World MS Day Hodge Podge

Credits: Basic Orange by the Ginger Scraps Designers,

 Big Hearted Woman by Pixelily Designs.

Today is World MS Day. I submitted my personal quote, “I cannot control things that happen to me, but I'm the only one that controls how I react to things that happen to me,” to 1000 faces of MS as my personal motto. Today’s opening scrapbook layout was the page I did for Multiple Sclerosis Awareness week in March.

1. What question do you often ask yourself?

“What time is it?” I’m always checking the time, part because I get busy and lose track of time, sometimes because I want to know when I can take meds again. This is usually true when I wake up in the middle of the night and I check the phone because I’m sore. I always wake up sore, but after I move a little it gets better. Ibuprofen helps too!


2. Do you grow roses? What's your favorite color of rose? Ever been given a dozen roses? Where was the prettiest rose or rose garden you remember seeing?

Not n purpose I don’t grow them. We had two rose bushes in the flower bed that were gangly, bloomed once a year and were ugly. I hated them. When I bought all the perennial bulbs, between Kelly ad David they hacked out those ugly things, but somehow they must have seeded and now I het scrawny, gangly, thorny shoots that are skinnier but just as tall and they don’t bloom at all. I call them wild rose weeds.

That being said, I do love roses that bloom into large roses. My nonna had gorgeous roses in her garden, Noni’s name was Rosa; maybe there was a natural affinity there. I had a potted JFK rose bush for a while that had large white blooms, usually three times a year and I really loved that too. The most beautiful roses are the ones David gives me!


3. Do you read the freshness dates on grocery store products? Will you use eggs past their 'use by' date? Take medication that's expired? Buy a dented can?

Yes, I read the dates. No I don’t use eggs past the “use by” date. My meds don’t expire. I’ll buy a dented can if dented cans are all that’s left and it’s something I really need, but I’ll choose undented in a different brand first. Dented cans don’t stack in the cupboard well.


4. Should athletes be role models?

Athletes are people and many of them with too much money too young to possibly have the maturity to be role models. It would be great if they took their notoriety seriously and maturely, and many do, but ultimately parents need to parent and know who their kids’ influences arte to talk to them about why or why not their choice is a good role model.


5. Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first explorers to reach the top of Mt. Everest on this date (May 29) back in 1953. What's something you hope to achieve in your lifetime?

In my lifetime, and the ONLY thing I’d put on something called a “bucket list” if I was forced to make one; I want to achieve immortality.


6. What would you do if you had twenty acres of land and the money to develop it any way you choose?

I’d build a Minor League baseball stadium with a full sports complex, little league fields, mini golf, batting cages etc…. It would be on the mass transit line and include wheelchair accessible mini golf and batting cages.


7. If I invite you to a party with a 7 PM start time, what time will I actually see you there?

About 6:45, unless David is taking me, then 7:15. :)


8. Insert your own random thought here.

Random thought: It’s way past lunchtime and I didn’t have lunch. I’m hungry. Gonna make a cup of peanut butter chicken soup.

Book Review: Keepsake Crimes by Laura Childs

Book synopsis at Good Reads

New Orleans scrapbooking shop owner Carmela Bertrand delights her customers with the sophisticated looks she achieves with their scrapbooks. But among her client's keepsakes she finds a tip of her own-about a murder...


My review at Good Reads

3 out of 5 stars

This was a cute mystery; light reading with a little action and an entertaining setting in New Orleans during Mardi Gras with most of the character development told in the main character’s scrapbooking shop.

I liked the book. I haven’t decided if I like it enough to read the other books in the series. It was a sweet read, but it’s a little more fluff than I want a steady diet of in my books

As a scrapbooker, Carmela, the main character, is just a little bit too much of a “miracle crafter.” While she’s handles the business of owning the shop, she also does freelance craftwork and teaches techniques. She never makes a mistake with her crafts and always seems to amaze the people closest to her with the perfect things she whips up. If there had been a shop like hers in my paper scrapping days I’d have just lived there, but I didn’t read any evidence her shop could possibly sustain itself when the sole proprietor has so much time on her hands.

Like I said, it was light reading, but the imagery was pretty and the characters cute and the plot was not really predictable, although in the end it was a little trite. It was still a good relax and escape book.

