Hodge Podge questions!

1. Share one fun thing you did last week, while the Hodgepodge was on 'spring break'.

David and I went to Indiana Friday to photograph some trains. I just wanted to get out of the house for a day. The colors weren’t the pretty spring greens get, but the trip was nice and the company great as it always is!


2. April 10th is National Sibling Day...do you have siblings, and if so are you close? Share a favorite story featuring one or all of your siblings. If you don't have siblings, did you ever wish you did?

I consider John, Scott and Kelly the brothers and sister I found later in my life and they are as much my immediate family as David is; relatives I wasn’t born into, but loved into later.

But actual blood relative siblings, I have one. Dave is my baby brother, 14 months younger. We were close when we were kids, but I don’t think as close as adults.

Picture from my wedding reception, July 2009

When we were kids, the next door neighbor kid was a tyrant. He and Dave were 4, I was 5. He had a whip that he smacked the tires on Dave tricycle with! It made Dave cry and “nobody make my baby brother cry but me” so I punched him in the stomach and made him cry. He never made Dave cry again. I guess I do still try to make sure no one’s whipping his tires.


3. Is it important to you to 'buy American'? Why or why not? How much of an effort do you make to 'buy American'? If you're not American, insert your own country in the blank.

I don’t think it’s really so much an issue anymore. In a global economy so little is actually made in one place and I’m sorry to say we’ve become a county that comes up with ideas and sends them someplace else to be made with cheaper labor. It would be great to say “Buy American,” but what exactly is buying American? Is it buying American ideas assembled in Mexico? Is it buying from the small business selling items made in China? A local restaurant with recipes from Italy and cheese from Canada or handcrafted items made with fabric from India? I believe in supporting local businesses when I can and when it doesn’t break my budget, but I don’t think “Buy American” means what it once did.


4. Besides The Bible, what book has impacted your spirituality in some way?

I have a great collection of religious and spiritual books from many different beliefs. I think seeing what they all have in common and the many ways they are different has had a greater spiritual influence on me than any one book.


5. April showers bring May flowers or so the saying goes. Do you find rainy days calming or depressing? When were you last caught in a rainstorm? What's blooming in your neck of the woods today?

We had a thunder shower this morning and some momentary big fat loud rain drops. Aside from being more physically challenged with the change in barometric pressure, I find rain and thunder showers to be exciting and even a little sexy. Tornado sirens, however, are a little unnerving and sometimes scary.

Right now we have the last of the crocuses and beginning of the narcissus/daffodils. There are some trees just beginning to bud.


6. What's your favorite yellow food?

I like a banana every morning and various kinds of mustards are my favorite condiments.


7. April is National Poetry Month...what's a poem that holds special meaning for you, and why is it special?

Okay, I’m going to go out on a soul-bearing emotional limb here. I am not a fan of poetry; I write funny poems. My Mom wrote serious poems and I have a folder full of them. Still the poems with special meaning to me are the two serious one I wrote after she died. This is the one that I cried like crazy while writing and it still makes me tear up ten years later.

Always

It happened one warm July morning,
There was chaos and peace,
There was fear and anticipation,
You and I began.

I was your miracle. You were my everything.

You taught and I learned.
Then I taught and you learned.
We both grew
and that bond of love strengthened.

I was your work in progress. You were my foundation.

You held so many doors open.
I sampled it all and dared to fly.
You stayed far enough away to give independence
yet close enough to catch me every time I fell.

I was your adventurer. You were my safety net.

You led me back onto the better path.
You showed me ways to channel my anger.
When few had that option, I could tell you the truth.
I ran to you, not from you.

I was your major project. You were my guidance counselor.

I moved on earning awards and degrees.
I showed you first.
You beamed but expected no less.
You boasted to anyone who’d listen and challenged me to do more.

I was your pride. You were my strength.

The roles reversed and I encouraged you to push a little more.
You never took advantage, though you knew you could.
The bond of respect and trust was unbreakable.
The love was unconditional.

I was always your precious child. You were my mother.



8. Insert your own random thought here.

Poetry, shmoetry. I told you it still makes me cry. I don’t know if it gives anybody else the mental pictures or emotional impression it does me and maybe that’s why I really don’t get poetry; it’s personal. As much as I love Shakespeare I'm not into his sonnets. But, anyway, thanks for indulging me.

To make sure you leave on a happy note. My blubbering is not because she’s gone. They are happy tears because she was so much to my world for 37 years.


And for a smile, I put this on my Facebook page last week with this caption:

Where are the other 174 heads???

Monday Mug Shot – Big Mac

It’s a chilly but sunny day today! It’s our Sunday but David is out railfanning with Mike. I was invited too, but I’d taken a scrap day on Saturday and got four pages done followed by groceries yesterday morning before David and I went out and did some local railfanning that included getting the Seneca County Bicentennial Barn. So, I’d pretty much had a traditional weekend and 2 days away from the White Tornado project. We’re considering a possible vacation and Kelly and Dave are coming back in June, so I have, at least in my own mind, a deadline. I don’t want to go out of town or have guests over until at least the organizing part of the project is done. I have 2 months and there will still be normal life happening. I need to step up the progress!

So how about a cup of coffee? How about a coffee cup?

