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

War On What Now?

In the very first chapter of George Orwell’s 1984 it speaks of the ongoing war. In fact it’s one of the ways the people are controlled. They are always at war. Who with changes and allies become enemies, enemies become allies and more troops are sent to the front lines. It distresses me how familiar that sounds and I checked references to make sure I wasn’t confusing today’s news with the book. Alas, that scenario matches both.

But I’m not writing today to lament how Orwell’s fiction from the mid-20th Century, which should have been a warning to governments, seems to be used as a manual. I’m writing to talk about war, my personal issue with a war that I’ve been troubled by for a good 20 years or more; The War on Thanksgiving.

I’m not talking about the stores that are open on the holiday or the insanity of the start of holiday shopping season which was dubbed “Black Friday” by Philadelphia police in the early 60’s because the mad shopping day made it an awful work day. It’s relatively recent that advertisers have turned the name around to make it more positive and a sales tool. It's still means an awful work day to hourly workers. Like the Winston, the main character in Orwell’s book, I think there’s always been a war on Thanksgiving. I remember a time when that must not have been true because there was a year when it was shocking that someplace had put out Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, but that was so long ago.

You see, Thanksgiving was always the big family holiday to me, even more so as I got older. First off Thanksgiving was the meal my parents hosted. My aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents from both sides of the family came to our house for the feast. I remember the traditional turkey with our family stuffing, the pickle and olive plates and pumpkin pie dessert to celebrate the American holiday plus the breaded chicken and pork chops from Mom’s side of the family, a first course of cappelletti soup and espresso with dessert from Pop’s side. As adults with the cousin tier starting to marry off the dinner tradition changed, the numbers of people and the times they were at dinner changed,

Thanksgiving dinner became Grandma’s dinner after she and Papa retired and moved “up north.” Then Thanksgiving Dinner became a trip “over the freeway and through the woods by the lake.” That’s when the war really started for me. Grandma asked me to bring paper plates and napkins for the dessert table. I realized it was getting harder and harder to find paper Thanksgiving supplies. In the late 1990s I became obsessed with a quest for a paper turkey centerpiece. You know, the full unfurling turkey tail in tissue paper on a cardboard turkey frame? I remembered seeing them in tons of places with the Thanksgiving party supplies when I was a kid. I tried CVS, K-Mart, even a couple of Hallmark shops. It was two weeks before Thanksgiving and there was no turkeys anywhere, just Christmas decorations. I finally found my paper turkey at a party supplies store in a little display nestled into aisles and aisles of Christmas stuff.

 

Tissue turkey tail opened

 I guess I get it; Christmas is a bigger money holiday than Thanksgiving. But Thanksgiving has always been the most special holiday to me because there are no church obligations, no presents, no imaginary symbols to protect the children from hearing truths about for another year, Thanksgiving is just a holiday for time with the family, it’s food and togetherness, being thankful for having enough of the things that really matter and nothing else. It’s a true American holiday too. Seriously, Christmas is a federal holiday because the majority Christians way back all took Christmas off or just didn’t work. Christmas is a federal holiday to keep it from being a federal disaster day. Thanksgiving is a real American holiday, perhaps the most important one because it doesn’t celebrate our nation’s independence, it recognizes the abundance that independence affords us; it recognizes peace over destruction of people.

 

Maybe that’s what happened to Thanksgiving. We’re at war with everything. War on drugs, war on women, war on poverty, war on Wall Street and of course the war on Christmas which claimed a commercial war on Thanksgiving long ago. The war on Thanksgiving is not a new retail thing. Stores are just opening on Thanksgiving now because were letting Commercial Christmas win the war on Thanksgiving it has always been fighting. We’ve abused the word war so much that it means nothing anyway. The things we're "at war" as meaningful as what you do when you "keep calm." Thanksgiving, thanks for our people, for abundance, recognizes that we gain more from peace within our shores than we do from war. We do need to figure out how to make “war” a mean word again but all I’m asking for right now is a paper turkey and peppermint mocha to wait a few weeks so there’s a little more pumpkin spice coffee to have with pie.

For three more weeks, Happy Thanksgiving!

