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

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!

Weekend Playlist February 17

Happy Sunday! My weeks are so busy right now that I feel like I’m working full time again, only instead of getting a paychecks, I’m writing checks. -sigh- There are two things I miss the most. I don't get to scrapbook anywhere near as much as I'd like and I don't get to blog as much as I want to either, especially during the week.

But a scrapbook page may take to a week to do a simple one, and I may only post one or two blogs a week, but at least I do get a little bit the fun part of my life. Because of the MS and several other things that I have going on in my world , I talk to nurses and psychologists from the insurance company and a couple of other providers pretty much every week or so. One of the questions that they always ask, I think it's pretty much a boilerplate question to check for depression because it's also one of the questions that they ask at Cleveland Clinic when I go in to see my MS doctors too, is "do you find that you have little interest in the things you enjoy doing?" Last week when I spoke to my case manager from the insurance company I answered honestly, "oh it's not that I don't have interest I just don't have time for the things that I really want to do."

So as it is on Sunday, here are the last five songs from my music library on shuffle: (As usual, please don't judge!)

No Such Thing As A Broken Heart, Old Dominion

We Found Love, Rhianna

Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke

This Is Your Day, 112

Video Killed The Radio Star, The Buggles

I love irony. Video Killed The Radio Star was recorded in 1979, but is remembered eternally as the first video shown on MTV at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981. Do you remember when music videos were new? Do you remember when MTV actually played music videos?

Things move, things change. The Walkman, which actually came into existence before MTV, gained popularity. Remember putting a cassette in a little contraption with earphones? You could walk around, ignoring everything around you, listening to your music getting hit by a car crossing the street because you were ignoring the don't walk sign. Then it grew into a CD player that you could carry around with you. I had one of the CD players that I hooked up to the cassette player in my car so I could listen to CDs in my car. When those first came out the biggest problem was every time I hit a bump in the car the CD skipped. Eventually they made CD players that were a little more stable but by then MP3 players were coming out and cars had CD players instead of cassette players in them anyway.

In the history of the car it didn't have a radio at all and then there were AM radios, and FM radios, and then eight track players… for there is always been something to kill the last kind of star, hasn't there?

My great-grandmother and I were always very close and from the time that I turned 16 and got my license we would get together every Tuesday for coffee and sit and just talk for a few hours. I absolutely loved those nights because we just loved sharing stories. When I was on the high school radio station in 12th grade, she was just close enough to get the station in and listened to us every morning. She was tickled when every now and then my partner would dedicate a song to “Opal, one of our favorite listeners.” I did the news and had to be very careful to make sure it was accurate because I think I was her most regular source for national and local information. There were a lot of times during the 7:30am slot, I think she may have been our only listener too.

She shared stories with a smile about how the world had changed in her lifetime. When she was born they didn't even have electricity or indoor plumbing. and now her great grand daughter can drive a car to come visit her and even bring ice cream. She was in our cable area and sometimes watched my sports programming, I think mostly the end to see my name on TV. My boss, the Executive Producer, and me, the Producer on the fist page of the credits. She was alive when women won the right to vote, the 19th Amendment ratified the year she turned 14. She was a line inspector at Ford Motor Company and boasted a photo of the truck I drove for productions work for everyone to see. She saw the first Mustang come off the assembly line and wanted one of the "Pony Cars" since you first saw them. Her last car ended up being a Mustang (a cute, four-cylinder muscle car) with my mother my grandmother telling my father and grandfather “don't you dare even think about talking her out of it. No man is selling the WRONG car this time.” One of the things she bragged about with that was in the last 70 years, at the time, the women in our family had gotten stronger because we don't give up and we don't let ourselves get old.

She always smiled and reveled in the changes in the world and how most of them made life better. She is without question how I learned to appreciate changes in the world and changes in our personal lives in general. She probably has a lot to do with my interest in domestic history over learning details about wars. And don’t get old - My great-grandmother loved the old gospel and country music she grew up with. She was also a fan of REO Speedwagon.

She is definitely the source of my eclectic musical taste and I will always love her for that. My mother’s tastes were the same kind of defying the demographic. I'm the one who introduced HER to Dmitri Shostakovich and SHE played Toad The Wet Sprocket for me. My great-great-grandmother had an Elvis scrapbook because she loved his music from the first time she heard it and the family remembered quote was “That boy is definitely going to change things!” That love of current music seemed to skip a generation with my grandmother but she learned how to use a computer in her 70s, so we'll give her a pass on the music.

As I said before I love irony and then love domestic history. Video Killed The Radio Star is an important part of our culture’s musical history. Yeah now when you think about how many videos you don't see on MTV and how we put earbuds in our phones and listen to either our personal playlist or whatever RADIO station is on our music service and that kind of makes you think maybe TECHNOLOGY killed the video star.


Now of course it's very hard to find someplace that will allow you to embed a video to share it anymore. It's a silly song and not an impressive video but it's a piece of history. So if you would like to experience a little bit of history here's a link to the video:

https://youtu.be/9ffoTMBlAOA

Friday By Request (8/4/06)

I was looking through some of my old journals, actually looking for this very poem for David. I actually keep not only my personal journals but copy of everything that I've posted, that I think is worth keeping, as well as everything I posted on a regular basis. David actually was the inspiration for the whole Friday By Request idea. I'd love to do that again.

I have my regular blog readers and I also advertise my blog on my Facebook page so I'm definitely inviting anyone who would like to participate in bringing back the occasional Friday By Request, to send me your challenges! Keeping in mind that this is a family-friendly blog, I don't think I've ever refused a request for Friday's yet.

So after that introduction, here is the very first ever Friday By Request, from 2006!

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All right bad poetry fans! I was writing poems last night, actually one about the cats, when David challenged me. "Why don’t you write a poem about the groceries?” So I did and it gave me an idea. 

I will do Friday as “Friday By Request.” The first person to make a request before Wednesday will give me my challenge for Friday. It can be a topic for a poem, photo or the script for a TV or Radio ad. Try other ideas - challenge me! It can be for any topic or product, all I ask is that you remember this is a family blog. I have kids on my friends list!