Monday Mug Shot

Mackinac Bridge

Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, Michigan

I figure since I’m from Michigan it shouldn’t be a great shock that I’ve been to and over the bridge that connects the Lower and Upper Peninsulas of the state. When my brother and I were very young and my parents were just starting out as a family, we were avid campers. Camping was a fun vacation, a good learning experience and affordable for a couple just starting out with very young children. We very often went to a number of Upper Michigan State Parks; Indian Lake was a family favorite. We’d leave either Friday night or Saturday morning and be gone for the week, sometimes a long weekend.

When we got to the Mackinac Bridge, even if it was at night and we were sleeping, our parents would wake us up so we could see the bridge. I know they did that, but honestly don’t really remember it. I still appreciated that they did it. That’s what gave me the idea of quelling Tori and Rina whining about going to bed when they stayed with us when they were little. I remembered that I didn’t want to miss anything when I whined about going to bed too. I also remembered how much I appreciated being awakened for the bridge, even if I fell back asleep and didn’t remember it. So after an especially rough night trying to get them to bed, I woke them up at midnight to see a cartoon debut on Cartoon Network. They thanked me but went back to sleep. They didn’t remember any of it in the morning when we talked about it, but never gave me any trouble again about going to bed because they knew I’d wake them up if there was something really cool. Maybe that was my parents’ thinking with waking us up to cross the bridge?

The amazing thing about crossing the bridge during the day is Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecilia was always, and I mean always, on the radio when we crossed. Truly amazing! Mom and Pop liked the song and Dave and I liked the song and it didn’t matter how amazing a coincidence it was. We just sang and enjoyed crossing the bridge. Years later Mom confessed that she had a very old school battery-operated cassette player in the car when we camped.

Pop worked in construction, so our camping trips were usually in the spring or fall, when the workday was shorter and the workload was either still building for the season or waning. Cool thing was, especially during the week, we were usually one of only a few campsites that were full. This is how I fell in love with squirrels. At five or six years old, when there was no one else in the campground, I was allowed to walk all the way 2 campsites away with my bag of peanuts in the shell to sit at a picnic table and feed the squirrels. I was told to never touch the squirrels, throw the peanuts out for them on the ground. That worked at first, but as I got older, I started putting the peanuts on the table. The squirrels were slightly tamed by fall with a campground full of humans leaving them scraps all summer. One time I bravely put the peanut in my open hand and the squirrel on the table with me took it from my hand and cracked it open on the table to eat it. Most of the time, they took the peanuts to store away for winter. To this day, I love squirrels and they remind me of that moment when I was a child that I felt very special because the squirrel trusted me.


I love how sometimes writing takes on a my mind of its own. When I started writing today’s Mug Shot I thought I was going to write about the first time I drove on the Big Mac, as the Mackinac Bridge is known. Maybe next week I can repost the mug with a different story. So many of my mugs are reminders of multiple stories.

I’ll be back at my next break with Meet Me On Monday!

Wednesday Hodge Podge

1.. The NFL playoffs were held this past weekend and this year's Superbowl lineup will feature The New York Giants versus The New England Patriots. How do you define 'patriot'?

Super Bowl Champions? :)


A patriot is one who thinks of country before self. Today, there are more football patriots than American patriots.




2. What's something in your life right now that feels like a 'giant'?

The reorganizing project in the house, which is just a nail and hammer away from remodeling. I’m making decent progress though. Tomorrow is assemble the first shelving unit day!



3. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think back to being 18?

Voting! I turned 18 in a Presidential election year and I was pretty excited about voting. My birthday was a Sunday, but I was at the Secretary of State office on Monday to register.

Many presidents for whom I didn’t vote lived in the White House before a candidate for whom I voted did, but I finally felt like I had a right to complain about it!



4. Coconut-mashed potatoes-vanilla ice cream-mayonnaise...which white food would be the hardest to give up?

That one’s easy. Vanilla ice cream; there would be no Baseball Nut ice cream without it!






5. Describe an incident or a day you remember as the coldest you've ever experienced?

Once the temperature drops below70 outside, I’m pretty much cold all the time, unless I’m in bed or someplace with heat. Right now I’m wearing the thick fleece robe I always wear over jammas or clothes at home and my furry house slippers!


The coldest I remember in my mind was ice fishing when I was little and I think that’s where my intense dislike for cold came from. It was a family adventure when I was 6 or 7 years old. It was cold enough that the ice on the lake was thick enough to drive on to get to the shanty for fishing. Everyone was in snowmobile suits with ski masks and gloves, much layered warm clothing. They sent my brother and me outside to play. I guess it’s because we were restless in the shanty. I remember being so cold that I was sitting next to the ice shanty balled up and rocking back and forth praying. You see, it was supposed to be fun and I felt bad that I wasn’t having fun at all. In fact, I was praying that God wouldn’t let me die from the cold because it would make my parents feel bad if I died. I was a kid. That is what I remember thinking, that it would hurt their feelings if I died.

That memory has never left me and I don’t think I’ve ever perceived I was that cold. It was the most terrified I remember being of the cold.



6. You're hosting a brunch...what's your favorite dish to prepare and serve?

I could say “waffles” because David cooks the waffles. :)


Seriously, if I’m hosting the brunch, my specialty is cinnamon chip pancakes.