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,)

Filling Up My Dance Card

I mentioned finding a couple of dance cards in Grandma’s keepsakes and David gave me a puzzled look.

“You’ve never heard the expression ‘My dance card is full’ or ‘I think I have room on my dance card' or any of the other dance card expressions?”

“Yeah, but I thought dance card was just an expression not a thing.”

I showed him this one and he was…well, he was less than impressed. I guess I get that. I have to agree with him that in today’s world, for a woman to carry around a card at a dance and schedule dance partners seems like it would get in the way of fun at a school dance. But in 1944 dancing was just dancing. It was ballroom type that had definite steps that some did better than others. Maybe it was a way for a popular girl to mean it when she said she’d dance with a guy before the dance is over?” No “dirty dancing” either!” The other dance card I found, which is put away upstairs and I’ll share photos at another time; had the types of dances listed so a girl could write in the boys who fit the style best. It had waltzes and the Charleston but NO TANGO!

This was the Junior/Senior prom for CHS. I’m not sure what high school that was, but Papa graduated from California High School in California, PA, so it makes sense that Grandma would know some people there. The Lee Barrett Orchestra performed. Can you imagine and orchestra at a high school dance? Don’t think for a minute that my romantic brain isn’t picturing and Astaire and Rogers prom!

 Senior  class officers and Prom sponsors were listed on the last page of the book, but other than the orchestra and date, no other credits are in the dance card.  More clues may surface as I go through some of the other things I have.

This prom was the year after Grandma graduated and a month before she and Papa married. The only name on her dance card, for just 2 dances, is Allen Russell, not family or anyone I ever met. I wonder if it’s a friend who was going into the service after graduation? I am quite sure it’s Grandma’s dance card because I recognize her handwriting. The answer to that question, I’ll never know!

So, anyone else who didn’t realize where the references to dance cards came from, they really were part of our American culture!

See and share more wonderful bits of history at The Coloradolady's Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Blog Defragging

Digitalegacies Designs’ One Step At A Time was inspired by the Jordin Sparks song

Last night I started putting this post together with the intent of scheduling it to post at 6 AM, which is usually right before I wake up anyway, even though my alarm is set for 7:05. The last couple of days I’ve been waking up around 7:30! It’s more sleep than I usually need, but if the body says “hit the snooze,” I’m going to give the body what it needs if I don’t have a pressing reason to be up earlier.

Yesterday was a weather mess! There were tornadoes up in Michigan and flash flood warnings all over. We had "take your pick” lighting; gray clouds, but give it a minute, look, sun! Unseasonably warm and just as you opened the windows, rumble.4rumble,” says the sky. Seriously, I heard ominous rumbling that shook the house with bright sunlight washing our street! All that sound and fury was going on in the afternoon and it didn’t rain until almost 10:30PM! Last night was a weather mess. It rained like the dickens, lots of rain, thunder, lightning and a little hail. The day in our part of Toledo started and ended with hail. Hmmm.

So far today the radar is clear and there is a little glint of sun showing, but that is scheduled to change this afternoon and become cloudy. We’ll see. I’ve come to think of weather as a gamble based on science rather than an actual science!

Follow Friday Four Fill in Fun Blog Hop

Every week Hilary at Feeling Beachie hosts the Friday Fill-Ins. This week’s co-host is Boca Frau who added the last two fill-ins.

This week’s statements:
1. I get my best ideas_____
2. When I am ___ I ___
3. When I have a cold, I like to_____
4. Watching a ____ move, can be ______.


My finished statements:

1. I get my best ideas when I’m trying to get a great idea. Seriously, I’m what I call a linear rather than lyrical creative. My best stuff comes from needing a great idea. Even my best scrapbooking ideas come while I’m working on a page and I just can’t put a page together unless I have the photos and journaling done first.

2. When I am bored I watch TV. I don’t watch a lot of TV! :)

3. When I have a cold, I like to drink regular Coke heated up in the microwave. A cup of Coke zapped for 60 seconds makes it sweet and warm with a fine fizz that massages the throat. For me with a cold it’s the ultimate comfort drink.


4. Watching a windmill move, can be very calming. Even the less classic looking wind turbines have a soothing effect on me.