HeySend me your suggestions with the subject “For Friday?” through the Yahoo 360 messages. If I don’t have any requests on any given week, I won’t do the Friday By Request blog. If I have more than one, I’ll  o the first one I get. If I don’t do yours, feel free to resubmit it any time after the Friday blog is posted. It might be serious from time to time, but more often than not it will be bad, funny or both!


Without futher ado, here is David’s request...

A Poem about Groceries

For David

Apples, oranges and plums 

The fruit bowl cries for purpose 

Lettuce, tomatoes and peppers 

The poor crisper has none

Burgers chops and chicken 

The freezer meat shelves empty 

Ice cream, veggies and entrées 

The top shelves barren too

Flour, sugar and coffee


The canisters sound so hollow 

Cereal, soup and pasta


The cupboard shelves collect dust

Dinner rolls, cookies and Pop Tarts 
The bread box, light as a feather 

Cinnamon, chili and garlic


The spice rack bottles are clear

Let’s go to the grocery store!

* send a message with the subject " Friday By Request" to chroniclesofnani@gmail.com, a private message on Facebook or just as a comment here. Out of respect for the writer and all readers, please try to refrain from suggestions about religion or politics.

Weekend Playlist, December 2

There's been a lot of unhappy and perplexing going on in Naniland. Oh, it's Nothing to worry about.

Have I bragged about my niece, Tori, who finished her masters last June in psychology? I am so proud of her and it is such an important and noble profession. I can honestly say the incredible relationship I have with my dad now has everything to do with the counseling place that helped me when I went to it for a few month after school. I can also say seeing a psychologist a while after being diagnosed with MS kept me from being clinically depressed. So I guess what I’m saying is if you’re having any sort of personal problems, things you are even nervous talking to with your best friend, psychologists can save your life, or rather they can show you how to save your own life. Most health insurances cover talking to a professional and there is absolutely NOTHING to be ashamed of in seeking help. Actually it's quite more something to be proud of. It's making your problems your solution.

I’m kind of in that kind of funk right now for many reasons. I’m gonna be meeting with a social worker, who happens to also be a psychologist. I have some pretty big issues that need fixed. And I am openly admitting I'm going to get help because that's what strong people do.

So this week’s songs are not from my general library. They're from a playlist that sort of reflects things that are going on in my brain right now. The playlist doesn't have a title because right now I feel a bit untitled.
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Blue Train, Marty Stuart

The Boxer, Simon and Garfunkel

Don’t Lie To Me, Barbra Streisand

Burn, Usher

Who’s Crying Now, Journey

While going through my general funk, I've been reading some of my old journals. When that last song, Who's Crying Now by Journey came on it really reminded me of something sad about my old journals. I used to keep journals written when I was in high school. That's when I started having my occasional not able to sleep and I stayed up all night listening to the radio while writing in my journals. Sometimes it was funny stuff, sometimes it was things that frustrated me. I think back in high school is when I realized when something was bothering me if I wrote about it and just kept writing until the problem presented itself, the real problem, I could solve it. That's something that I've always done.

Nani circa 1981

Sadly, in my 20s, I decided silly things that I'd written when I was in high school were a dumb thing to keep and I threw them all away. I'm 52 now and I'd love to go back and read some of those things that went through my mind when I was a teenager. So note to any teens that read this - don't throw things away that are a piece of you, no matter how silly or painful a piece of you, you think they are, because in years to come you'll wish you had them. Whether it’s to show you how far you’ve come, remind you how strong you were and still could be, or just to remind yourself about the great person you've always been. It's a lot easier now because you can put it all in a digital folder.


Where this particular song really brought out that said memory was because I remember the first time that I heard the song. It came out in July of 1981, which means it wasn't a school night-yay for me on that one, right? But I remember the Journal with the green cardboard cover but all handwritten and I remember talking about Journey's new song and how awesome it was. And just to be silly now, what really made me think about it was hearing the guitar solo at the end and actually writing something like “wha, wha-wha, wha-wha, wha-whaaah … SO COOL!"

Such a silly direct line to remember, huh? But it made me smile.

So here's a fun know. The video is the song with the album cover because no actual video was produced for this song I could find or remember seeing. Why bother? The song came out in July 1981. MTV didn't exist until August 1, 1981. Can you imagine putting out a single and no video today?

These Hands

A little poetic and a lot of positive memoirs on a rainy day.

Before MS I accomplished...

I wrote calligraphy. One Christmas I handmade all my cards.

I baked, not just for the holidays. I made peach and apple crisps with fresh-picked fruit. Whenever the mood struck me I'd bake cookies, cakes, brownies... When I lived with my parents there was often treats for breakfast in the morning after an end of the day project.

I played both electric and acoustic guitar. The first song I ever learned in formal lessons was Leaving On A Jet Plane. My favorites to play and sing were Crystal Ball by Styx and Neil Diamond's Play Me. Although it was "cooler" that I played rock and roll electric, especially as a girl in the late 70s and early 80s, I enjoyed my acoustic guitar the most. I was most proud of playing Dust In The Wind.

I wrote and copyrighted 4 songs.

I did crafts with the kids I babysat as a teen and with my nieces in my 30s.

I sewed most of my own wardrobe in the 80s, the costumes for my brother's band, Tempest, and a lot of the costumes my friends and I wore to professional wrestling matches in the late 80s/early 90s.

I cross-stitched a lot of small projects that I gave as gifts and Grandma taught me how to crochet. It took me almost a year to complete, but I finished my first afghan during the Super Bowl in 2003.

Inspired, I hand wrote the notes and production outline to pitch to my program director in one night for the biggest single project I produced in cable tv.

These hands have touched the foot of Jesus on Michelangelo's La Pieta in Rome, dipped in the water at The Fountain of Youth in St Augustine, touched the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico and ałl five Great Lakes. These hands have shaken hands with George Foreman, Gordie Howe, a US Senator, and a Michigan governor, fed babies and held my great grandmother's hands with love even though she no longer knew who I was.

These hands no longer have the strength or finesse they once had but I can't allow myself to rue what they can no longer do. Rather, I make the most of what they can still do while I celebrate what they have done.