7. How do you combat negative thinking?

I write in my journal about it. Sometimes it takes a few pages, or even a couple days of writing if something is really bugging me, but I usually find the answer to getting over my troubles.



8. Insert your own random thought here.

I made stuffed pepper soup Sunday with a recipe I found online. I did a half batch, which was 3 servings. I had the last one for lunch yesterday and I don’t know what I’m gonna do now that it’s gone! Oh my, it was HEAVEN! I need to make a huge pot of it to freeze!

Click photo for recipe

Come join Joyce at From This Side of The Pond and share your Hodge Podge of answers!

The Morning After

It was raining this morning, so maybe that had something to do with it, but, oh was I sore! I was wondering if maybe I’d overdone it a bit yesterday, but right now I’m feeling pretty good. So maybe it was more the rain than anything this morning. My hands are still a little clumbsy though. You should see what this looked like before I typo and spell checked it! In looking ahead to a straight week of baking coming up before Christmas, I think I’ll slow down a little and stretch it out. I can do the Krisp Kringles and frosted cookies a little earlier because they keep well.

This is from the Davinities Test Kitchen. I am SO pleased! They are almond sugar cookies with sprinkled almond buttercream. The distinction here is that it’s not cream made with almond butter, but butter cream splashed with almond milk. That’s a note to me because I didn’t write it down yet. The almond sugar cookies are a new Davinities recipe and I might add them to this year’s lineup; that’s how pleased I am with my new recipe!

Every now and then, a recipe just sounds so good that you have to buy that one ingredient you’ve never used, even though it comes in a larger bag and the recipe only calls for a cup. That was me with Marie’s recipe for the French Macarons. Also, just the cookie part without the French cream filling is very low in Weight Watchers points! But that left me with a large bag of almond flour left, so almonds have been on my cooking creative brain lately. The macarons were very good, but I’ll probably make them again after I can afford a standing mixer! In this recipe, the almond sugar cookie dough is made into small balls, rolled in almond flour and placed on parchment to be flattened lightly with the bottom of a glass. Now I just need to let the frosting set and I can package a sample up this evening to add to the boxes.

That’s the formal tree in my contemporary living room that I mentioned yesterday. The little coffee bar was to the left, next to the desk. Oh, I was wrong about the burgundy dress on the angel. I have a gold-haired light-up angel ornament with a burgundy dress. The gold angel on top is the one on top of our tree at home now. This was in 2001 or 02. There wasn’t a date on the photo and I don’t really have time to do an album search to get the year, but it was after I fell in love with a lace ornament with pink and light blue ribbon, so I got 6 light blue glass balls to make it work!

While I’m showing off that tree, let’s visit the other extreme.

This photo is Dave and me in the finished basement of our home in Southgate Michigan, in 1973. We’re making Christmas ornaments! Mom did a craft with us at Christmastime every year. In 1973, when Dave was six and I was seven, Mom made homemade uncolored play dough, rolled it out and used Christmas cookie cutters on it. Then she baked them with ornament hooks in them. They came out hard and once they cooled, we went to town with the paint! Mom painted with us and did a camel with a fringed blanket on it and eyes and everything. It was gorgeous and it frustrated me almost beyond what my 7-year-old ego could stand! I tried, I really tried, to paint my ornaments in beautiful detail like Mom’s camel. She’d done a pretty angel and some balls, but the camel is what will always stick out in my mind as a skill I couldn’t quite accomplish. Never mind that Mom painted ceramics as a hobby and I was 7 years old at the time. I just wanted my ornaments to look as nice as that darned camel.

It is a great memory. I know now that my Mom was just very talented with paint! I can’t paint that well now, either. A generation later, I did a Christmas craft every year with Tori and Rina when they were little. We made felt and sequin ornaments, glitter drawing on satin balls and we even did play dough ornaments one year. There were stars and bells and circles, but, there were NO CAMELS! We used to put the name and date of the artist on the back, so if the ornaments survived, we’d know when each craft was done. I was almost in tears in 2008. The girls got me an ornament for Christmas, a glass baseball with my name on the front. They made sure I looked on the back. They had the year put on the back, “because we always dated the special ones.”

And now it’s time to clean up the kitchen, put together my grocery list and wrap up the last of the packages for the mail tomorrow.

Happy Naniday!

Perfect black forest birthday cake, huh?

Original photo and recipe at Ahaar Pleasure and Sustenance

Happy Naniday, everyone! I am officially 45 today. My Twitter message said that I was 45, even to a newspaper reporter. Yes, that’s directed at that guy who shares the same last name and address as me. For the last 48 days we’ve been calling ourselves the same age, but he has insisted I was 44. I think when I’m 48 days away from 45, I‘m much more 45 than 44, My always cheery honey, reminds me that if I dropped the day before my birthday, the obituary would call me 44, not 45. Okay, so I made it to 45. Told him so! :P

Last weekend David and I kicked off Nanifest XLV with baseball in the Motherland, specifically in Lansing. I hadn’t been to a Lugnuts game in a few years and when I lived in Michigan I went to a couple Nuts games every year, so I really missed seeing them. I’d been to a couple Lugnuts games on my birthday or during the Festival. We kinda copied the first Saturday off Nanifest XL, stopping in Hell on the way to Lansing. The ice cream in Hell is great! This year, also just like when I turned 40, David bought me a Hell T-shirt! The new one is a Screams Ice Cream shirt! It’s cool! The lettering is in glow-in-the-dark green on dark purple! The shirt is a “goal shirt” right now. It is a size smaller than I usually wear and just a bit snug. By Halloween, it’ll fit great!

