Chronicles of Nani - Memory

Memories can be so powerful. Good memories can help calm bad symptoms of chronic illness or bad pain from sitting in a wheelchair. Not always, but they help a lot.

This week I talked about some of my memories & the power of your memories.

(And for any nitpickers who get on my recollection of dreams, you've never been to the end of an Italian women’s party when the men come back to pick everybody up and something big’s going to be on TV!)

#MultipleSclerosis
#Wheelchair
#Memories

Chronicles of Nani - Almost Didn't Make It

Another week of things going wrong punching me in the face. BUT another week when my face survived!

It was also another week where I recorded edited and did the whole shebang on Wednesday all day and most of the night. I'm uploading and going to sleep.

Hopefully things are getting back to normal and I'll be tackling "list 2” to get my life back!

#CyberCoffeeShop
#HerbalTea
#MikePiazza
#MötleyCrüe

The Chronicles of Nani - Learning

It's been almost a year since I started the vlog! It's been a wonderful year of learning so many new things. My mother always said that “the day that you stop learning is the day you start dying.” Along with the length of my to do list, I figure I'm good for another 150 years. Maybe by then they'll have cured MS I've gotten my lower back surgery and gone through therapy. I'll be walking up Sand dunes again and I'll actually get to try skydiving. Having a plan in mind is important so are healthy fantasies.

So these are things that I've learned about YouTube, communication, feedback and wonderful things about life in general. Like so many things when you make public a project that you do to help yourself you end up helping your self in ways you didn't know you would while you're also extending help to other people.

I hope YouTube is still around in 150 years!

The Chronicles of Nani - My Mom

my newest vlog!

I Love

Welcome to Day 14 of 30 Day Blog Challenge, hosted by Katie at So, Funny Story… Today is another photo day! I’ll try to be a little less photo than last time.

A picture you love.

I’ve got two; just two.

This is me and my brothers and sister that you saw on Sunday. Acting goofy by request of the photographer, my Mom which makes it double special.

This is David and me with Grandma and Tori. It’s at Spago Ristorante in Windsor, Ontario (Canada) celebrating my 39th birthday. David left work and came directly to Canada for my dinner. This was the night I gave up trying not to fall in love with him.  I put up a valiant fight. (Of course I wouldn’t have the guts to tell him know that for a few weeks,)

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???

Happy Summer First!

I know, I know, I have been a little scarce. I was really busy at the beginning of the week a couple weeks back getting ready for last week. Last week was our (late) spring vacation! Last year and this year David’s vacation time was later than it had been when we went to Florida in 2010. Of course we melted last year in record end of May/beginning of July heat in Iowa and especially in St. Louis, so this year, with vacation time in June…we went farther south!

It sounds quite insane considering that, while I like the heat, David unequivocally does NOT! But there were free room and family opportunities that prompted the decision. Baby brother was planning a trip after his girls graduated from high school to take the whole family, including his step daughter’s family and Dad and Aunt Judy to Italy. As a planner I guess I’m a little harsh, but I’ve commented before about my brother and paper bags and being trapped inside one without GPS.  He probably wouldn’t have planned ahead and brought batteries for the GPS anyway. Four months before the trip, he discovered the prices for flights to Italy were just a TON pricier than he expected. So, the family trip to Italy became a beach vacation in North Carolina.

The planned beach vacation was his family with Dad and Aunt Judy to the Outer Banks. David had planned his vacation time around his birthday and concert tickets in Washington DC the day before. We asked little bro if he might have room in his beach rental for guests a couple of nights and he was ecstatic that we wanted to join them. So our vacation week included 2 days and three nights in their sound-side rental in Duck, North Carolina, in between trains, 3 baseball games, a Marillion concert and a fun evening car-camping by the railroad tracks. For our two days, we visited The Wright Brothers museum and memorial in Kill Devil Hills, Jenette’s Pier, where my family was fishing, 4 light houses and we ate lots of seafood!

My main issue with the 3 nights at the beachouse was the steps. There was a full flight of stairs into the main level of the house. That’s hurricane protection, but it’s definitely not handicap-friendly at all. Every time I used the steps, someone had to run the walker in front of me so I could grab it when I reached the end and walk in front of me going down or behind me going up with instructions to push hard if I started falling down because I’d rather break a few teeth on the wood steps than my skull on the concrete floor below. Good news is, as nerve-racking as it was doing the steps, I experienced the victorious feeling of accomplishment every time. But next time I go to the beach, we’ll do a hotel with an elevator. I’ve never understood vacation rentals; what kind of vacation is it where you cook, clean and make your own bed? (And do more steps than home!)

My highlight of the beach time was seeing the lighthouse at Cape Hatteras. My parents had traveled to The Outer Banks together and Mom was in her glory seeing the lighthouses. She had brought home a replica of every one of them that were displayed in their bedroom. She was a huge lighthouse fan and Cape Hatteras was her favorite. We shared many lighthouse trips on the Great Lakes, but seeing Hatteras was special for me since she loved it so and that was one we hadn’t seen together. Mom’s lighthouses are on a shelf in our nautical-themed bathroom. I’d been with her to some of them, but it’s neat to have seen a few of the other ones now.