American Hamburgers

Nani, Noni and Mom, circa 1983

So I'm not going to make excuses for not keeping up on things in the blog-world. The truth is I'm still having some problems hit and miss which includes the height of the new chair not being able to comfortably get in front of the computer, so I'm not on it unless I'm lounging back in the recliner. I still need to form a working normal for myself. I've been feeling like a bit of a hermit so for the most part when I get on the computer, I'm scrapbooking. That doesn't mean that I'm totally a hermit. I'll check my email and I visit Facebook, but I don't post a lot of anywhere right now. I am always getting on my own case for that and I'm trying to inspire myself to become involved with the world again. Politics has been very frustrating and almost painful. I post a little about that because I'm ripping my hair out with the idiocy that's going on in the presidential election this year. There seems to be a lot of people that are not fact-checking, they're just reacting to false statements. It frightens my "ugly-cripple-anchor baby" brain. It's just going to take some time before I'm ready to venture out into the world again.


I was looking at digital coupons to add to my Kroger card and one of the coupon choices was this:

White Castle condiments at Kroger?

It made me think about how long it's been since I've been to a White Castle. Ruthie, my aide, said that she hadn't been to a White Castle in 12 to 13 years, or half of her life. For me I don't think I've been to a White Castle since my grandmother passed in 1989 that got us both reminiscing about White Castle.

For me, White Castle was the American hamburger. What I mean is there was a White Castle on the road on the way to my grandmother’s house. In the Italian grandma tradition, Noni cooked... everything… constantly! Of course friends and family visiting, especially family, would encourage her every now and then to take a day off and just let us bring dinner in. She would have none of that, also in the good Italian grandma fashion, she loved cooking and cooking for people. But every now and then Noni would actually feel like taking a day off. When she wanted the day off she would say "I don't feel like cooking, let's get a bag of American hamburgers." You see, to Noni's palette White Castle hamburgers were the quintessential American food. (Keep in mind the actual Italian food is NOTHING like Sbarro or even Olive Garden.) So to me White Castle is a wonderful memory of "Noni's Day Off."

White Castle available in the frozen food? I had to check out the White Castle website. The last time I ate at the White Castle the onion chips were relatively new. Now you can get all kinds of things at White Castle! They have chicken and fish and a full breakfast menu. And then the sides; it's not just fries or onion chips anymore. Now you can get mozzarella sticks cheesy fries and fish nibblers. It's just amazing that White Castle is still competitive, keeping up with the fast food market and it still is that corner hamburger stand where you can get your sliders. Part of me would like to stop at White Castle for old times sake. But the closest one to here is about an hour away. Maybe it's a flavor that's better kept in my memory anyway.

Billy Bob Can't Say That

Back in June, when the power chair was new, I fell asleep in it. I’d been having trouble sleeping and David let me be for the night. The chair reclines all the way back, tilts up and the feet lift. It’s almost totally flat and in the right position can be pretty comfy. After a few nights of MS insomnia, it was a deep and restful sleep, aaaaahhhhh. I fell asleep with Buddy Bat, my iPad, on my chest, which eventually slid off of me. I vaguely remembered feeling it slide to my stomach and down my legs. I knew I’d have to upright the chair and fish it off the ground with my reacher.

I moved the back of the chair upright and grabbed the reacher. Then I started moving the leg supports down, “woooo…ooo…ooo…CRUNCH!” I immediately stopped the chair. The motor doesn’t go “crunch.” Buddy Bat didn’t fall to the floor. Buddy Bat slid onto the working parts of the joints in the chair.

I’m pretty dependent on my tablet. It’s my library and my game console. I have an app with all my medicines that automatically searches for potential drug interactions when I add a new one. My calendar is in it, my daily journals, notes for my doctors and even my grocery list app! Keep in mind that I really can’t write legibly or turn pages while not dropping a paperback. My tablet really has become my most important assistive device for daily living!

So Buddy Bat had to be fixed or replaced. The tablet worked fine, every app, and swiping across the screen accessed everything although half he screen was a bit difficult to read. Also, every time I swiped the screen I got tiny shards of glass on my finger. My replacement insurance expired back in April and it couldn't be renewed anymore because they don’t make the iPad 2.0 anymore. But I was able to update to the 4.0, faster and more memory, for less than I paid for the original one. That my friends, is the silver lining. There is always one of those if you look for it.

The New Buddy Bat is the gold one!

So I had to move in to the new tablet. Much of my stuff was available from the cloud. Every app I’d downloaded and my music library was transferred with my sign-in. I imagine that’s the same with any tablet or smart phone, that you sign in to whichever store you download apps from an you can download he apps you use on your other devices. The apple apps had the info and setups as I was used to, my calendar was intact and I had my notes, but some of the non-apple apps had to have the info put back in. Mainly, I had to re-enter all of my medications in my Rx app. I also had to re-train Siri. You know, I had to remind her that David is my husband and “Lee” is who I mean when I say “message Pop .”

I also had to give her the alternate spelling of my name. Siri looks at my name and pronounces it “Nanny.” My nickname is pronounced like the Hawaiian word for beautiful or the Japanese word for huh? But Siri is neither Hawaiian nor Japanese!

Back when I was a teenager, there was a talking computer at the pizza place we used to hang out at. It was Showbiz Pizza, which was a knockoff of Chuck E. Cheese with a little better pizza and a bear named Billy Bob. The little kids weren’t into the talking computer so much, but we teens were! Remember, it was the early 80s. Typing a sentence and hearing the computer voice read it back was a cool new thing that you didn’t get to do at home. Of course we wanted to hear it try to pronounce our names. But we found out the when you typed any profanity the computer said “Billy Bob can’t say that.” We were good kids that hung out at family restaurants, got along fine with parents and played video games with the kids. But we were still teenagers. It became our mission to figure out how to make the computer swear!

We tried just typing a few lines of random letters with the profanity in the middle, like “jdkifnxyskmassholejfdikjkn” The computer voice sounded like it was mumbling with a mouthful of marbles and flow right into “Billy Bob can’t say that” and continue to mumble. We laughed at each failure, as did the preteens who weren’t waiting to use the machine but just waiting for us to win. We finally discovered that phonetics, dashes and spaces worked. Yes, honor roll students and early PCs made for the discovery of the likes of sh-it, you beech and what made us preteen heroes for a while, if you use ah sandwiched between the f and k in a single word, it sounds just like a soft u. Every time the computer swore we laughed and cheered and the preteens took notes.