After ice cream at Screams, I had chocolate fudge wrapped around cherry in a waffle cone, black forest cone, baby, we went to the Lugnuts game. Finally the streak of losing home teams is over! The Lugnuts won 3-1!! I’m feeling better about upcoming games at home in Toledo and in Cincinnati to see my Reds! The Lugnuts celebrated my festival with fireworks after the game. I love birthday fireworks!

On Sunday, we took our buy one get one coupon to Baskin Robbins with us after dinner. I had two scoops of Baseball Nut in a waffle cone. I like waffle cones because they hold the ice cream all in the cone instead of on it, better for avoiding dropped ice cream! I’m using the Weight Watchers Points Plus system to help with my diet goals and the coolest part of the program is how real it is. There are weekly extra points that allow for an occasional treat on plan. With the extra points I was able to have ice cream twice. Okay, that uses almost all the points, but hey, it still working, slowly and safely! Best news is the weekly points reset on Thursdays, just in time for the Festival weekends!


Last night, David took me out to Mancy’s Bluewater Grille. I had the Pretzel Crusted Flounder, a dish with Nani written all over it! We shared a flourless chocolate cake for dessert, truly decadent! Tonight the Mud Hens are having fireworks to celebrate the actual day again, just like last year and we’ll be there. I know the Reds really wanted me to come to Cincinnati tonight, they’re doing fireworks set to music from the 60s, the decade in which I was born, but my Dad is doing a barbecue for me tomorrow in the Motherland and Tori and Rina will be there too. So, my Reds game will be later in August. I still love the Reds for hosting a Naniday party!

After dinner at Pop’s tomorrow, which will be chicken kebabs and teriyaki pork with grilled veggies, oh my mouth is watering already, Pop is the king of the grill, Tori and Rina are coming home with us. They’re having lunch with me and Sheri Sunday at our favorite Toledo restaurant, Ya Halla. Sheri likes Middle Eastern food and this will be her first time at Ya Halla. Then we plan to visit Cold Stone to use my birthday coupon for dessert. Sunday evening, the girls and I will meet Dave and Laura for dinner and they’ll take the girls home. Both of the girls have their drivers licenses now, so I’m thinking I can get by with only having to drive home from dinner this weekend!

I’m trying to set up some travel to the Motherland for next week. Maybe the Farmers Market with Scotty and then lunch with Heather H and Tracy. Still working on that plan.

I’ve had some interest in doing the Photo Walk in Frankenmuth in October, so maybe I’ll gather a modest group, maybe I’ll even sign up for it being an official Photo Walk. Edna, when I posted about Photo Walk, I SO had you in mind too! Anyone reading can either form an informal or solo Photo Walk or check that website out to see if there’s an organized one in your area. It’s definitely something to which I’m looking forward!!

My birthday wish is that I hope everyone has a great Naniday, do something that makes you happy and eat ice cream!

Ah, Summer!

I love these bright sunny days! Yes, as much as I complain about the snow and cold, I revel in the glory of the summer sun! I’m a Leo after all. We lions have an identifying connection with the sun. Okay, but Lions are also cats, which explains why I dislike the humidity. Too wet! I’d still rather sweat than shiver.

I had a great weekend in Indy! David and I went to join my brother and fam to see the last Harry Potter movie. Tori, Rina and I officially saw every one of the Harry Potter movies together in the opening week. I cried at a few points in the movie, during deaths and the mushy parts, but I successfully did not cry after the movie because they were done, like I feared I might. Dave, my brother, replied to my facebook post that I was sad to see it end with a “don’t be sad, it’s a happy thing because you’re visiting us!” I truly appreciate the fact that baby bro was excited to see me, but he’s not seeing it from my perspective. Ten years later, those almost 7-year old girls that Mom and I took to see the first movie are almost adult witches themselves! They’ve grown up right with Harry, Ron and Hermione! The movies being complete means that we won’t be going to another one, a major event is gone and that chapter of their childhoods is closed.

Rina and Tori at breakfast Sunday

Rina and Tori at 7

Okay, truth is, they’ll be off to college by the end of next summer. It would be getting tougher to get all three of us together for opening week of a movie. Good thing Warner Brothers thought about that and planned accordingly!

Thinking ahead, Nanifest XLV starts this Friday! The girls will be in Michigan on their summer Grandparents Tour and Pop is hosting a birthday dinner for me on the mid-festival Saturday, rather than on actual Naniday, to be sure David can go and the girls are going to come back with us for two reasons. First reason is I’ll take them to the meeting point with their Dad Sunday evening and I’ll get to see Dave and Laura during the festival. The #1 and biggest reason is we’ll go to Ya Halla for lunch on Sunday! Ya Halla is our favorite Toledo Middle Eastern restaurant. I don’t go there alone because it’s a little bit of a drive, north side of town and we’re on the south side, and usually if I go to a restaurant alone, it’s something simple. We have a Cracker Barrel right across from the place I go for physical therapy and I have occasionally made it my lunch stop. So, Ya Halla is a “must go” when the girls visit.