I’ll tell a little more about what we did on vacation in the next week or so. For now, It’s Wednesday and I’m back to my normal week, so, how about a little Hodge Podge?

1. Summer officially rolls in with the Hodgepodge this week, for those of us in the Northern hemisphere anyway. What song says summer 2012 to you?

I can’t think of a specifically 2012. When I was in my 20s and 30s, Summer was always official when I could drive the Camaro with the windows down and Motley Crue’s “Wild Side” blasting in the cassette player. More recently, I think Kati Perry’s “California Girls” makes me think of summer. I’ll probably think of a bunch more after I hit “post.”




2. What's your favorite quintessential summer food?

Gazpacho, A Midsummer Evening’s Pasta and Baseball Nut Ice Cream from Baskin Robbins

Recipe is my random thought

3. I've spent a lot of time traipsing up and down the NJ Turnpike in recent weeks. Did you know the rest areas on the turnpike are named after people who lived or worked in NJ? Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, James Fenimore Cooper, Molly Pitcher, Joyce Kilmer, Thomas Edison, and Gover Clevland just to name a few. Of those I listed, who would you most like to have known and why?

Thomas Edison – he was an old fashioned Steve Jobs!

A little tongue in cheek there, but Edison said “why not?” to so many things that became necessities. Think about it; in the timeline of discovery, without the development of the phonograph to record and replay data, voice, and without a power grid to transmit electricity, would the iPhone or iPad have ever been developed? I just find the historical roots of modern day normal to be fascinating.


4. At what age did you move out of your parent's house and what prompted the move?

I left my parents’ house when I was 40. I was there for the same reason I left; money. I was fine to stay there and drive my sports car while hoping to get to Atlanta, but mergers in the communication production field and the fall of the economy left me really grateful to still be with my parents! I don’t imagine it would have been easy to have to come back after I’d been out!

The economy was challenging Dad’s income and Aunt Judy’s bills and they chose to combine assets. I was already an hour away from my boyfriend and moving with them would put me farther away. Boyfriend offered to let me move in and I thought that was a better choice for me. It ends up that I’m married and still living with that boyfriend now, so it worked out well.


5. What's more satisfying to you-saving time or saving money?

Saving money is wonderful, but I hate wasting time more than anything! I’ll spend more in gas to drive around construction than be stuck in traffic. I need to feel occupied more than I need to see my wallet full.


6. Name something you think brings out the good in people.

Wheelchairs! No, really, people are incredibly kind and want to be helpful to people in wheelchairs.


7. This last question comes to you courtesy of Kathy over at Reflections...Will you be taking a vacation or a staycation this summer? If so where will you go? If a staycation is on the calendar have you made any special plans to fill the time?

If ‘va” is the part that makes it “go someplace,” then “cation” is the part that means “take a break.” That being said, I don’t believe in the word “staycation.” Taking a break to me is seeing something new and NOT being at work or home. It’s also having housekeeping making the bed and the staff at a restaurant serving the food and doing the dishes!

We just got back from 11 days in Virginia and the Carolinas.



8. Insert your own random thought here.

Here’s my recipe for A Midsummer Evening’s Pasta, one of my favorite dishes I cook in the summer.

***Recipe***

A Midsummer Evening's Pasta

 serves 2

2 cups of dry Farfalle pasta

2 Roma tomatoes

1 cup of fresh basil leaves torn into bite-sized pieces

1 TBS. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

3/4 cup of freshly shredded Asiago cheese.

Boil pasta in water with an extra drop of olive oil to keep it from sticking. Cook pasta until it is al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, dice the tomatoes and mix them with the fresh basil and olive oil. Adjust taste with salt and pepper.

When pasta is done cooking, drain it and put it in a serving bowl, immediately adding the tomato and basil mixture and the Asiago cheese. Mix it to warm the additional ingredients and melt the cheese.

Serve warm.

Monday Mug Shot – Mini Series Part 6 Finale

Museum of Transportation

St. Louis, MO

 

360 view of mug

 
Mom and I went back to St. Louis in October of 1996 to see some of that stuff the Cardinals fans suggested at the ballgame in July. On our first afternoon in town we went to a winery. Parking on the grounds was guided during busier times and that’s when I was almost kicked out of the state!

Okay, I guess I need a little background to explain why I was so despicable that the St. Louis natives who were so kind to us in July were threatening me with deportation from Missouri in October. Remember I told you that up until the National League Championship playoffs in 1995, I thought I’d forsaken my childhood National League team for the Braves because I planned to become an Atlanta resident? In the time of expendable income I bought a lot of fan gear for the Braves, including 2 Jackets I’d gotten on sale and a “Tomahawkin'” state of Georgia front license plate. Since the time of discovering I couldn’t cheer against the Reds, not when it really mattered, I now have front and back Reds license plates that match the little red Camaro better! But, at that time, I had the Tomahawkin’ front plate and was fending off the bit of October chill with my Braves dugout jacket.