Funny Friday

Cluster made with Be Awesome by Aprilisa Designs

Friday Fragments

** Remember the shout out I gave to the mini muffins Wednesday? I have a correction to make. I’m not correcting the review of the muffins, it a grammar thing, specifically, a spelling thing. The brand is Entenmann’s. When I say it, when most people say it that I’ve heard, that second “n” is sorta swallowed. Kinda like the second “a” in caramel when a Midwesterner says it. Big difference there is that I know there are three a letters in caramel. I didn’t know there were four n letters in Entenmann’s until David pointed it out. Rather than go back and fix every mention of the company in Wednesday’s blog, I chose the lazy way out and I’m posting the correction.


** While we’re talking about the Entenmann’s Little Bites, David was reading the box yesterday at breakfast. He pointed out the words next to the animal on the scooter with the mini muffins on its head.

Um…

After reading that it was a serving suggestion, my sweet husband’s inner little boy woke up. He kept asking if he could open one of the pouches to see if they could be served on a cat’s head. He did try to balance a peach on Kaline’s hip “to practice.” Poor peach.

He switched his attention to trying to figure out if the critter on the scooter is a dog or a cow.

What do you think? Dog or cow?

** This was dinner Wednesday:

It was the fruit of my first Bzz Campaign. I got to try Johnsonville Fully Cooked Dinner Sausage for free. Cool or what? I wanted to try the Kielbasa, but David has a more conservative palate, so we went with regular smoked sausage for a first time. It was an easy campaign to join for me because Mom used to make some great meals with already cooked Kielbasa when we were kids.

Of course, my parents were on a tight budget when we were little, so meals often contained affordable price tags and Mom’s creativity. Johnsonville is not just a brand name I trust, but full retail for the sausage is well within competitive pricing for a family budget too. These sausages come in two individually wrapped pieces, great for a couple who only uses one sausage for a meal.

I did this one the quick and simple way; I cut the sausage into coin-shaped slices and pan-fried them with a teaspoon of olive oil. Then I served them over prepared garlic shells with some broccoli. A very quick meal after one of David’s later shifts and also a quick meal trick after soccer practice or gardening after work.

I’ll stop shilling now with one last bit: Follow this link for a printable $1.00 off coupon to try one of the 5 great flavors of Johnsonville Fully Cooked Dinner Sausage. YUM!


** Be sure to check out the bulletin board up top for new entries in Kaline's blog and my MS blog.  The MS blog has a new entry from this morning.  I'd love to hear your feedback if you have some!

This week’s statements:
1. One of my best and worst traits is that I ______
2. If I could escape for a day, I’d _____
3. The best part of ___ is _____
4. When I was young I thought _______.

My Answers:

1. One of my best and worst traits is that I am very analytical. Sometimes it means I pick up important details. Other times it means I can’t make up my mind.

2. If I could escape for a day, I’d go to an out of town baseball game in a park AND state I haven’t been to yet.

3. The best part of chocolate is that it’s chocolate.

4. When I was young I thought all guys should have long hair. Now I don’t find long hair attractive at all.

Life After Hostess

I’ve said before that I’m a sweet in the morning person. I can tell you all about great breakfast cereals, muffins, scones, cakes in just the right points amounts to complement my coffee, fruit and yogurt and stay within my 10 point breakfast goal. One of the things I really enjoyed as part of my breakfast rotation was Hostess Mini Muffins, especially the Banana Walnut, although I liked the Chocolate Chip ones too.

I have a fairly regimented “choice from each column” system for breakfast. My dairy serving is usually yogurt, but on those days where I feel like a savory breakfast cheese and a breakfast meat take up those 3-5 points. Fruit is point-free on the Weight Watchers plan and that’s one serving of fruit, usually a banana because bananas are filling for me. We can talk about my issues with hunger and apples at another time.

Coffee is always a point with one tablespoon of Coffeemate. I’ll add that I use Coffeemate at home because I like Coffeemate. It’s not a torturous dieting substitution for cream. Honestly, if I could get Coffeemate instead of cream in restaurants, I’d order that.

The entrée column includes the cereal or other sweet breads, including muffins. That column is 4-6 points, so breakfast could go as high as 12 points, as low as 8. Trouble with muffins is a regular full-size muffin can be up to 15 points all on its own! That’s where the Hostess muffins were perfect; 5 tasty and sweet mini muffins in a pouch and 5 points for the pouch.

But alas, Hostess and their wonderful mini muffins are gone.