Also for the festival, the Toledo Mud Hens are home and once again this year are having fireworks to celebrate Naniday. How can you say “no” when the home team is going to such lengths to celebrate for me? Hey, Naniday is a big enough deal to the Hens that they often have fireworks on my day even if I can’t make it!

K. Now I need to get ready or the rest of today, errands and a few more planning things for the upcoming weeks. Summer is almost half over! School starts up again next month!

--Summer-- Summer--Summer--Summer--Summer—

Show and Tell Thursday

Today is the brunch talk edition of my blog every day week. I have some fun or interesting notes and a couple scrapbook layout for show and tell today.

Baseball Tell

First off, not much baseball talk today because I feel “up” and that’s not because of yesterday’s baseball. My number one team in BOTH leagues was shut out yesterday. I know I have a fair share of Red Sox fans who follow The Chronicles, but there are only a few times that I’m not cheering for the Sox with you and well…

I was reminiscing yesterday about the intro/outro bits they had on the Tigers broadcasts for a while when I was a kid. It was the feisty cartoon Tiger growling at the beginning of the broadcast, ready for battle. At the end of the show you saw the tiger again biting a bat with the opposing teams logo when we won. He ripped it up, spraying splinters everywhere. I loved it when we played teams that could be otherwise represented too. For instance, when the Tiger grabbed the bat with the Orioles’ logo after a victory, you heard the growl and instead of splinters, orange feathers, very cool. When we lost, you’d see the sad tiger with a cold pack on his head and hear a whining meow, followed by a quieter “we’ll get ‘em next time” growl and a determined look. I loved those bumps! Yesterday, after an evening of fog and rain, my child brain saw that sad meowing tiger with the cold pack. I always took that “we’ll get 'em next time” to heart, still do. So, sorry Red Sox first fans, the man who shares the TV we watch it on included, today is OUR TURN! And arrrgh, mateys, the Pirates walk the plank too!

And that’s all I have to say about baseball today.



How about some show to go with all the tell? Here is a scrapbook layout I did. This page is an “ad” for the new album by The Feline Patch. David always refers to the shots of all three of our kids in the hall as their “rock band pose.” So, I ran with his idea and did one of the rockstar photos he took as an ad for their CD!

Credits: Cat in a Basket by Miss Edna and Suruha Freespirit

Featured Tracks:

What Part of “NO” Do You Understand?
Hiders From The Storm
Fun Mouse
Feline Groovy
War Kittens
Tuna The Page
House Cat Strut
When The Cats Go Marching In
Theme From Meow Mix
(remix, with more salmon)

It’s not our first collab piece. We’ve written a few sets of parody lyrics when waiting for trains too. David and I can come up with some fun stuff when we work together!


Oo! There’s another piece of way good news, to me anyway. I watch baseball and Degrassi on TV. Sometimes I watch some news, if there’s something I want to see instead of just read about, even though I’ll go back and read for better details later, but baseball and Degrassi are the only things I make an effort to watch on TV. There used to be another show and it’s been a number of years now since it’s show finale, Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Yeah, I have a strange thing about shows in high schools. Well, the network that carries Degrassi, Teen Nick, is going to debut Buffy on May 31! For the first week, it’ll be 2 shows a day, then it will be one a day in a regular time slot. That is just so cool!

Okay, maybe I’m too easy to please.

My Netrition order came in yesterday. Yay for having fat-free peanut butter in the house again! I also got a couple of meal replacement bars. I like those once in a while to replace the small meal of the day. A lunch bar and a large can of V8 is a full meal without feeling too stuffed if I’m not hungry. Promax lower sugar bars come in chocolate fudge and peanut butter chocolate and I bought one of each to try. The sample they threw in this time also happened to be a lower sugar Promax bar, the chocolate fudge. They are sweetened with Stevia and I think the Stevia tastes even less artificial than Splenda, and I love Splenda! I tried the chocolate fudge bar and instantly flew back to my childhood.

Mom used to buy “Food Sticks” as snack for us when my brother, Dave, and I were kids. We were astronaut nuts, all abuzz after the lunar landing and anything that the astronauts ate, you could get us to eat. We drank Tang and loved dehydrated ice cream, in fact, you can still get dehydrated ice cream at the Air Force Museum in Dayton and when I visit there, I always bring some home as souvenirs. Food Sticks were shaped like beef sticks, but instead of meat, they were vitamin fortified fudge. I don’t remember what flavors they were, but I do remember the chocolate and the peanut butter. The Promax lower sugar bars have the taste and texture of Food Sticks! YUM!!! I think in my next order I’m getting a whole box!

Okay, one more “show.”

This is the first page for our “wedding album.” I think I’m going to do our reception weekend and Patch 365 as a separate book in between the two 2009 books.

credits: Mr. and Mrs. – Red and Gold by Nibbles Skribbles

I’m a few folders behind on 2011, but keeping up well and I really need to get moving on the 2008 pages in my catch up, but this page fit well for a challenge at Ginger Scraps. It did put me in the mind that I really need to get some notes down for some of the folders that I don’t have a hand written notes for.

That’s it for Show and Tell day! Need more coffee!