It happened to be the day before Game one of the World Series when we visited the winery. The 1996 World Series was between Atlanta and New York. The National League Championship Series had been between Atlanta and St. Louis. When we pulled into the lot at the winery, the guy directing parking, with a grin, said he shouldn’t let us in but should just send us home with “that plate.” So, there’s the story you’ve been reading the Mug Shot for 6 weeks to hear. Sorry if my threatened deportation form Missouri isn’t as exciting as a 6-week build up might have lead you to expect. Yet, baseball having everything to do with it really fits The Chronicles of Nani’s usual content!

The Museum of Transportation was very cool! There were vintage street cars, trains and even classic cars in various stages of restoration. Now call me a bad example of a Detroit native, but the classic cars have never interested me. I still think most of them are just shined up used cars. My Detroit pride is in that my 18-year old Camaro still works, even with some nicks, scratches and things that used to work better. My 13-year old Buick has a couple dents and cracks from a fender-bender last year. It was my fault, slipped on ice. No report filed because we were both okay and the damage was cosmetic. I fixed the car I hit instead of mine. But my cars, even the muscle car, are transportation not trophies. They’ll get scratched in a parking lot or minor damage from Midwest winters and if they are good cars they’ll still be transportation. Mine are still transportation over a decade later; they are good cars. I’m still not going to shine them up and invite people to “look at my car, but you can’t drive it.” But to each his own and to all those who enjoy classic cars, I’ll stay out of your way if they have trains.

Oh, and the trains at the Museum of Transportation! There were old examples of man powered rail cars, steam engines from early to late in the era of steam and early and recent diesel locomotives, passenger cars and freight cars, so much rail history! I think Mom enjoyed the “train zoos” so much because I was such a little kid when we went. Unlike an indoor museum there were not a ton of “don’t touch” signs. I climbed up on a Union Pacific locomotive and walked around a little. Mom got the cheesy photo of me on the UP loco wearing that "public enemy number one" jacket!

It was a fun visit back to St. Louis in the fall that included wineries, museums, a St. Louis Blues hockey game and a ride in a capsule to the top of the Gateway Arch! They did let me stay and thankfully, since my best friend ended up moving to Missouri a few years later, they even let me come back; as long as I promise to spend money! Still, I wonder if my visiting St. Louis before the sting of the Cardinals losing the NLCS wore off is why the Yankees won the World Series that year.

Links

St. Louis Museum of Transportation

Monday Mug Shot - Mini Series Part 4

100th Olympic Games

Atlanta, Georgia

Mom won Olympics baseball tickets from a Georgia lottery scratch-off ticket the November before when we were on vacation with Pop. The fact that they just happened to be baseball tickets she won seemed almost supernatural and of course, she sent the lottery ticket in to get her Olympics tickets! She said she wanted them as a souvenir of the Olympics in America.

So she sent in her lottery ticket and the tickets for Olympic Baseball came back. The game was on the opening weekend of the games on Saturday. Now there are a few points to note about that. First off how cool to win tickets on a weekend? I mean a game Saturday afternoon is totally doable for Joe or Josi Average. Watching prices rise in Atlanta for a few years leading up to The Olympics, we were definitely Josis Average! But the date of that Saturday; July 20; Mom’s birthday. The kismet of baseball on the scratch-off didn’t seem so crazy now! Mom had some “mad money” she’d been saving and asked me if I’d like to go to The Olympics with her. Wide-eyed and with a shocked smile I told her I would absolutely love to go to the Olympics with her!

Mom’s mad money wasn’t quite mad enough for the prices on Atlanta hotels during the Olympics, so our day in the Olympic city to soak in the whole atmosphere was going to be just that; a day. It was Mom who brought up the idea of “stopping” someplace else on the way home. We were traveling anyway, we were flying anyway, where else could we see baseball? You see that my baseball habit is totally heredity. Watch too much baseball when you’re pregnant and the baby is born hooked. And they didn’t even make baseball onsies in 1966; I was totally prenatal-influenced!

A week before the Olympics, Fruit of the Loom was hosting a free country music festival in Atlanta. To get tickets you sent in a request and they were sending tickets on a first come first served basis. Heather and I both sent in requests. We were the producer and associate producer team for public access and sports but July was our slow month and we could manage a Friday/Monday off and use the tickets we both got! One of our interns, Thad, went with us too. We drove down on Friday. We went to the festival Saturday, caught a Braves game and visited Olympic Park on Sunday. There was a ticket window near one of the subway stops with Olympics tickets. There were still mens gymnastics tickets available for next Saturday? They weren’t cheap, but they weren’t unaffordable. Heather was crunching numbers and figuring out frequent flyer miles. I was looking at starting times and how well they matched the flight Mom and I were already on. Our souvenir from the Music Festival weekend was 3 tickets to mens gymnastics Saturday morning!