Join us! It takes a few minutes to do the fill-in and a couple more to read the other blogs and see who thinks like you and who reads the fill-ins way different! It’s fun!

Friday Fragments

Mrs. 4444 at Half Past Kissin’ Time hosts Friday Fragments, a chance to defrag your blog by emptying those short things from your “To Blog” folder. I can’t be the only one that has a To Blog on my desktop. It’s an opportunity to post those things that are worth blogging, but just not big enough for a whole post. If your blog could use some weekly defragging, why not join us?


** Grandma crocheted mini afghans for the family cats. I have a bunch of squares she crocheted that I need to put together to make one for Carla. Grandma didn’t meet Carla but she saw pictures and said, “Guess I need to make another kitty afghan.” So, it seems appropriate that I use her squares to make one for Carla


** I was treading Ronalyn’s blog, The Adventures of Esa and Zed, last week. Zed lost his collar, his Washington Capitals collar. It was a big deal because his Capitals collar had his tags on it. When Ronalyn found the collar, Zed had located it and was sniffing it as if to say, “Mom, over here!”

Before she got sick, Azzie wore a collar with a bell and even a bow at Christmastime. I took the collar off for good when she got her paw caught in it when she had a seizure. I worried that it could have broken her front leg. But Az loved her collar and even the bow.

Years before when I had gotten Ritchie, a black cat, his red collar with the rhinestones on it, he strutted around with his head up and showed it off to everyone. I think it was his badge of “I’m not an alleycat anymore; I’m a loved housecat now! When Ritchie died and Pop buried him, he took his collar off and gave it to me to remember him. It’s still in my box with memorial prayer cards and keepsakes.

When Kaline was a kitten, I got a less expensive collar without a bell in blue for her as a “training collar.” I planned to move to a nice navy blue collar, so with her orange coat she’d sport Detroit Tigers colors, with rhinestones and a bell when she was adult size. She hated the collar with a passion unknown to any cat before her. She unhooked the collar numerous times before it was finally lost for good. I think she hid it in the basement somewhere. She won. When we moved to Toledo and Chester and Baggle didn’t wear collars, I knew our sweet baby girl would never wear accessories. She’s 6-1/2 now and has never worn a collar since she was a kitten. And she really never wore that one either.


** We had an issue Sunday about warm vs. hot and iced vs. hot coffee. David got me an iced coffee because I “usually have iced coffee when it’s warm.” Huh? It was in the 60s Sunday. NOT iced coffee weather! I love that he remembered that I sometimes go iced in the summer, but I only have iced coffee for my first coffee of the day if wake-up temperature is near 80! I even have hot coffee with breakfast on days that hit the 90s if they start off at 75 or below. Any other coffee drinkers want to chime in? What time of day or time of year is iced coffee time?


** I’ve been in a bit of a cooking mood lately. Thursday dinner was Froot Loop Chicken. Moms, Grandmas, this is a simple recipe that is a good kid idea! I used chicken cutlets, but chicken strips work too. Dip them in egg or egg substitute, the coat them with Froot Loops that have been ground into crumbs in a food processor. I use my little 2-cup chopper. Bake for 20 minutes at 400. Tasty and fun!

Froot Loop Chicken -

(Don't be concerned, the salad and raw carrots had a separate plate!)

I got the idea from the fried Captain Crunch chicken strips at Planet Hollywood about 15 years ago. Froot Loops are similar in taste and just more fun!


** New music ot The Chronicles of Nani includes some more upbeat, springy stuff, including One Step At A Time by Jordin Sparks. No question that since hearing that one the first time it easily rates in my top songs of all-time list! I just love it from the lyrics to the feel of the melody to that incredible dress she wears in the video! It’s an all around total package of great music!


Okay, blog defragged for another week! :)

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.

Nani Is A Happy Little Princess!

I’m posting my first post of the day a little later than usual today. Pop was over this morning to see what could be done with our crashed bookcase. It took him about an hour to go from shattered pieces to shelving unit anchored to the wall! It took me the better part of the day in 2007 when I assembled the other identical bookcase and David constructs with words, not wood! Assembling a unit from a kit, even a unit that had splintered a few screw holes and taken a chunk out of the bottom of one shelf when it fell was very simple work for my Dad, who has worked in construction since the early 70s. He’s already said that he’ll come back when I get the rest of the kit-furniture. I’ll prepare a nice lunch spread to say “thanks!”