So last grocery trip I decided to try a new breakfast treat. I tried Entemann’s Little Bites muffins.

Same mummer of muffins per pouch, same number of pouches in the box, same points. They’re okay. They seem both a little greasier and sweeter than the Hostess. They’re not as banana-y as my favorite Hostess ones and no walnuts. I’ll probably try the chocolate chip at some point in my rotation of breakfast goodies on hand and keep the Entemann’s in the list, but probably not on as regular a rotation as the Hostess ones were.

So now we join Joyce at From This Side of the Pond for the Wednesday Hodge Podge!

1. It's National Bike Week...do you own a bicycle? When did you last ride a bike?

I haven’t ridden a moving bike since I learned how to drive. Do I get any credit for driving places I walked? I used to bike all the time when we lived in Southgate, MI, but when we moved to Novi, when I was 10, the neighborhoods were too far away from anything a kid would want to see or do that bikes were just recreation that Dave and I rode in our own little neighborhood.  It was too far away in a new place for us, or our parents, to feel comfortable using them as transportation.


2. What's something you learned in school that wasn't part of the curriculum?

Leadership skills. Oh, they started with staring protests outside the principal’s office in 8th grade and getting other kids into trouble with my ideas as a high school freshman, but then some awesome teachers helped mold me, and taught me to use my powers for good. I wrote and organized the literature skits in Humanities, arranged the advertising for the French Club croissant sales and even tutored a few people in English.


3. What's a food you've never tried, but want to try? What's a food you've tried and will never try again?

I can’t think of a food I intend to try that I haven’t, but I will often at least try things I haven’t without a necessary plan to try them. I tried snails and I don’t think I’ll be trying them again. The flavor was mostly sauce, but the texture was nasty.


4. Have you been more demanding on yourself lately or less? Why? Do you think that's a good trend?

I am pretty demanding on myself because I want to do everything I can to stay as independent as possible. I think that’s a good trend, an important trend, in keeping a positive attitude in dealing with my challenges. The positive attitude is necessary for dealing with the disease, so it’s an essential full circle.


5. Who is your favorite book, movie, or TV show villain?

Q from Star Trek The Next Generation.


6. How concerned are you about identity theft?

I have identity theft protection through my bank and honestly I don’t know who’d want to be me financially. Still I check my credit every couple weeks and keep an eye out in the news for anything questionable about security involving my bank.

I had my credit card information stolen about 10 years ago. I caught the errant charge on my card and called the bank about it. The charge was for a catalog order from a plus size women’s store. It was shipped to Mishawaka, IN. I lived in Michigan at the time, but had used the card to check into a hotel in Mishawaka a few weeks before the charge was made.

The charge was removed and I was instructed to file a report with the local police in the city where the card’s bills went to. I filed the report and a few weeks later I got a call from an officer in Mishawaka updating me on the progress. Here’s the fun part.

The address was for a man in transition of a gender-change operation. Of course she’d want larger women’s clothes for her formerly male frame. When the officer visited, there was a catalog on the coffee table for the very store the charge using my stolen information was made and delivered to that address. When the officer asked if she’d made any purchases from that catalog, the answer was to the effect of “I wish I could afford that.”

There wasn’t sufficient evidence to make an arrest, but there was to keep an open investigation. I was told I’d be contacted if I was at some pint needed as a witness.

The system worked for me. It was only a $66 and change charge, but the bank took care of that, gave me a new card and the police in both Novi and Mishawaka did a great job of follow-up with it and kept me in the loop or as much as they needed to. It was neat experience to see how the system worked and I got a great story; what’s the chance your credit card information is stolen by someone in the process of a sex-change to add some color to a tale of bank and police heroes?


7. I saw this last question on Dawn's blog a couple of week's ago and asked if I could share. Everybody hop over and say hi, but first answer this...would you rather have an ordinary home in an extraordinary place or an extraordinary home in an ordinary place?

I answered this on Dawn’s blog!

Being that the ramp, stair climber or elevator etc. would make an ordinary house extraordinary and that I need ordinary mass transit in an ordinary municipality to get around, give me the extraordinary home in an ordinary place, please.