We met up at the airport in Atlanta after our flights from Detroit got in. Since Mom and I were out for the weekend, we had bags to put in lockers. It was at the lockers that I had my cool very Olympic experience! The Olympics; can you imagine how many languages were being spoken at the very busy airport in Atlanta? When I was getting a locker for our bags there was a man, from his appearance I guessed Eastern, maybe Japanese? I couldn’t ask him because I don’t speak or understand a word of any Eastern languages and he didn’t speak or understand a word of English. But his dilemma was with our language and our money. He had a fist full of coins and directions and a price for renting a locker in English. He smiled at me and had a look of “please help me” in his eyes. Through pointing, nodding and facial expressions we were able to communicate and I helped him choose the right size locker and the right coins to pay for it. Okay, it may not sound like a huge International PR thing, but it felt VERY COOL! It’s a communications challenge I’ve never since experienced.

Mom, Heather and I headed out to the Georgia Dome for the morning gymnastics event. It was muggy and the line to get in was long and slow. Bags were thoroughly searched and people went through a metal detector on their way in. In 1996, before 9/11 and before the bomb the very next week, the security was a little annoying and seemed a bit overkill. Who knew it was the shape of things to come?

Our original plan was to grab lunch after gymnastics and see Heather off at the airport before going to Fulton County Stadium for the baseball game. But the reality of a day on “Olympics time” changed that plan! After finally squeezing on to the packed fourth or fifth subway train, Heather decided to go back to the airport on her own so we could get in line for security check at the baseball game. She’d eat at the airport and we’d eat at the ballpark.

It was all so busy, so exciting. There so many people, so many different people, different languages, styles and customs. And the whole city felt like a giant carnival, but a huge carnival, it felt big. It’s hard to express the feeling of being part of something that huge. We saw Cuba and Australia. Cuba beat Australia; I looked it up, 19-8. Those are details you have to look up because, like a wedding day, the day, the moment is such an experience itself that you have to have the photos and written stories to remember it all!

The game had a short rain delay that only made the park, the whole city, muggier. The Olympics was the first place I’d seen those walk-through misters. I didn’t go through them, but I think Mom and Heather did. I didn’t want to mist the huge glasses I wore at the time! But when the rain chased us into the concourse it washed my glasses anyway!

We went to the airport deciding to get food at our destination where the lines would likely be shorter to get in. Mom and I had cappuccino and a snack while we waited for our plane. The evening was much quieter than the airport had been when we got in on the early flight. When we boarded the plane, there was hardly anyone on it! Just not a lot of people flying out of Atlanta on a Saturday night, the second day of The Games. A flight attendant made an announcement asking if there was anyone with a connecting flight or a reason they absolutely needed to be on time when we landed. There had been a delay for a flight coming in from another city with people connecting to our flight and if there were no objections we’d wait for that flight. That was okay with the ten or so of us. I think I recall that we got a free drink or premium snack from the cart for our trouble. Our flight about doubled with those people from the other plane!


Next stop St Louis!

Mom, Heather and Me at Mens Gymnastics

Feeling Scrappy

I hope everyone is having a nice Friday. I know for many this is Good Friday and the beginning of the weekend that commemorates the beginning of Christianity. My Mom became Catholic before she got married so she and my Dad could have a full Catholic church wedding. She was probably a more devout Catholic than Pop. Then again, Pop is probably the most devout American I know. If it’s something you want and work for, it ends up meaning more. Many of us who still practice the religion we were brought up with or are citizens of the country in which we were born don’t have the same passionate appreciation as those who embraced something different, their choice. I’m not at all saying anyone is less American because they were born here or less faithful because they never changed their spiritual path. I’m just saying that a naturalized citizen or someone who has chosen to spiritually redirect themself has a special appreciation for their status.

Mom was that way religiously. I think some of her views are why I think if you are sacrificing on Good Friday, eat hamburger instead of lobster. The church’s reason for making Fridays fish days long ago was to encourage the wealthier people to support the poor. Instead of eating more expensive meat, support the local fishermen. It’s definitely flipped now. So, instead of buying the more expensive seafood, support your local franchisee and the people they employ and have a Quarter Pounder. That’s not my official recommendation; Practice your faith and spirituality the way that is fulfilling for you!

I’d say enough of the religion talk, but I know there’s a question coming up in that area! :)


I’ve been a bit scarce in Blogland this week because there’s been a bit going on outside of The Chronicles of Nani. There’s been White Tornado stuff, a few other fragments and scrap stuff. I’ve pretty much adopted the challenges at Ginger Scraps as my main monthly challenges. I like the variety and the bonus plan is awesome! I have a couple favorite designers are there too. I still do challenges at The Studio and Gotta Pixel, but my main challenge place is Ginger Scraps now. So, take a look at a few challenge layouts I did in March!