After Pop finished putting the shelves in and put away his tools in his car, we had minestrone. I was both anxious and a little nervous about Pop tasting my first try at minestrone. I thought it was good, just a few tweaks away from great, soup is my specialty, but the opinion of the senior minestrone maker in the family was the true test. He liked it! He really liked it!

After lunch he wanted to make sure he had the directions to Sofo, MY Italian market, so he could stop before he went home. I enjoy the fact that both Pop and my brother feel the desire to stop at MY ethnic store when they visit. I have the edge there!  Sofo is a truly awesome place for Italian groceries!

So far, the popcorn popper is the only thing on a shelf, since that was the tallest appliance and it was used to place the first shelf. After a couple of serious moving, bending, lifting and stretching days upstairs, I promised myself, and David, especially David, that I was going to relax today. Just like working out, rip, then heal to build muscles, I rip then heal to restore strength.

Happy Chocolate Day!

Today is Chocolate Day!  Chocolate Day is celebrated on the third day of Valentines Week. So I think I’ll eat my rose tonight.

David has been bringing home little gifts when he finds ones that just scream me. At this time of year, there are lots of those! At the end of January, he brought me a Dove rose. I know the rose is 3 Weight Watchers points. I figured it out right away, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to opening it. It’s so pretty and so sweet and romantic and once I eat it, it’s gone! I think official Chocolate Day is a good day to finally open it. There WILL be more chocolate, likely even more chocolate from David!

The past couple of nights we’ve had another treat he brought me.

He knows me well! That little black forest cake was the perfect size for us to share for dessert for two nights.


Last thing I’ll share for now is a vintage thing for Vintage Thingie Thursday!

I have three peach-tone glass dessert plates from Grandma’s. You don’t really see the peachiness until there are a few stacked together, but they ARE peachy!

I confess that it was a set of four, but I lost one to a knock off the counter that also claimed one of my dollar-store glass plates. Obviously the peach dish was a bigger heartbreak!

I don’t know exactly how old these ones are. What I do know is I hadn’t seen them before we found them in the back of the cabinets that had many other old dishes. I spent a lot of time at Grandma’s house and did a lot of foodie things with her. So, I’m fairly sure they pre-date me! I do know they are pretty and totally match my peach and green kitchen future!

See more Vintage Thingies at Suzanne’s blog, The Coloradolady, every Thursday!

Links

Chocolate Day

Sofo Market

The Coloradolady

Groundhog Day – Come Vacation in Ohio!

Happy Groundhog Day! I was reading some dejected Tweets about the impending doom of Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow this morning, but on a blissfully overcast day in Ohio, Buckeye Chuck did not, I repeat NOT, see his shadow. So while the rest of the country is burdened by 6 more weeks of winter, my crocuses will be budding by mid-March! On behalf of the Ohio Department of Tourism, I’d like to invite everyone to our fair state to enjoy the early spring!

I did well in all levels of my education with math…and sarcasm! As a lifetime Midwesterner, I never understood what all the fuss about the groundhog was. How mean is it to wake up a furry critter on an early February morning to see if it casts a shadow so you can determine if it’s going to be a torturing 6 weeks until spring or blissfully only 6 more weeks until spring. If you’re banking your state of mind on a groundhog, that’s pretty sad. Still, come to Ohio, the happy state!

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I’ve been diligently working on the White Tornado Project upstairs this week. Today I am achy and I’ve decided to take it as an easy day. One thing I need to do is plug lights back in. I was moving some things around, cat toys and socks, under the bed. I pulled on an extension cord and unplugged the light on David’s side of the bed. Then when I turned on the light on my side, it blew out. So right now we have no bedside lighting. Not so good in the winter when the sun is gone at bedtime and not back yet when you wake up! So, while I’m otherwise taking a break today from the White Tornado, I will still wiggle onto the floor to plug things back in and replace the bulb in my reading light.