A Little Bit of This – Spring 2011

Mom with Dave and me, Easter 1970

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Moms out there and to all of the Mom helpers. That photo is the one I have as my ID on Facebook right now. I saw a few people using their Mom’s photo as their profile photo for Mother's Day and I thought it was a neat idea for the holiday, so I used that one. It turns out that my photo was such a good idea that my brother snagged it for his profile photo. Now we look like twins, but as I posted on his page, we kinda look like twins in that photo! (But trust me, we really are 14 months apart!) It’s my Mom with my brother and me on Easter Sunday in 1970. I was almost 5 and Dave was 3-1/2. That’s a photo my Dad carried in his wallet for a long time. There is one that goes with it, Dad’s other wallet photo, of us with him on the same day. We were almost adults and we were still under 5 in Dad’s wallet. The staples in Mom’s wallet were a little more up-to-date. She always had the current school picture, then we got to be seniors forever, but the First Communion photos were always there too.

Today is the 8th Mother’s Day that I won’t be at a ball game with my Mom. “Take Mommy Out To The Ball Game” was our Mothers Day tradition. She loved carnations and that was one of the Mothers Day perks. Many ballparks give a carnation to every woman who comes to the game on Mother’s Day. Sometimes it was a Tigers game, sometimes a Minor League game. In 1996, the ball game was the day before when Heather and Tracy were with us in Philadelphia. We saw the Braves and Phillies after a rain delay the night before and the three of us treated Mom to lunch at Old Bookbinder’s before we left for the airport. When I wrote the tribute that was on her memorial website, I mentioned that she’d see Roberto Clemente, one of her heroes as a kid, play again at Heaven’s ballpark. For this year’s Mothers Day game, she’ll get to see Sparky Anderson manage one of the teams.


Speaking of Baseball…


A little tirade of questioning Dusty Baker - why, oh why, would he put Francisco Cordero in to pitch when they were only ONE run ahead in the ninth inning, I don’t care if they call him “closer," which by the way is the most OVERRATED position in baseball, Cordero is more accomplished at throwing a lead away when it really counts than he is at saving games. I listen to the commentators on Fox Sports talk about how closers seem to perform better with men on base. PLEASE! Any other reliever, we’d call that “not able to get the job done,” “Poor performance.” But for a closer, the ulcers for managers and fans are part of their, I don’t know, legend? YEESH! The first batter Cordero faced went yard and tied the game. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a tie does NOT close a game! Oh yeah, but he did close it in the ninth. The Cubs got another run in to beat, Cordero. It just sucks that the Reds and their fans have to take the hit for his inability to do his job. Yes, he has a bunch of saves, but when the game has been tough or the score has see-sawed or just if it’s not easy, Cordero is NOT the man you want on the mound in the ninth. I don’t care how much of a Reds ticket goes to pay his overpriced salary, I’d rather pay him to sit on the bench and record a win.

Okay, that rant ends. If you read it all, thank you for indulging me. It’s just that Cordero really irks me. Congratulations Cubbies on the victory, but we took it easy one you and gave you Cordero and his beach ball pitches in the ninth. You can thank us by not hitting today!

So after watching the sad ending to the Reds game, I tuned in to the Tigers game in the fourth inning. What better way to wipe my emotions clean of that nasty Cordero inning than Justin Verlander! He was phenomenal yesterday, the second no-hitter of his career and just inches shy of a perfect game! In the bottom of the eighth in Toronto, after facing and retiring 22 straight batters, he went to a full count and walked batter 23, then ended the eighth with a double play. So, he did only face 27 hitters, an almost perfect game!

Justin Verlander - 2nd career no-hitter yesterday!

It was very cool to watch the game. As David said when he got home yesterday, we usually only see the last batter or at most the last inning when a network games breaks into it as the no-hitter is completed. I loved watching the game and seeing the pitcher for one of my teams pitch the gem. Verlander is only the second Tiger in history to throw two no-nos and at 28 years old, he has time to do it again in his career. Can he do it? Could he throw five more and match Nolan Ryan’s record seven in his career? Yeah, no one can answer those questions yet, but it’s going to be exciting as a Tiger fan to find out!


School’s Out For Summer

Well, this semester was tough for me. Planning on the medical issues being much simpler, I took two classes. Even in the easier one, Web Imaging, which is basically Photoshop 5, I only got a B+. I say “only got a B” because it’s my first grade since returning to beef up my resume that wasn’t an A! I had some of straight-A semesters through high school, trade school and college, but I was never a 4.0 student when all was said and done. I am proud that my cumulative average has always been in the “A” range, but really, I’ve never been asked what my GPA in school was in a job interview, so in the greater scheme of things, a B, even if it was a C, doesn’t hurt anything but my ego, and even my ego is only slightly bruised.

But the ego bruising fades with some very glowing remarks and the full 250 points for my final project in Photoshop! For the final project, we were to create two original pieces using the tools and methods we’d learned in class. I created the first one to be an in-store promotional poster for home and garden departments in the fall for spring perennial bulbs planting. I used photos of my own flowers and the labels from the bulbs with one of Darlene Haughin’s papers from the Everyday Life collab.


For the second one, I used a paper from Darlene’s portion of On My Knees, we had to secure permission to use anything we didn’t create or photograph ourselves, and photos of my own cane and walker. Remember that I got the walker when I was in aquatic therapy because it took me a little to get my land legs back after getting out of the pool. I positioned this as a motivational poster and one that could be used in a co-op ad or public service ad for a nonprofit like Paralyzed Veterans of America or Special Olympics.