April Desktop (Nani’s Pandora Dreams)

Desktop Challenge

Credits: template by Sugar Kissed Designs, Kit - El Mojito by Twin Mom Scraps

Here’s one using the Photoblog from last Wednesday:

Kaline’s Court

Inspiration Challenge

Credits: The Cat’s Meow by Jen Yurko

And Finally…

Mississippi Steam Train

Template challenge

Credits: Template by Twin Mom Scraps, Kit - Stippety Strpiety by Twin Mom Scraps, additional elements from Travel By Train by Volshebnica Designs, additional papers from For Us by Pretty In Green

(Title linked to gallery to read journaling)

Okay, now let’s look at some of the usual Friday Fun! Let’s check out the Five Questions from Mama M at My Little Life!

Five Question Friday



1. Would you prefer having people over for dinner or going to their house?

Actually, I’d prefer to go out. Restaurants have to be wheelchair accessible by law, so I don’t risk anyone feeling bad because I can’t do steps or get around in their home. Also, if I’m at someone’s house enjoying their hospitality, I want so badly to help with cleanup. I can’t really do that in a house I’m not familiar with because I don’t know where I can grab to steady myself. Yes, that’s all about me. I’m just not comfortable letting a friend or family member wait on me while I do nothing in return. I’d love to have people over…after the White Tornado project I complete. I’m still embarrassed to have the bug-guy in the house and we pat him.



2. Favorite Bible verse and why?

The verse from Ecclesiastes the 1965 song, Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds was based on. It’s a wonderful message, and a great song. It was the verse I chose for my Mother’s prayer cards because it was one of her favorites too.


3. What was the first concert you ever attended, and the most recent one?

First concert was Kiss with Cheap Trick July 13, 1979. Most recent was Rush last year.


4. The year is 2025. What are you doing, and what have you done?

Oh my, I’m almost 60!

I tell everyone I’m 59 already, although I won't be 59 until July, and David gripes because I’ve always done that. He has probably told me, “Start acting your age! You’re old. Be just a little bothered by it?”

I have a graphics job, a power chair and I’ve mastered the hand controls in my van and actually don’t mind driving as much anymore. I’ve been doing public speaking engagements about keeping your spirit happy while facing challenges for a decade. There is decent money in the public speaking stuff and David and I have had the train layout with a house over it, including my coffee lounge, for a few years.

My face is finally starting to look like I might be able to have gray hair with it.



5. What's your favorite Easter treat?

No question; Hershey’s Candy Coated Milk Chocolate Easter Eggs!

I’ll try to post some more this afternoon! Everyone have a great Friday ad a wonderful Easter weekend!

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!

Monday Mug Shot- Belle of Louisville

Belle of Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Mom and I went to Louisville in June of 1994. We took my brand spanking new Camaro for the trip. There is something liberated and classic about two women traveling in the early summer in a hot red muscle car. Okay, Mom was happy to let me drive in my newer-than-hers car and she knew I was just silly with the thrill of my new baby. Yes, as much as I don’t like driving, it was different in that car. That car is still in our garage and, though I can’t drive it anymore, the last time I did drive it, last March, it was still fun to drive that car!

We drove through Indiana from Michigan to get to Kentucky this trip. It was a sunny Friday, the first day of our 4-day trip. As we crossed the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge on the I-65 into Kentucky Mom noticed a train on the train bridge next to it and mentioned it to me. I looked over quickly and acknowledged the train but didn’t get a good look since I was driving. Mom was not a train nut like me, but she used to love to watch the trains going over the Ohio River whenever we visited Cincinnati. She just thought a train floating over the water was cool. I had no problems sitting with her watching the trains cross the river because, well, they were trains! So she made mention of the train because it was definitely something we might enjoy finding a place to watch for more trains with a picnic style lunch after the boat ride.

When we got into Louisville, around noon, we parked in one of the downtown lots by the river. We had planned to ride on the sightseeing cruise on the Belle of Louisville riverboat when we first got into town since it was early to check in to the hotel. It was easy to find the boat landing because from the time we got off the interstate you could hear the calliope melodies echoing on the street by the riverfront. We went in to the office and got our tickets, then boarded the boat. The nice thing about cruising on a Friday is that it’s not as crowded as it is on the weekend and even after getting in to town just in time to get our tickets and board, there were still seats and rail space in the front of the boat.

The sightseeing tour was guided by a gentleman who used a microphone to be heard on all sides of the boat, but announced from the area where we were. He pointed out sights and gave some historical information about the boat, riverboats, the city of Louisville and Jeffersonville, Indiana on the other side of the river. By the way, Jeffersonville is where Louisville Slugger bats are actually produced now. They are packaged and shipped in Louisville.

As we approached the Big Four railroad bridge that runs parallel to the freeway Mom and I were looking to see if there was a park for lunch nearby where we could watch the bridge. Our tour guide asked over the speaker how many people had just come in to town. There was a decent number of people who acknowledged that they had, us included. There was a good number who also nodded when he asked if we came in on the interstate form Indiana. Then he asked how many of us saw the train today. Mom and I both had as well as about a dozen others in the area where we were in front of the boat. Then he asked, “Do you believe in ghosts? Because y’all just saw one.”