Then, the rest of the day is for scrapping, blogging and making some mini quiches for the freezer. I joined my Dad for the first phase of the South Beach diet back in the late 90s. Word of eternal caution here – even if a doctor suggests a diet to someone else, it may not be right for you! Pop’s doctor suggested South Beach for my dad to shed a few “off season” pounds. He always gained over the winter when it was not construction season. I decided that I’d join him because the support would help him stick with it and it certainly wouldn’t hurt me to shed a little. Well I was wrong on the “wouldn’t hurt me” part! I followed the recipes with the exception of adding all the oil they called for. That much oil was a gross thought and I had elevated cholesterol. Upping my fat intake would drive me to the “high” level in no time. After I got sick and actually gained weight, MY doctor chewed me out for trying a diet that is geared towards people with weight gain from carbohydrates with high or headed that way blood sugar. It’s actually dangerous for high cholesterol because if followed to the letter, it will reduce blood sugar and raise cholesterol. By cutting out the fat in the recipes, I reduced my blood sugar, which wasn’t good for me and because I wasn’t eating enough calories, I gained weight.  This is why they say to consult your doctor before changing your diet!

But the one thing that I did get from the 2 week on the South Beach diet is a taste for the little breakfast quiches made in cupcake pans. Boy those were good! All the talk last week on the Wednesday Hodge Podge about brunch and the many people who’d make a breakfast casserole or a quiche made me crave casserole or quiche. I remembered those wonderful South Beach breakfasts, which I’ll definitely have with whole wheat toast now. I looked up a few recipes last night and I’ll analyze them and create one that works for me this afternoon. I’ll get back with you all on how that turns out!

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It’s Thursday and time to share a vintage treasure. This is from one of the boxes from Grandma’s garage. The garage is where the boxes from Detroit went in 1982 that weren’t opened again until Dave and I with our spouses were sorting through everything. It’s where we found the tax return copies from 1958. and in one box I found these!

I had to do some searching to get a little bit of background. The Labor Non-Partisan League pin is supporting Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1944 Presidential election. Winning that election saw FDR’s fourth term in office. He died of a stroke just a few months after the beginning of that term.

I haven’t come across any other presidential election pins, but I find it interesting to note that the presidential election pins I’ve had, the candidates have won too. Maybe there’s some family mojo at work there. Maybe I should seek out a pin for the candidate I choose this year.

The other pin is a Douglas MacArthur War Hero pin. It was in the same box and I’d guess probably from the same time.

I admit that I totally enjoyed the research I did for these pins. At the site where I found both of them, the FDR pin sells for $45 and the MacArthur pin for $20. I also did some reading at various sites, brushing up on some American history and imagining my just-married grandparents at that time.  Grandma was living in Boston, and at the time of the election, Grandma was pregnant but probably didn’t know it yet. Papa was stationed in the Pacific. World War 2 wasn’t over.


Enjoy some more nostalgia and vintage finds at Suzanne’s bog, The Coloradolady for Vintage Thingie Thursday!

Links

Cleveland Leader – Buckeye Chuck blurb

Roosevelt 1944 Election Pins.

MacArthur War Hero Pins

Cleaning Treasures

The coolest thing about cleaning and organizing is not the ultimate reclaiming of rooms that have spent the last couple of years as essentially storage rooms. Do not get me wrong there. The prospect of getting our kitchen annex back to usable additional prep space for the kitchen and having a working office/studio for my projects is exciting. We have three rooms that have been stacking places for the boxes of things we’ve accumulated and two years of disarray in our lives. Between losing my Grandma 2 years ago and the legal responsibilities that went with being the administrator of her estate and the huge cleanup at her house, which is the biggest source of the many boxes all over my house, and my health trials last year, I’ve had no time, no energy, to keep up.