I used this trick to teach my first Mac how to say my name in 1997. Nah-knee, but when I changed my name in the first iPad, Siri said “nah” with a harder a, like ant. See our devices don't have computer sounding voices anymore. Siri is an actual person’s voice with sounds formed on an algorithm that works with a script of normal sounds. Siri and I had a talk about pronouncing my name and she decided to spell it “Nonny.”

It kinda makes me wonder if today’s text slang comes from smart phones telling teenagers how to swear.

I’ll be 50 in a few days. I’m allowed to make an occasional “we were better” comment. ;)

A Few Spring Things

Happy Opening Day! Like the parties on Christmas Eve have increased over the years, there were 3 Opening Day Eve parties. I watched bits of the first one, because my aide was in and yesterday was salon-day (hair-wash and pamper,) and all of the last two. Opening Day is today, not because I’m a Reds fan, but because the oldest professional team in baseball has always played at home on Opening Day. Baseball resuming in Cincinnati has always marked the beginning of the new season.

I still want to one day get to Cincinnati for Opening Day, parade and everything. I’ve been to OD for the Tigers as both a paying fan, intern and paid staff. No matter in what capacity, there is nothing that compares to the electric feeling in the air on Opening Day. As huge as it is in Tiger-town, you can feel the city-wide buzz is even more powerful in Cincinnati watching it on TV. I’d hope that the Joey Votto jersey and wheelchair could get me to the front of the parade line, or at least a free drink. **smiles**

When Melinda, my aide a few days a week, was here on Saturday it was snowing. It was enough snow that at times it looked pretty heavy and it did stick to the ground. It was April 2, so where did that prank come from? Its been a rough spring for me with no actual usable wheelchair, I’ve been a house-body, so I pretty much missed the crocuses this year except for one photo David took when they first came up and a glimpse of the end of them and beginning of the daffodil buds when I went to the doctor’s office a couple weeks ago. Melinda came right back in after she left and brought me one of the narcissus blooms. It didn’t get knocked off, she picked it. “So you get to enjoy at least one of them.” It made my day.

The snow we got on Saturday was melted away pretty quickly yesterday morning. Even though it was still a cold day, it started out sunny. We have nothing to complain about. I read on Edna's blog  that they woke up to a lot more snow from overnight in New England yesterday. She had some nice snow pictures and in spite of the snow, she offered a very bright and warm quick page freebie. By golly, it’s spring! I followed her lead and rebelled against the chill with this:

Credits: 2016 quick page 15 by Miss Edna, Open Windows by Mandy King and Connie Prince

I added a bit of my slightly sarcastic sense of humor, I remembered the ads from my childhood that “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” It seems she pranks us enough. I don’t need no stinkin’ real butter…

Funny memories… Marco was being nosey about my toothbrushing stuff and it brought to mind an old lesson about why they don’t sell cat-toothbrushes.

Nani and Ritchie ages 17 & 1

When I was 17, I had a cat, Ritchie. Ritchie was all black except for a few white hairs on his chest and he was incredibly affectionate, although dumb as a box of rocks. On one given day, 17-year-old Nani was dumber than that box of rocks. I was playing with Ritchie, nuzzling his face, and he had incredible fish-breath! I figured it was a good idea to brush his teeth. I got an old toothbrush and put a little toothpaste on it. I never got to brush his teeth. As soon as the toothpaste hit his tongue he freaked. He ran through the house with the foam that the tooth paste instantly created trailing behind him leaving a frothy white map to exactly where he was. Where he it eventually ended up was his water bowl and I don't think I’ve ever seen a cat drink so much water!

Leave cat dental procedures to the professionals!

I Think I Got It Tough?

I’ve been very self-involved the past few weeks. I haven’t shared a lot because I’ve sorta been in a serious dark spot for me and I don’t want to share that in case it’s contagious. Hey, I’m serious there. I know a smile or a laugh can be passed on when someone is feeling low and I’ve experienced someone else’s bad mood sucking the life out of my mood. Anyone who cohabitates with their significant other or even a platonic best friend knows what I mean, you’ve felt it first hand. Its part of the emotional connection. But as much as strong happiness can put a dance in a stranger’s step when they walk by, a very dark brood can push that same stranger into traffic.

I was sorting through my art journals and I decided the MS art journal pages should be their own book instead of throwing them in my main scrapbooks in chronological order. They express an area of my creativity that I want to keep in its own compartment, I’m not ashamed of it at all. I think it’s good and it’s great therapy. It’s just that it’s very dark compared to most of my scrapping and certainly compared to the parts of my world that I want to preserve.

While pulling out folders, I came across this page I did in September.

Ghost From The Past

Credits: Distressed and This Can’t Be Happening by Created by Jill Scraps, 

When Skies Are Gray by Ginger Bread Ladies

Who we are and who we will always be is a work of art itself. Ideally, it’s a work we love being and others appreciate it too. That work of art is a combination of everything and everyone who has touched our lives. Because we’re always being “painted” or “sculpted” with a stroke here or smoothing out there by different artists we are ever-changing works. Everything we see, every life we touch, leaves a little and takes a little.

The woman represented by this page was very real and although we never spoke a word to each other, I don’t recall ever even making eye contact with her, she left an impression on me. She is one of the artists who added a few strokes to who I am today. I find myself thinking of her a lot as I struggle through the especially trying times.

When I was a young adult, I often went to a bar/concert theater with friends in a rough part of Detroit. They had the local bands and hard rock and heavy metal bands that weren’t big enough to book arenas when they toured, but they could sell out a downtown concert bar. It was festival seating and for the big concerts it was common for there to be a line going around the building before the doors opened of young people, mostly from the suburbs. Safety in numbers, it was a party atmosphere with plenty of six-packs and wine coolers, talking, flirting and getting to know strangers.