Then we cleared an area of trees on the Kentucky side of the river and this is what we saw:

The Big Four Bridge, named for the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St, Louis Railway, known as “The Big Four Railroad,” closed in 1969. It had become known as “The Bridge to Nowhere.” There was no way a train had crossed the bridge that day or any day for quite a while before then. The collective gasp was quite audible and there was lots of chatter afterwards. Was it an optical illusion, powerful suggestion or was there really a ghost train?

Me being haunted by a train makes sense, but my Mom, the boat nut? It would make more sense if she’d been haunted by a boat! Well, it was on a boat, that we learned the punch line of our supernatural joke!

It was a fun long weekend in Kentucky, but there was no more haunting!


** No more haunting – the Big Four Railroad bridge is being converted to a walking and bike trail between Louisville and Jeffersonville and the eerie sheer drops have been replaced with entrance ramps from street level.

Links

Belle of Louisville

Big Four Railroad Bridge

Sentimental Saturday

Me and Mom 1999

Yesterday was another productive, although tiring afternoon/evening in the White Tornado world. I got another chunk sorted and cleared in the future woman cave that turned up some wonderful things. I went through a grandma box and a Mums box.

Before I go further, I want to clear up a source of confusion. I realize that what’s simple for me can be very messy to try to read and I’m sorry. But don’t we all do that from time to time? Things that have just “always been” don’t seem to need clarification. My brain says if I made a distinction once, it’s already overkill. That would be true if I was writing in my private journal and didn’t expect anyone to ever read it. Even my private journals I do want read after I’m gone. They are all my secrets that might make insightful, helpful or entertaining reading 60 years or so from now by my nieces, grand nieces and nephews, and greats and so on.

Grandma, Mums and Mom 1945

Anyway, the distinction issue. The other day when I mentioned women in my blog who were here before me, I spoke of “Mom.” “Grandma,” “Mums” and “Grammy.” Those are four different women. It gets more confusing because if I talk about Tori and Rina the names are different for each one. SO the round up goes like this:

I am Nani, nicknamed that by my mother and in 1994 it was intended that I’d be “Aunt Nani” to my nieces. Well, they never called me Aunt Nani, I am Nana, pronounced /NAH-nah/. They are 17 now and I’m still Nana, so I don’t think that’s changing.

When I speak of “Mom” on my blog, I speak of my mother, Janet. Truth there is I didn’t call her “Mom,” I called her “Fluff” pronounced /Floof/. That was a private nickname and to my friends and other family members I still referred to her as Mom. To the Niecii, she was “Grams”

My first communion with Noni and Grandma 1973

Now is where it starts to get a little more complicated. Being the oldest is so cool because you get to name everyone. I had very distinct differences in the names so I could keep them sorted out when I was very young. My grandmother, Wonda, was “Grandma.” She got to keep the American English Grandma because my paternal grandmother, Rosa, was Noni. Oldest grandkid, I got to choose to call my nonna, Noni and all of my cousins followed suit. The girls never got to meet Noni, so they know her as “Noni” or “Dad and Nana’s Noni” Grandma to them was “Grammy.”

Grandma and Tori 2005

Grandma with Rina 2007

We’ll skip a generation for a moment. This is a huge source of confusion. My nieces and I share a wonderful treasure in that we all knew our great and great-great grandmothers long enough to remember them! They called their great-grandmother, Wonda, “Grammy.” I called my great-great-grandmother, also Wonda, also “Grammy,” and their great-great grandmother, Opal, “Great-Grammy.”

I actually have just one vivid memory of Grammy whom I didn’t see very often, but I did a few times. She passed when I was 9. I have lots of pictures and things she wrote on, touched and some of her quilts, but the memory I hold is just a simple saying hello when I was about 5 or 6. It’s just at a family gathering, I made a point of finding her to say hello. I just remember saying “Hello Grammy!” and she said “Hello Honey,” with a smile. We hugged and kissed and that’s the memory. Small, but special because I don’t remember anything else from that family gathering except that it was summer and outdoors at a relative’s home in the country.

Mums and Grandma 2000

Back to the original timeline. My great-grandmother, Opal, was “Mums.” She’d originally been “Mom-mom.” which is what my mother called her, but I eventually shortened it to Mums. I was very close to my great-grandmother. I remember spending the day with her from time to time when I was little. We lived about an hour apart then, so it was a big, just us, holiday for me. When we were building our house that was just a mile away from her we lived with her for a year and we shared a room. Mums snored, shake the rafters loud. I think that’s why I don’t even notice when David snores; it’s actually a comforting sound to me. Once I started driving, I never missed a Tuesday coffee at her house. I was in my 20s, she in her 80s, the first time I heard her say, “Sometimes I feel a little old.” She also told me, “But a spoon of ice cream makes that go away!”