Last year the dust had settled, some literally, from Grandma’s estate and I’d planned test-surgery-recovery for my back that tuned into a half year of tests with symptoms of my eventual MS diagnosis getting worse. During the 2010 cleaning at Grandma's my back, hip and knee on the right side had gotten pretty bad and I was relegated to sit, sort and shred at Grandma’s house with David, Dave and Laura bringing me boxes to “quick sort.” Quick sort is if I thought “maybe” put it in my box to take home, no reading, no reminiscing. We were all traveling a good distance on weekends to do the clean out and time really was an issue. Well, it ended up being BOXES, not box, with David asking a few times, “Where are we going to put this stuff?” Well, for the most part that answer was the upstairs office and the kitchen annex. I chose to reclaim the kitchen annex first since it’s on the main living level of the house.

I started cleaning Tuesday and I’ve gone through 4 of the boxes from Grandma's house as well as half the cupboards in the annex. I was telling my Dad last night that it would have taken the 10 years ago Nani about three days to finish the annex but the mobility-challenged Nani of today is thinking 2-3 weeks. I may need chairs and help lifting the heavier things, but I have the necessary drive to achieve! I just have to make sure I employ the necessary brains to take breaks.


Today I have a treasure box to share for Vintage Thingie Thursday!


It’s such a pretty little cardboard box. The edges are definitely worn and no question it’s old. I don’t remember seeing this at Grandma’s house, but I’m sure I was the one who decided it should come home with me because I don’t know that Dave would have just assumed I wanted it, he might have, but neither David nor Laura would know the significance of what was written inside.


The name written on the side and in the box is “Opal Pugh.” Dave would have known that was our Great Grandmother, with whom I was very close. She was born in Sutton, West Virginia, in 1906 and was only Opal Pugh for 16 years. She married by Great Grandfather in 1922. But that’s not Mums’ handwriting and the crayon markings under her name make me believe it might have been a trinket box from when she was little. Tori and Rina had trinket boxes that I gave them to have at our house when they were little. It was someplace to keep little things they collected, rocks, prizes form cereal, those kinds of easily lost things. Maybe this was a box like that for Mums.

When I opened the box this is what I saw



There is a crocheted hat pin cushion,

Crocheted string pincushion

a beautiful white silk handkerchief with royal purple trim

Silk handkerchief, SO soft!

and a crocheted band in variegated oranges. The band might have been a choker, which was a common accessory at the time, but there isn’t anything to close it. That closure may be something that fell off.

Crocheted string, maybe a choker?

So the box itself is at least 90 years old, but I think closer to 100. My Great Grandmother would have been 105 last month, she’ll have been gone 10 years in July. The items inside could have been put there at any time, but I’d guess the things were probably put in it maybe sometime around Grandma’s birth in 1925. It’s a guess, but that handkerchief is the softest and finest silk I’ve ever laid hands on!


Thanks for joining me in my treasures and guesses today!

See more vintage treasures at The Coloradolady, where Suzanne hosts Vintage Thingie Thursday every week!

Monday Mug Shot

It’s Crunch Time!

Doesn’t Christmas on the weekend make more stress? I don’t think it’s bad stress, it’s more that It energizes me and makes me relapse in my type-A-ness. But I’ve learned how to channel my type-A and just garb those reins when there is a project to be done. It took a long time to make myself learn that discipline!

This mug was Grandma’s. While she usually came to our house about two weeks before Christmas and stayed until New Year’s Day, going home after the`- celebrating in the new year, she drank her coffee from a Christmas cup all of December. I think that’s where Mom got the need for appropriate Christmas glassware and mugs from. I got it from both of them!

I inherited the type-A thing from Grandma too, to an extent. Grandma was one of the first women in management positions at the Kresge Corporation. She’d been the store manager at 2 different Kresges. Every year on Christmas Day, she had to take a break from the festivities to go check on the store, make sure all looked good and safe and the closed store was having a quiet Christmas. That’s dedication. But what I failed to realize, or to remember anyway, when I started my professional days was that when she did her store-check on Christmas, Papa always went with her and when she came back, she was all smiles and picked right up where she left off in bubbly conversations, games and nibbles. Her standard answer when someone asked her how the store was, “It’s still there,” and that was all she said about it. She was dedicated, but knew how to separate what you do for a living and what you do for a life. It took me a decade to figure that out and I never asked, maybe it did for her too, maybe that’s why she was offered the management positions first. The thing is she was great at balancing work, family and parenting before it was even a thought of being necessary for anyone! She could also in 2 hours every Wednesday, her day off and one that I spent with her in the summer a few times when I was little, she could vacuum and dust the house, do dishes and scrub things that needed scrubbed. She was the Energizer Bunny before anyone knew there was one too. Maybe she was the model for the advertising icon?