She lived there, in those rough streets. To the quiet woman, concert nights were working nights, collecting the empty beer and wine cooler bottles which were worth a dime apiece in Michigan. Sometimes she had a cart, but usually it was a plastic shopping bag or two that she collected her dimes in. It was the unwritten and unspoken rule that she never spoke to us and we never spoke to her. When anyone finished a bottle or can when in line, they left the empty on the sidewalk where she could reach it. The only time anyone ever heard her voice was the occasional time someone would get an extra hamburger at McDonalds and leave it with the beer can. She took the burger and said “thank you.”

She was ragged, dirty and didn’t smile, but she didn’t let her lot in life completely destroy her either. She didn’t panhandle, she collected bottles. Altruistically, she cleaned up after the kids for her payday. The piece of her that she left with me was pride and determination. She left me her dignity and the knowledge that despite the standards I’ve given myself, that dignity is much deeper than a credit score or clean hair. I am able to feel good about the little victories because they are MY victories. Every time I use a bag to move something because I only have one free hand, or lament at my ”Snape hair” or that I was too weak to shower and “smell like a bag-lady,” her image comes to my mind. It might get better, it might not. But as long as I do the best I can and never stop trying today, I can still grasp an ounce of pride, of dignity, even on my worst days.

It was over 25 years ago that the unnamed woman touched my life every couple weeks. The rough life in the streets tells me she’s probably gone. But she is not at all forgotten.

Brrr...This is June?

Good morning friends! It’s 7AM and 46 degrees outside. If this were March I’d be ecstatic about the balmy temperature and sunny day. However, being June and all I’m ready to panic! I mean, we really didn’t have summer last year and after the deep freeze just a few months ago, I’d just hate to think I missed the warm weather already. I didn’t go outside every day just because the high temp was in the 80s because I figured it was only the beginning, ya know? This morning I have R2D2 running steady to heat up the room and it has nothing to do with a chill from the air conditioning. I even gave thought to passing on making a cup of morning coffee to get back into the room with my diligent space heater. But you know me well enough to know I stayed in the chill of the kitchen long enough to get a cup of my morning elixir!

Yesterday was Marco’s birthday! Our little boy cat-dog is 2! The kids all shared Savory Salmon Feast birthday cake at Marco’s party last night and David and I sang Happy Birthday. All three of the kitty-kids were so affectionate with the party spirit and even Marco joined in the singing as we held the plates of salmon feast and serenaded him.

My allergies seem to finally be calming down. It was especially bad this year, but I’ve read it just was especially bad; not just for me. I think the storms we had last weekend must have tamped the pollen down so it’s not flying all over. The rain made everything a robust green and made the trees full and healthy looking. The main drawback to last weekend’s rain is it was the festival weekend at the church across the street and the usual carnival sounds I enjoy hearing that weekend were too often interrupted by the sound of rain and thunder! The festival goers came back when the sun did, but it still hurts the church/school's fundraising when rain interrupts the carnival.

I never went to a carnival that I didn’t ride the Tilt-a-Whirl at least once when I was in my teens/20s. Usually I’d ride it a few times! Nowadays I really don’t go to carnivals; they set-it-up-for-a-week rides really aren’t wheelchair-friendly. It’s still great to listen to the carnival sounds and the happy screeching people on a warm summer weekend. But I’ve found that I can turn the speed up a little on the power chair if I have a smooth and a little open space and spin for some fun. I call that tilt-a-whirling! I can go around about 3 times and then I have the same feeling I used to enjoy at carnivals too! What is/was your favorite carnival ride or game?

Happy Memorial Day

Remember with a prayer or grateful thought today those who have given their lives in service of our nation. We don’t always have to agree with the motives of our government, but the men and women who have answered the call by desire or requirement at their time of service have represented you and me with courage and dignity.

Happy Black Cat Holiday!

Happy Friday the 13th to all the kitties and the humans brave enough to embrace rather than fear black acts and the number 13! It makes me sad that black cats are hard to place shelter cats. They say it’s because people think they’re “bad luck.” Really? In 2015? It’s just amazing that will all the very real bad things in our world people still fall for unsubstantiated superstitions with archaic roots and take out their gullible fear-attitudes on innocent animals. We celebrate Friday the 13th as a cat-holiday and have adopted the American St Patrick’s Day attitude for it – “Pet me, I’m a black cat” and every cat is a black cat on Friday the 13th!

Please feel free to right click and save the graphic I made for the holiday and share it on your blog or social media sites too. Make Friday the 13th a fun day; catnip for everyone! (and something with milk, like chocolate or ice cream if you don’t do nip.)


Now I’m joining Heather at Feeling Beachie for Follow Friday Four Fill In Blog Hop. This is a meme I haven’t done in a while, but I really enjoy! Stop over to Feeling Beachie to join the fun!

The statements:
1. The worst ____________ is _______________
2. I would rather____________________ than _____________
3. I can ________ but I wish I could ________
4. The song ________________ evokes memories of _______________

My Answers:
1. The worst thing about autumn is winter is the next season.
2. I would rather sit at a ballpark in a rain delay than watch a parade in the snow.
3. I can spin in circles at the mall in my power chair like a tilt-a-whirl but I wish I could still climb into a real Tilt-A-Whirl at a carnival. (That one was too easy, huh?)
4. The song Mess Is Mine by Vance Joy, my current favorite, evokes memories of how wonderful David is and how lucky I am.


I leave you with my signature for Ginger Snaps this month. The challenge was lots of green in your siggie. I got that, but NO green shamrocks! My green eyes and summer freckles are courtesy of the orange part of the flag! My mom used to tell me that it irritated my great grandfather when she wore green to school on St. Patrick ’s Day because her Irish heritage was orange not green. So while I do wear green too, I’ve always made sure to rock a little orange on that Irish holiday in memory of Dad-dad.