Some of the real treasures I found in the box from Mums’ things that I went through yesterday include a diary that starts on January 1, 1944, which is the year my grandparents eloped. There are lots of very old photos. Three identical photos of a baby in an old brown cardboard fold over frame. There’s nothing written on any of those, but I have a hunch it might be Donald, the older brother Grandma never met because he died from pneumonia before she was born. I think that’s part of why Mums and I became so close. I was hospitalized with pneumonia when I was 2. Mom had told me that Mums was terrified when I got sick and the happiest of the whole family when I came home.

Here is one of the wonderful treasures:

Mums 5 years old

This says “Opal, taken 1912” on the back. She turned 6 in December of that year. What really struck me was that if I’d dressed Rina up and taken her picture in black and white when she was 5, it’d look like they were sisters. Mums is definitely where the eyes come from, those sultry eyes that Grandma had, I have and Rina has. But Grandma and Rina work them, without trying. I’ve got the same eyes, but I’ve never been sexy. All the older pictures of Mums, they’re just pretty eyes, not sexy. Grandma and Rina got the tools and the natural talent. Mums and I appear to have gotten gypped in the sex appeal department. Oh well. Who needs sexy? There’s still ice cream!

On the top of the box were some more current photos. I recognized those as the ones Mums kept on her buffet. She kept every post card I sent her when I travelled, and if I went to the zoo, I sent a post card, and some photos. She used to show off the picture of the production truck I drove for sports and the George Bush presidential rally photo from 1992 to friends and family when they visited. She kept this picture on the buffet too:

Me and Mums 1985

That’s us on New Year’s Day 1985. I kept the same photo framed in my living room. Her buffet is now my buffet and if you visited that same table we used to sit at for our Tuesday coffee, you’d see Tori and Rina’s senior pictures displayed. The buffest still boasts about the women of the current generation.

So that’s the nomenclature of the women in my family you hear me speak of from time to time, especially if I’m talking about my vintage treasures or the origination of some of my quirks.

Monday Mug Shot

Broadway Dinner Train

Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville was the last stop on the 2-week tour of the South that Mom and I went on in 1989. It was the first time I’d ever been south of Kentucky and the scenery was very different! On that trip I’d driven through the mountains in pea-soup fog, through twisting and turning back roads in Chattanooga city traffic in Atlanta and I saw my first ever train coming down the middle of the street in Columbus, Georgia! We had planned to see caverns in Alabama, but they were clos3ed for the season when we got there. The brochure didn’t say anything about closing in October! After spending the night in Cullman, Alabama, we headed north through Tennessee, making our final stop of the trip, two nights in Nashville.

We’d decided before we left that we’d each pick one place where we’d splurge on a really nice hotel and we’d go Knights Inn/Days Inn for the other nights of our trip. Mom picked Nashville. We stayed at the Sheraton Music City, very posh and comfortable room and close to everything. We’d already been on a riverboat dinner cruise in Chattanooga and a Dinner train in Atlanta. There was just something about eating while moving that made the food taste better. Well, okay, that and that most dinner trains are the food equivalent of a several star restaurant.

We got to the depot early. Dinner trains seat 4 to a table and parties of 2 are seated with other parties of two. If you get there first, you get to pick which seats you want! It was still light when we boarded the train, but the sun was setting when it left the station. We were seated with a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary. The conversation was fun and included what we all did for a living, how they met and how our trip had been. Casual small talk you enjoy with strangers when you’re seated together for dinner.

The tracks went along the Cumberland River for a good part of the ride. It was beautiful to watch as the sun was setting, with the last of the colors in the sky quietly reflecting off the moving water. I’ve always had a romanticized feeling about riding on a train. A dinner t4rqin is one of the most romantic places. Yet it’s someplace, as many times as I’ve been on dinner trains that I’ve never been with a date. I haven’t even ever been with my husband. Strange.

After a wonderful chicken dish for dinner, it was dessert time. All four of us chose the same dessert; pecan pie with chocolate sauce. Oh my! It was wonderful! I dint as vividly remember the dinner as I f=do that wonderful dessert!

After dessert, I sat with my coffee and gazed out the window for a while. Mom and the couple we dined with chatted. I was a little blue because we’d leave in the morning back to Michigan and our trip would be over. I stared out in the black night and marveled at the beautiful lights that twinkled on the river as we passed little inhabited areas. I rejoined the conversation as the table as the wait staff was clearing off the last of the dessert dishes and cups. Yeah, I had to surrender my coffee cup before we got back, but it was just a plain beige cup. When we got back to the depot, I had to stop in the souvenir shop, of course, to get a mug to remember the beautiful trip, twinkling lights, a friendly strangers and the last destination night of a great vacation with Mom.

Monday Mug Shot

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Vacation 1992 was in the beginning of November. It was just a couple weeks after my brother’s first wedding and our family had been far more involved in the planning than I ever thought a groom’s family was. (This was when I firmly decided that IF I ever got married, I wanted nothing to do with a wedding.) I had started to plan my vacation week in September. Mom usually went with me. She and I were great travel companions. We were going to Atlanta by way of Chattanooga, a couple of my favorite cities. When Mom and I went on fall vacations we always asked Pop to go with us and he always had a reason that he wasn’t interested in going, but we tried every year. In 92, frazzled and celebrated out from the wedding, Dad took us up on the offer!