As I mentioned already, I currently have an Incomplete in my XML class, with three chapters and the final to catch up by the beginning of August, I want to redo some of the chapters before that so I have the language down moving forward. As I said before, my instructor is awesome, very compassionate and understanding. I want to excel on the portion of the class that’s left, not just for me, but as a way of saying thanks to him too!


Flowers!

The entire length of the house next to our drive is in bloom!

I’m having so much fun watching the flowers Kelly and I planted in October come up! That photo was taken May 4. The tulips are up now and the colors along the side of our house are just beautiful! But, after the tulips are done, that’s it! I planted spring flowers. I’m still new to this flowers thing! I’ve been doing some looking for summer blooming perennials and next I’ll look for fall blooming ones. I’d love to be able to have continuous blooming plants through to fall on the side.

Here are three I found that are right for the growing zone we’re in and I just think would be beautiful in the summer.

Gladiolas

We’ve had glads in the side bed all along, but they were dug up when our basement waterproofing was done and we didn’t get them back in the ground soon enough. I want to get some to plant now because I know they’ll grow there and David picked a Glad branch for me a couple times, when rain or wind knocked them down, and I had a glad branch on my desk at work. So, they have sentimental value too.

gaillardias

clematis

These two are one I found that I just think are so pretty! I want to get some each of the gaillardias and clematis. I love the colors and the sunburst of the gaillardias is just SO summer! Kelly did the planting while I was at school in October, but I know how she did it and I figure I can set out the bulbs in the driveway and just move a chair down to each section to do the planting. David said he’d help too. I’ll see about choosing fall flowers and maybe planting them all at the same time.


Okay, I’ll be back with more later!

Lights Christmas

I’m dreaming of a lights Christmas
Just like the ones without the snow
Where the trees all twinkle
But no sprained ankles
From slipping on ice out when you go

I’m dreaming of a lights Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be warmer, yet bright
‘Cause my all your Christmases have lights

Yeah, maybe I’m getting old, or maybe it’s just the common fear of one who walks with assistance, but the snow can go away any time. I don’t need Christmas snow, just give me the lights and I feel merry and jolly!

I have some totally cool people around me. We have David’s Mom’s wheelchair and David and I have already discussed the possibility of using it when Rina and Tori are here to go to the lights at the Zoo. I hope it won’t be too cold, but I do have plenty of regular and Splenda hot drink mixes. I have never been to the lights at the Zoo and have really wanted to.

Also, I’ll get to use the chair for Christmas before that. I have an awesome baby brother! Dave and fam get up to Dad’s the day before Christmas Eve and go to the Eastern Market in Detroit on Christmas Eve morning. We always used to go to go the Saturday before Christmas, but I haven’t been in years. David and I usually go up later in the day, after he gets off work. I’ve really missed the Eastern Market during the holidays and I lamented not being able to go. Dave said, “Well Sis, you can go with us, just like old times!” When I reminded him of my knee and not being able to do it, he said he’d push the chair so I could go.

Now, when my brother is pushing a wheel chair with me in it, there is some teasing that goes on in the form of how fast he can get me going. David does it too. But it’s all good. I kind of enjoy it, but he needs to remember he’s setting that example for the girls. If the day comes that he is old and can’t do the walking, they’ll be pushing him – in the way he taught them! Hehe

Now I take this all in stride and with a smile because I’ll get the MRI on my knee in January. Maybe next year I’ll be able to do the walking? I’m going to take advantage of the seat for the events this year and being able to take lots of pictures! One of the parts of the holiday season I love is reminiscing…and making new memories to reminisce about in the years to come.

The Cleanup Is Done!

My brother and I with our spouses and occasional other family members have been going up to Michigan every few weekends since March to work on cleaning up and out my Grandmother’s house and prepare things for the estate sale and sale of the house. Yesterday, we loaded furniture into a huge rented truck to travel to an auction house in Indianapolis, which will be handling the cataloging and sale for us. Before leaving the small town that was my grandparents' retirement paradise, we stopped at the real estate office and signed the papers for sale.

Dave and I agreed that the small town in the woods we enjoyed so much since 1982 didn’t have the charm as a destination anymore. The magic was seeing Grandma and Papa and visiting with them. I remember having enough comp days after the busy spring season when I worked as a producer for local TV that I had an extra week in the summer to spend with them. It was always wonderful! I got to be a spoiled little kid again!

In May 1994, the day after I got my new Camaro, I drove up to visit them for the weekend. I didn’t tell them I’d gotten a new car. When I went in, I tried to sound appalled when I said I’d taken my car in to the dealer for repairs and “you have to see what it looks like now!”

Papa casually got up from his chair and said, “Come on Mom, let’s go see her new car.” Guess I wasn’t hiding the excitement well.

For the first year I had the car, my grandfather was the only person who wasn’t me who’d sat in the driver’s seat! When we went into town to buy some groceries for dinner, they had smiling plush fruits on a display and he grabbed the cherry one. He told me that it would match my “candy-assed red car.” That stuffed cherry still lives in my 16-year old muscle car today!