Credits: Break Time by Colie’s Corner, Lucky Me by Aprilisa Designs, 

Crocuses from Vintage Rose Blossom by Carena Designs

My First Friends

This will kinda be a replacement/reprise of the Monday Mug Shots that I haven’t done in a while. Where appropriate I might show a mug or photo. Retired Not Tired hosts the new Memory Monday meme. It’s recording our memoirs a week at a time with a new prompt each Monday. This week’s prompt is:

My First Friend

I don’t remember my first friends but I remember my Mom telling me about them. In the late spring before I was even a year old we’d spend afternoons in our fenced-in yard in front of our Detroit home. Fenced was good because I was crawling and Mom was pregnant with my brother so she could let me play in the grass and sit in a lawn chair to watch me. There were a couple of girls that stopped by the fence every day on their way home from school and gushed over the baby. Mom told me they always made me smile and laugh and they enjoyed their visits with me too.

Sadly, that was the spring of 1967. During the summer there was a 5-day riot in Detroit that ended with 43 dead and over 1000 injured in the city. When fall came I was sad because my friends walked right by and didn’t stop anymore. After that summer young black girls didn’t stop to play with little white girls in Detroit. The girls knew the tension and that they had to walk by without stopping and my mom knew she couldn’t try to ask them to, but I was just over a year old and didn’t understand.

I’d like to think that I did get a little of a life-lesson from it at that young age. Maybe it was the first time I knew how silly the color of someone’s skin meaning anything about them as a person was. It was definitely the first time I was involved in grownups doing something stupid that ultimately hurt kids. Maybe that’s why I’ve always understood that every choice I make can affect other people in a good or bad way. People being stupid hurt the whole city and I’m not so sure Detroit has recovered from that riot yet.

A Season Sweep

It did NOT get better.

In baseball a season sweep, winning every game against an opponent for the year, is a fun and wonderful thing when it’s your team doing the sweeping.If your team is the one getting swept it’s good to think positively and remember that if you’re getting swept, well, if it was real sweeping at least you could say you don’t have to walk and scooting across the floor might be kinda fun. Another thing that makes it easier is if you go to that final nail in the season’s coffin in person and bring fans of the other team with you so someone goes home happy! That was yesterday, yet yesterday was much more fun than you’d ever imagine getting swept for the season could be.

As much as I dislike Interleague Play, and I immensely dislike it… One of my papers way back in English 102 was about Interleague Play and why it was an awful idea. I still stick to what I said 19 years ago… But I digress. As much as I dislike it, there are some good points. The Reds and Red Sox played each other this year; 2 games in Boston and 2 in Cincinnati. The Reds lost both of the Boston games. We hadn’t seen the Red Sox this year and David really wanted to go to one of the games in Cincinnati. My cousin, Rob, lives in between us and Cincinnati and is a Red Sox fan too. Rob and I have wanted to get together for a game or coffee somewhere and if he was available for the game, what a great choice for a get-together!

A few emails and a chat with the nice agent at reds.com to get accessible seats and I had tickets on the way for Rob and his daughter, K, David and me for yesterday’s game. I was excited on so many levels. David and Rob had never met and they do have the home of their baseball hearts in Red Sox Nation in common and I’d seen pictures since she was a baby but a decade later I hadn’t met K! The absolute to the excitement was that although we chat and communicate online often, I LOVE social media for that, Rob and I haven’t had a face-to-face get together in a long time. In fact the last time we spent actual time together I have a vivid snippet of memory of Rob and his sister, Rhonda, my cool cousins, going to do something and me pouting because I was too little to go too. You see, they were double-digits, practically teenagers, and I was still in single digits.

Yeah, I probably followed them around like an annoying little cousin because I wanted to do everything with them when we got to see each other. We just didn’t see the family in Ohio, Mom’s side of my people, as often as we did Pop’s side who were all in Michigan like us. I was probably as annoying to Rob and Rhonda when I did see them as all of my younger cousins were to me on Pop’s side. Really I hope I did as well keeping from making my younger cousins feel like pests as they did keeping that from me!

So fast forward up to yesterday.

Long lost cousins reunite!

We met just outside the stadium at noon before the 12:35 game. Introductions were made and I was suddenly the minority in my Reds jersey. K opted to go “fence” as in sitting on the fence in her Red Sox shirt and Reds hat. That’s like I usually was back in the 90’s at Reds/Braves games or like I will be someday when the Tigers and Reds play in October again.

I’m going to take a “ain’t technology great?” moment right now. Not only was our day set up with emails and online ticket chats, but iPhones and an iPad were essential to the day too! The iPhone enabled Rob and me to find each other in a crowd of people on a big plaza outside of the stadium. Imagine that even ten years ago!

Now, read carefully and bookmark this page. We had the four tickets, knew exactly where they were before we left Toledo and took them from that place when we left the car. And then they were gone. I don’t know if they were dropped somewhere in the car or in the garage, but somehow in the shuffle with the wheelchair and getting to the plaza, they were lost. David went back to frantically search the car. I wanted to go to the ticket window and Rob offered to push me.

I opened the iPad and got the receipt information from my email. I asked at the window if it was possible to get the tickets reprinted, if I had enough information. I was asked how I purchased my ticket, if it was reds.com. I said it was and the woman at the ticket counter took the iPad, opened to my confirmation email, through the window slot and walked away. A few minutes later she returned with my iPad and 4 tickets. Do you think even FIVE years ago that could happen? I called David and told him we have tickets, let’s go see the game.

When we got to our seats and got situated it was time for the razzing to begin. You see, Rob and K were there to see the Reds lose Tuesday night’s game so the Red Sox had already won the season series and given that the Red Sox have a worse record this year it was the mathematical probability that David would see his team win once when I saw mine lose twice since they lost the game Friday we were at before Summerail. Add to that Rob had been there the night before and they won. The math was not in their favor going into the game. Rob threw in a bet with his Reds fan neighbor as being a factor but that neighborly “bet” was for a series win, a sweep wasn’t necessary to decide the bet. So in my best fan bravado I pronounced that it didn’t work into the mathematical equation and the Reds were going to win.

Rob and K

 Our traditional baseball selfie. 

I should have moved my arm to uncover the Reds logo!

Don’t think there weren’t doubts behind that bravado. The Reds are a good team this year, not a great team and Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips; the biggest offensive threats are BOTH on the disabled list. That leaves a huge defensive hole at first and second too. When you have good players taking the places of great to phenomenal players, it definitely affects the team’s performance. But I’ve been listening to David telling me the World Series champions of 2013 in last place his year are much worse that the “good” I rate the Reds right now. Law of averages and probability and all says… never mind. The baseball gods weren’t practicing law yesterday.