8. Insert your own random thought here.

Yesterday was our semiannual trek to Cleveland to see my Neurologist. I’m doing fine and the best news is that the all-important blood work showed my liver levels had actually improved a little from the last two times they’d been checked. I suggested the Milk Thistle I was taking might be helping and the doctor agreed that it wasn’t hurting. The importance of that is there is no threat of taking me off the disease-modifying medication that’s been so wonderful for me. YAY!

Blame It On The Sun

It was a fun and fairly involved weekend in these parts! I wasn’t around Blogland on Friday, blame that on the sun. David was off for a long weekend and we took advantage of the trainlicious weather. I added the Conrail Heritage Unit to my collection on Friday and the Virginian on Saturday. With those I’m up to 13 of the 20 photographed “in the wild.” David wheeled me out to a river-bank picnic table on Friday for the best shot of one of the special engines I‘ve taken yet.

Norfolk Southern’s Conrail Heritage Unit

Saturday it was well worth being late to my dad’s place when we caught the Virginian in Toledo before we left.

Norfolk Southern’s Virginian Heritage Unit

Yesterday was a cloudy midday, which was great for napping after getting home late Saturday night and then rising early with the sun. This was my favorite Sunday morning shot in Deshler, Ohio, newly painted water tower and all!

So that was my weekend. Every now and then I really need to take a break from blogging, scrapbooking and cleaning the kitchen to do some things to blog about and scrapbook while making no new dishes in the kitchen.


But now the week begins, easing into it in a social way with Heather at Acting Balanced and Wayne at Touristic and the Monday Quiz About Me.

1. May is National Asparagus Month - do you like it? Haves a favorite recipe?

I just bought a bag of precut asparagus spears at Kroger yesterday. They were on sale because they were nearing the sell by date. I love asparagus and recently discovered I like them raw in my Crunchy Veggie Bowls too. Mt favorite recipe is just steamed with a little vinaigrette. However, being that David like asparagus too, but doesn’t care for vinaigrette, I make them either with a little butter or I heat up a little bit of olive oil and brown minced garlic is in, adding bite-sized pieces of asparagus and cooking until tender; YUUUM-MEE!


2. May is also National Salad month... what's your favorite salad?

Favorite? Only one? I totally believe that anything is improved by putting it on a bed of lettuce. Yesterday we had lunch at Bob Evens and I had their cranberry-pecan chicken salad, one of my summer favorites. I also often eat chili on a bed of lettuce at home. I’ve even had salad with scrambled eggs and bacon on it. Seriously, a bed of lettuce is almost always better than a bun.


3. Laundry Question: Fabric Softener yea or nay? How do you keep your clothes soft and static free?

We use dryer sheets and that’s usually enough for anti-static and fresh smelling. But I really love the smell of Tide detergent which we use.


4. Do you speak more than one language? What language would you love to learn?

Je parle un peut de francais, enough that I can ask for directions or order in a restaurant in Quebec. I’ve never been to France, but I do know my French is sufficient to impress store owners to speak English to me as a reward for my effort. That was the difference after the dismal warning my grandfather had given to me about Quebec before I went with the high school French Club. I could hold a conversation with our host family, who did not speak any English, and read the newspaper then, which means that I could again with a little practice, but I’m not sure I could just pick up a newspaper in Montreal and read as fast as I do an American one now.

I read a little Italian, just a little, but I’ve kept with letting my “other country” knows where I am so I continue to get political stuff in the mail. That keeps me reading it, but I always bring things to my dad and tell him what I think the letter says to see if I got it right. My Italian average is about .750. I can construct and speak a few sentences in Italian, but I’ve never had a conversation in Italian.

Really, there are still so many English words I haven’t learned well enough to make them part of my natural vocabulary I don’t even know if I can really say I even speak one language!


And don't forget to add a 5th Question on your own blog so we can answer as we hop around!

5. Do you find that you blog/social network less when the weather is nice, or do you use mobile devices to keep up in the cyber world wherever you are?

When I travel for any amount of time I take my laptop, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I keep up with social networking, like my blog or Twitter. I often use it for weather and email while I’m away. Ido will take a morning every few days while David goes out to stay in the hotel and practice the water pill ritual because if I go a week without that and spending lots of time in the car, my feet will swell past painful. That’s when I take advantage of some time to cyber-socialize.

I know there are those who blog from a tablet by the pool or Tweet from their seats at a ball game, but not me. (Although I think I’m probably more likely to want a tablet than a smart phone, I’ll probably end up with the smart phone because they’ll quit making dumb phones)