2009 was the last Christmas I had with Grandma. She was in assisted living, in the memory care wing. She was still very Grandma in that she seemed to forget the unpleasant things, but remembered the better things. She didn’t remember that Papa and my Mom had already gone. At Thanksgiving she asked if they were coming to dinner. Thankfully, she also thought we shouldn’t let dinner get cold and they could eat when they got there.

That last Christmas she asked me to bring her checkbook and buy her some Christmas cards so she could write her gift checks. I had closed her checking account and opened one local to me for her so I could pay her bills, I kept the old checks and kept the register up including the Social Security and pension deposits so she could see that the bills were paid and write the Christmas checks. I rewrote the checks from the actual account before giving them. She was mentally okay in remembering to whom she gave gifts and where she kept the record of how much. By about half way through her cards she began to get tired. That’s when she stated getting confused and we decided to finish the cards another day.

I tried to time my visits so I could spend a couple hours with her before the time of day where she got tired, but doing the Christmas cards tired her out quicker than when just talked. I still have the Christmas card that she made out for me. It’s signed on the wrong side of the card and her handwriting had gotten pretty sloppy, but it’s still a special treasure to me. That card, perhaps more than her mug, but the mug brings me back to the card, lets me relive the precious moments of my last Christmas as a granddaughter. It reminds me of how blessed I am to have started my life as a beloved granddaughter to four and held that title, beloved granddaughter, for 43 years. It’s through the holiday traditions and memories that the ones we love never really leave us, they’re never really far away.

Money, Money, Money, Muuunney!

When we were getting Grandma’s place cleaned up and ready for sale, Dave walked in with boxes for packing things up. He gave me a couple of boxes. “Sis, we don’t want this to be a year-long project. If you want to go through anything, put it in your box and go through it at home."

Baby brother knows his big sister well. Actually, it was enough of a distance and coordinating our schedules was an issue, so we both took home few boxes to go through and shred/dispose of what was necessary each trip up to Mid-Michigan. Our rule was "if you find something you really want in the boxes you took home, keep it." We'd pull out anything we thought the other or the great-grands might want. Box other things for sale. I’m pretty proud to say that we did okay. Grandma left my brother and me as even heirs in her will. I’d heard horror stories about siblings and estates. We did really well sharing the burden, the responsibilities and the tangibles Grandma left.

I got the photos. I already had Noni’s photos and unofficially, I was the family historian. I also got all the coins because Grandma and I collected them together and she had stipulated that years before she passed. Laura spotted the metal box in things she was going through. Here is what it reads on the front:

That had to be from goggles Papa had in the navy. But it made a noise like small pieces of metal. Laura had brought it to me and told me I could open it just a sec, then put it in my box. After looking inside briefly and wide-eyed, I closed it and put it in my box, a box that’s been in the back room of my kitchen since about May 2010. I’d simply forgotten it in all the commotion of the cleaning and legal work we still had to do. This is what I saw for that brief moment at Grandma’s house:

Papa definitely brought it home from World War 2 with him. The denominations are mostly from Pacific area countries, the ones I could tell for sure.

These coins are the newest ones in the box, dated 1944:

With the exception of 1 2-lire bill from Italy, dated 1943...

The paper money was all undated.

This coin was the oldest in the box, 1881

There was a Philadelphia Rapid Transit Token, there's one for Minneapolis too.

And a couple of tokens I can’t quite find info for.

Kansas Sales Tax token?

And a “valuable token” from Kennedy Cutrate.

Anyone ever heard of these last two?

I think it’s fascinating that Papa brought home all those coins and well, he pretty much did the same thing I did. He put them away, probably to mess with later, and forgot them. Boy if that box could talk about Papa’s days as a sailor and how he spent his money on leave. Hmmm…

If anyone has any thoughts on those last two coins, I love to hear it!

In the meantime, I’m sharing through Colorado Lady’s Vintage Thingie Thursday.