So we got swept this season by the Red Sox. Like I told Rob the company I kept put the smile on my face that my team didn’t. Anyway I always say a bad day at the ball park is better than a good day almost anywhere else, and I stand by that!

After the game we met at Graeter’s for ice cream. More great technology; Rob found the shop on his phone and sent it to me as a message. I clicked the link in the message and a map appeared! We all had ice cream, my favorite food group, together and talked baseball, travel, books a little paper as opposed to eReaders and barns! They started collecting quilt square barns with a pamphlet with addresses to locate the quilt-barns. It’s much like David and I collect the bicentennial barns. Rob and K searched out the barns while Rob’s wife, K’s mom, Kathy was on-call. Kathy, who I haven’t met, yet, is a doctor. With his second kid, Rob is a stay at home parent. Well, okay, a stay-on-the-road parent? I know from weekends and some weeks with Tori and Rina when they were little, that nobody just stays at home with kids!

K is a sweetheart. Even if she elected to not go all Reds, I wasn’t completely alone. We have Joey Votto as a favorite Red in common too! When her dad mentioned something about it likely being the end of live baseball season for them because school started soon there was a little yelp and her eyes bugged out a bit; she’s not ready for the summer to end either!

After a day of David and Rob talking lots of Red Sox and ribbing me in much the way my Reds bravado deserved, we did have to make our way home. It was great fun and we all agree we’ll do this again!

Thoroughly Thursday

First, let’s talk about the weather; BRRRR! It’s mostly in the 70s here and in July 80s is okay, really! There have been some hot days, but this is mostly a very mild summer so far. I hope it means there is a mild winter ahead again. I wouldn’t be happy if Global Climate Change ends up meaning Ohio Cooling Change. If we have the Polar Vortex winters every 4 or 5 years and very mild ones in between, that’d be fine. I can plan vacations accordingly.

Now for some snippets from Naniland as of late.

Yesterday I started my day in the arms of three firemen!

Boy, I wish that was as scandalous as it sounds! It would have been more fun. Lately it's been getting harder to get in and especially out of the bathroom. It’s the location of the counter, door and the turn I have to make in the morning to get to the stair-climber. Yesterday I failed. I was holding on to the counter and the walker just outside the bathroom and my balance gave out. I tried to lift upon the counter and David was trying to do what he could to help but finally my left leg was just to weak to keep supporting me and I told David it was no use; I was falling. The cool thing is it was almost a controlled fall, falling slowly so it lessened the impact. I landed on the floor but also hit my shoulder and head on the shower chair. After making sure nothing moved less than it already did, I managed to scoot out to the stairs, but there was no way I was getting up and we called 911.

Folks, if I weighed a hundred pounds I wouldn’t let David lift me on his own. 100 struggling or trying to be helpful pounds is a dangerous thing to lift on your own. I’m a little more /sarcasm than 100. The fire department dispatched three EMS guys. After a few tries at ways that would work, we got one with two of the guys behind me lifting and one in front steadying me and balancing me. I ended up hugging the guy in front and the other two hugging me from behind while I balanced. Then they got me in the stair lift chair and I got down and transferred to my power chair without further incident. It had been over a year and now my safety board goes back to 1.

Social Media

Well, a blog is social media, a personal blog is anyway, but I do some other social media things too. My latest big news on Facebook is my friends list. My 2 favorite teachers from high school sent me friend requests. How cool is that? When I was in high school I was a renegade. I was defiant and a had a huge wall in front of me to protect me from my own teenage insecurities. I wasn’t a troublemaker, not really, but I pushed established boundaries. There were two teachers who really saw through my teenage façade and pushed me to break past my own boundaries. They saw potential and nurtured it. I don’t know if they foresaw how truly influential and precious their influence on me would be for the rest of my life but when I got a friend invite from my broadcast teacher and then my French & humanities teacher those were acknowledgements and rekindled acquaintances that I treasure! Justin Verlander could follow me on Twitter and it wouldn’t mean as much. If you like how I turned out, thank my teachers, a couple of them especially.

Instagram; remember my plan for all coffee vignettes? Well, java_nani has become a bit more than that. I found a great Weight Watchers community there and one subset of that that I enjoy a “share the love” group with. We exchange support and monthly gifts in the mail with each other. The gifts include inspiring and supportive items and also an opportunity to share snacks and things that have been helpful to us. My partner’s box goes out tomorrow and it’s as exciting as Christmas!

I’ve also found a great MS support network there. I’m currently participating in a daily IG post meme leading up to World MS Trend Day, July 31. Here are a couple of the daily photo-posts I’ve done:

Prompt: Love

 

Prompt: Fun

 

Prompt: Sand

Short notes:

- My “training phone” died this week and I made the big leap to a phone that’s smarter than me! I have an iPhone that talks to my iPad and they talk about me in front of my chest (where the phone is clipped) That they share information is both cool and scary to me.

- As of this morning for the first time in 31 years I'm not a legal driver. My license expires next week so I went to the DMV to get a state ID. I seem to be the only one who thinks this is a good thing. I haven’t driven in 2 years and it disturbed me that legally I still could.

- On July 19 it was one month since the TV died. I don’t keep up with my baseball teams as well without the home team play by play. For instance it was three days before I read that Joey Votto reinjured his left quads. But other than the details I’m missing, our teams haven’t been doing well this year and maybe we don’t want to watch? Even the Tigers have been streaky. I still hope we have a TV by the playoffs!

- Tomorrow is Eye Exam day. My eye doc is next to Panera. You know what that means! Lunch tomorrow is a You Pick Two Bacon Turkey Bravo and something else with an apple and a latte! Then it’s come home with a new prescription and finally order sunglasses!

Grocery Trip - Nani's Liberat-yum!

Black Bean Soup

Good morning on a bright and gorgeous Saturday! Yes, wake-up temperature was 36° but it’s SUNNY!!! Besides, tomorrow, Easter Sunday, it’s going to be 70-ish degrees and still sunny; perfect for a pastel dress and a new hat at church or coffee on the patio while munching the ears off a chocolate bunny.