After Papa died, Grandma took over hosting Thanksgiving Dinner there. Mom and I would go up a day or two earlier and the three of us would prepare the meal. I usually finagled a couple extra comp days or vacation days to make it a week so Grandma and I got some extra “just us” time, which usually included a drive into West Branch for Chinese lunch and a stop for cappuccinos at the coffee shop across the parking lot from the Chinese restaurant.

We have taken home a few mementos and a couple of useful things from the house. Dave‘s stepson is a huge WW2 buff and he’s making a framed shadow box with some of Papa’s Navy memorabilia. I brought home all of the old photos. There are a ton of them! Now I have the scan and document project that will probably keep me busy for a few years!

Yesterday, I found the last very special piece that I was afraid had been lost! Grandma collected coins and she got me started. The pennies, American and Canadian, are my very favorites, especially the old ones, but I enjoy all the old coins and we’d spend lots of time when I visited going through the many dishes of coins she had and finding the ones that were needed to fill the books. She had an Indian head penny book. I really drooled over those! There was of which she had doubles and she gave it to me. She told me, “One day, the rest of them will be yours.” She left the whole coin collection to me, but at that time, she was talking about the Indian head pennies I loved so much.

I was stressing because the Indian head book was missing. We found it at my Dads house, where some of the more valuable things had been moved. David laughed at me because the Indian head penny book only has seven pennies in it. “All that anxiety over 7 cents?” Aside from the fact that an Indian head penny is worth more than a cent now, everyone knew it was so much more than the pennies that was the source of my anxiety. Those were very special pennies, they were Grandma and me pennies.


And now, it’s done. The next time I’ll go up there, it will be to close the last account in Grandma’s bank after the closing on the house. I won’t have anyplace to go when I’m there. It’s very bittersweet.

I was born into a world where I had four grandparents of whom I have fond memories. I was also very close to my great-grandmother. As children there was always that safe place where Dave and I were loved unconditionally and spoiled like a prince and princess. Even as adults we enjoyed those visits where we did no wrong. Noni always told me I had the face of an angel and insisted that I didn’t need to diet because I wasn’t really overweight! Mums, our great grandmother, loved Dave’s long hair in the 80’s and bragged about how handsome her great grandson was to her friends. Grandma and Papa knew and enjoyed our friends and always encouraged us to bring all of them with us when we visited. Now, at 42 and 43 years old, the last house where there are enough photos of us through the years to call it a “Dave and Nani museum” is empty. The last photo we packed yesterday was of Dave and me with Santa, dated 1972.

It’s sad to say goodbye to those wonderful people, grandparents, who loved so much and were always wonderful rocks on which we built our self-esteem. I mean think about it. Through our grandparents, we all get to watch our personal museums grow! When I visit the home my Dad and Aunt share, there are photos through the years of the seven grandkids they have between them. Not so many photos of the kids unless they are in one with their kids! But I don’t mind that there really aren’t pictures of Dave and me at my Dad’s house but photos of Rina and Tori instead. After all, Grandma and Papa, Noni and Nono and Mums did the work of reminding Dave and me how awesome we have always been. It really is Dad’s job to do that for the girls. Fortunately, that’s a job a grandparent always finds easy to do.

To all of the grandparents reading, thank you for the important job you do in shaping the psyche of the next generation and for all you do to keep us always loved and safe!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Stock photo from laptop

Hi there! I’m not lost, just kinda buried under my final project for my XHTML class! I’m doing a page for Journal Camp. It’s all dolled up to follow the requirements for the project, but I am a creative type that has to be creating for a purpose. It takes a lot longer to “make something up” for a subject than it does to create for something that already exists, so Journal Camp it is! The rough draft and copy is done, now I need to put the code in to, hopefully if done right, go from a text document to a web page! That’s kinds like magic. It’s fun!

Last weekend, my brother, Dave and I took our spouses back up to grandma’s house to work on the cleaning out. I was, not even kidding, shredding tax documents from 1958! Grandma and Papa moved there in 1982. You’re supposed to keep tax documents for 7 years. They didn’t even need to bring 1958 tax forms with them from Detroit!

We went up Friday night and left Monday morning so we’d have 2 full cleaning days. We really have made a good dent. I came home with a car trunk full of more old photos in antique frames. After I get a staging area cleared here, I have a major identifying and scanning project to work on. I started a family tree at ancestry.com and I’m filling in blanks and notes as I can put them together from the photos and notes I have. It is a huge task, but it’s kinda fun too. Ultimately, there will be 2 sets of disks with copies of everything, one for Dave and one for me. They can be copied from there, but initially everything will be duplicated for storing. I now have all the photos from both sets of grandparents, so I’m going to archive both sides of the family. Whew! Big project!

I’ll try to make some time to get the best of Monday Mug Shot up this afternoon for this week. I’m just a little back-logged right now! But I’ll get it all together, I always do!

The pre-camp meeting for Journal Camp is a week from tomorrow! How exciting!! The post for that week is ready; just have to do a little uploading. I have one more layout I’m working on that goes with week one. I want to remain ahead on this! You can see that I put up the sponsors list on the right side bar. The links are all working, I just need to get the blinkie locations up! I have 12 fabulous designers who have agreed to provide the random prizes for Journal Camp! I’m trying to use sponsor kits for the remaining layouts for examples to show off a little bit of what you might win.

Okay, now I have to get back to switching a laundry load, then working on my code for school!