Pop’s birthday is November 8th and that was the Sunday of our trip, the first night in Chattanooga. My father is the one who got me hooked on trains when I was a small child, counting cars when we were stopped, even timing the stop when a train was coming so we had front row viewing. H loves train travel and we often traveled by train on trip when it was possible. Because he wound up with a daughter nuttier about trains than he is, he completely accepted that it was MY choice to stay at Holiday Inn Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

The background here is that I liked the idea at staying at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Holiday Inn, and more that I really wanted to stay in one of the guest rooms outside which were passenger cars transformed into rooms on tracks in the courtyard with the Chattanooga Choo-Choo engine. I wouldn’t spend the extra it takes to stay in the specialty rooms in town on a whim for myself, but for my Dad’s birthday, it would be totally worth it as a surprise! So, I reserved a passenger car room, but didn’t tell Dad. He thought we’d be in the hotel. Then I ordered a balloon bouquet and a cake to be in the room when we checked in. Before we left, after confirming that everything was set, I slipped a bottle of Asti Spumate in my suitcase. I was excited ab0ut Pop’s birthday, till a hotel night and a day away!

We left around 6:00 Saturday morning and headed south. It was a usual trip south with stops for meals and exiting to see sights or shop at anything that struck our fancy from road signs and travel brochures on the way. We played a road game where you looked for words on signs for every letter in the alphabet. This is the trip where, after looking for a “V” for a very long time, Pop saw a sign and announced, “Vah-Vaffle House!” Saying it was two Vs in Italian. Yes, Pop is where I get my bold and obvious attempts at cheating in games!

We stayed that first night in Corbin, Kentucky. I’d stayed in Corbin a time or two on the way to Atlanta because it was just a good stopping point on the first day and it never occurred to me, I never cared, that Corbin is in a dry county. After an all-day drive, my Dad wanted to unwind with a bottle of wine and some snacks. When he asked at the gas station next to our hotel when he could buy a bottle of wine, the woman’s behind the counter said, “Honey, you’re in a DRY COUNTY!” Pop was shocked. Dry County? He’d never heard of such a thing! We ended up taking a drive before dinner and sure enough we ended up almost an hour back north in Richmond, NOT a dry county. Pop got a couple bottles of wine and we had dinner before we headed back to Corbin. I sensed that drinking a glass of wine in a dry county made it taste even sweeter.

On Sunday we got into Chattanooga by a little after noon and went to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. Mom enjoyed the museum, as she always did enjoy the trains when we travelled, but Pop and I were in heaven. There were engines and cars and water tanks and all sorts of very cool railroad stuff, as well as a working turntable. Many steam engines can’t go backwards for any lengthy of time and had to be turned around for return trips by rolling onto the turn table which then turned around 180 degrees so the engine could leave the turntable facing to opposite direction. I was very cool to watch! We also took a steam trip on the museum’s tourist ride, a stem powered excursion through some beautiful wooded areas with fall colors still holding on to some of the trees and a ride over a very tall trestle with a both breathtaking and harrowing view.

After a few hours with the trains, there were more trains! We went to the hotel, “my” choice, the Holiday Inn Chattanooga Choo-Choo. While my parents marveled at the opulent lobby, Mom was in on the surprise for Pop and kept him distracted, I checked in and made sure everything was set. Remember it was my father’s birthday and neither Mom nor I had acknowledged it all day. I let them know we were checked in and could put our bags in the room before dinner.

Pop was a little confused when instead of towards the hall, we went outside to the courtyard. I explained that they had passenger cars that were transformed into room. When we got to our car I stopped and said, “Here’s our room!”

Pop looked surprised and smiled. Then he asked me how much a room like this costs. I told him to never mind because it’s something I wanted to do, so it was worth it to me to save up. When we got in it looked like the entrance to a passenger car, the thin hallway had the very spacious for a train bathroom with décor and amenities that matched the grandeur of the lobby. A little further down was the main living area with a queen bed and daybed, refrigerator and microwave, all the look and feel of a high-end hotel room. But the first thing my Dad noticed was how all-out they went. “They even left balloons!”

The balloons were attached to a coffee mug filled with chocolate kisses. I told him to read the balloon. It said “Happy Birthday Popsie.” He looked at me with a huge grin and gave an equally huge hug. He opened the cake and said we could have it after dinner with the other bottle of wine he’d gotten in Richmond.

“How about with the Asti I brought from Michigan?” I smiled.

I got a little harassment because we’d ended up so far north before we got a bottle of wine the night before, but really, explaining why I was travelling with a bottle of sparkling wine would have inevitably spoiled the surprise.

I was a mushy moment and a fun evening enjoying cake and champagne after dinner in our private train car.

Links

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum

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.