Yeah, okay, sunshine just makes me happy. Moving right along…

At the end of last week I went grocery shopping! That may not sound like a big deal but I went grocery shopping by myself. I had my list, my coupons and three reusable shopping bags. The reusable shopping bags hold more than the little plastic grocery bags and there is a two-bag limit on the bus. I can put one bag around the head rest on the back of my chair in order to have three bags of groceries but only use floor space for two bags. I chose a time day when it would be a little less crowded at the store and was happy to find people were so helpful. A store employee swapped out full handbaskets for empty ones so I could get my shopping done – I can’t push a shopping cart from a wheelchair. I had no trouble finding employees that would grab things on the top shelves for me and in one instance a fellow shopper seemed almost honored when I asked if she would get a can of beans off a shelf that was out of my reach when there wasn’t an employee in that aisle. It was a good day. I got my three bags of groceries home and got them all put away before a well-earned cup of coffee and a donut.

At the beginning of this week I made a crock pot of black bean soup with the fruits from my shopping trip. I haven’t made black bean soup in a long time and golly it was SO GOOD! A 1 pound bag of black beans makes six servings. I have three left; one of the fringe and two in the freezer. I’m going to try not to thaw the container in the freezer for a couple of weeks but I haven’t made it in years and years and years and it’s really hard not to have it every day right now.

I use a slight variation of a recipe from “Fabulous Beans” by Barb Bloomfield, one of my favorite cookbooks, printed in 1994. It’s a great cookbook and in looking up the Amazon link I found “More Fabulous Beans” which is now on my Amazon Wish List!

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients:
1 lb dry black beans
8 cups water
1 chopped green pepper

1 TBS oregano
2 TBS cumin
1 TBS salt
6 TBS lemon juice

Soak the beans overnight with 2 TBS baking soda. (The soda will make the beans kinder to your stomach, sort of like adding preemptive Beano to the soup!)

Drain and rinse the beans and put in a crock pot with 8 cups of water and the chopped green pepper. Cook on high for a few hours until the beans are soft. Turning the crock pot on in the morning will make the beans ready for the finish when you get home from work.

To finish the soup, add the oregano, salt, cumin and lemon juice to the beans and cook in the crock pot for another 30 minutes. Purée a couple cups in a blender and return it to the beans to give the soup a creamy texture. Serve with a tablespoon of sour cream.

The recipe with the sour cream is only 6 WW points. :)

The “bookmark” made me smile. This recipe has been a favorite of mine for a long time. We used to do one “vegetarian night” a week when I worked at Omnicom cable just after trade school. I remember when I wrote the note to Mom because I was working until 6:30 and she got home around 5:30. She was adding the finishing ingredients so the soup would be ready when Pop got home. Back in the mid-90s my printing was legible too! I loved this soup and was excited to share it with my parents. I was pleased that they both liked it. When we did vegetarian night, Mom and I used to go vegetarian all day. Pop made sure he had lots of meat with lunch.

Memories Can Be Selfish

Ah, the wonders of the Internet! I broke a Dunkin Donuts coffee mug last week that was one of my favorites and it had to be replaced. The story about the replacement of the mug is one for another time. In searching to find a replacement for that mug I discovered so many awesome Dunkin’ Donuts mugs including the beige one with the brown logo just like I used to drink coffee in when I was learning how to drive in the early 80s.

There were some older mugs with the pinky-purple circle logos from when I was a kid too . That prompted the search for the memory lane items. It’s a very old memory that David has heard often enough because whenever we talk about donuts, and we talk about donuts quite a bit, it often brings back that fond memory of the first time I ever bought something at the store all by myself. It was a chocolate honey dipped donut from Dunkin’ Donuts on Eureka Road in Southgate, Michigan in the early 1970s; I was six or seven years old.

 

From the web, but if we'd had digital 

cameras then  I bet there would have been 

a picture of the actual donut I bought!

Times have changed, huh? Imagine any responsible parent letting a 1st/2nd grader walk all by herself up a block to the busy street, down another block in the alleyway behind the stores, across a neighborhood street and into a restaurant by herself. It was definitely safer in the early 70s. Well, I would imagine that the neighbors on our street knew I was going to the donut shop and my parents knew the owners of the stores  as customers. Heck, the guy who owned the store with the penny candy and baseball cards knew me personally as a regular customer with the neighborhood kids. So in that I actually knew neighbors and business owners it was probably safer anyway. The idea of safety never crossed my mind as a concern. My only concern was saving that 15 cents of my allowance so I could walk up to the store and buy my own donut, bring it home and have it for breakfast. I got to sit down at home and have my donut with the glass of milk Mom gave  me knowing that that day I was one step closer to being a grown-up.

I think I remember that trip to the donut store and my chocolate honey dipped donut so vividly because it was an extra special first time. I realize that I am truly blessed that I have such vivid memories so long ago. I’m trying to make a point of getting some of those very old memories that live so vividly in my mind written down. Maybe if I can read my own description with some detail about watching man walking on the moon for the first time on TV when I was almost 3 it will help me keep remembering things when I’m 83. At the very least I’ll be able to read it and be amazed at what a neat story it is.

In my search to replace that mug that broke I came across two mugs with Dunkin’ Donuts logos from the time of little Nani buys her own donut. I think it would be neat to have a Dunkin coffee mug from that time but I’m not sure which mug is the right Dunkin’ Donuts restaurant mug from the early 70s.

I was troubled by the fact that I absolutely don’t remember what a coffee cup at Dunkin’ Donuts looked like at that time. But after thinking about it I realized I didn’t drink coffee when I was six or seven years old except the “cappuccino” that Noni made for us after family dinners. I guess I don’t actually have a reason to remember what the coffee cups looked like so I really have no point of memory to tell me which mug I want.

The old Dunkin’ Donuts mugs still appeal to me as a mug collector, fan of old advertising and as a piece of my own history even if I wasn’t the one drinking coffee at the time. So dear readers, does anyone remember reading about or recognize either of these mugs as the mugs that would’ve been in a Dunkin’ Donuts restaurant in 1972 or 73?

I suppose I could just get both.