Broken Record

That’s a record for this day in Toledo history. Actually, it’s the coldest it’s ever been in Toledo on any day in February in recorded history. In the Naniworld that’s officially called “beyond stupid-cold.” Oh my! As an adult with Raynaud’s disease as a special friend to my MS, I’m once again staying indoors. I think that’s my biggest source of wintertime blues; I’m pretty much in hibernation with a cave but no sleep! Can you imagine how grumpy a bear would be if it was in the cave all winter and weren’t asleep?

I was reading a news poll one of the TV stations from Detroit did on Facebook. The poll asked if kids should be off school because of the temperature. I was amazed, even though I shouldn’t be, t the number of comments about raising kids to be sissies and “in my day…” comments. There was even a comment that said “most parents can afford to properly dress their kids for the cold,” like the word “most” in that statement is okay!

I grew up in Metro Detroit. We most certainly did not go to school on days like yesterday or even today which is starting out at -11 and going to a high of 15. There weren’t days like that to debate. “A new record low” means it’s NEVER BEEN THIS COLD. That makes “when I was a kid we didn’t get to stay home because it was cold” make you sound like a bit of a moron. The winters are getting unpredictably worse, much worse than my generation grew up with. We are breaking records for cold temperatures in the Great Lakes region, they have no place else they can put the snow that won’t stop in New England, they are bracing for ice storms in the Carolinas and Tennessee and let’s not forget the weather that was more of a mess than predicted that shut down Atlanta last year. The climate is in a period of unrest. It doesn’t matter why you think that is, there definitely IS a change from what we’ve known as “normal.”

The meteorological unrest is happening faster than we can adjust to it. If this is what will become normal, there may be a day that there is cold weather protocol for school kids, even adults. Maybe there will be e-learning snow days and more telecommuting or maybe they’ll develop an affordable super thinsulate that can keep kids safely warm while they wait for the bus and adults free from frostbite when they scrape ice form car windows. Maybe they’ll create more effective snow removal or something that melts ice on roads in sub-freezing temperatures without beating up the roads too much. And maybe there will be seminars where states from the south can get ideas for setting up winter weather plans from the states in the north that always had snow “when I was a kid,” but that’s not today and it wasn’t yesterday. Yeesh!

Everybody be as safe and warm as you can!

The Best and Worst Week

The week started with a new month and me wanting to assess January as I went into it. But starting February 1 there was plenty of present to keep me from reviewing the recent past right away.

Of course Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday. The game outshined the commercials this year! There were a few good spots, but the football was exactly what you’re supposed to see when arguably the best from each conference face off in the biggest football event of the year. As a Patriots house we were biting nails at the very end, sure that we were about to see the Sea Hawks grab the victory on a drive at the very end only to screams and exchange happy high fives as Patriot’s rookie, Malcolm Butler, intercepted what would have been the end of the game loss for his team and essentially won the game and the title for the Pats.

Add to the coolness, it’s four Super Bowl rings for Tom Brady, who was the game MVP and was awarded a new truck from Chevy in recognition of that. Brady wanted to give that truck to Butler. The huge difference in incomes of the veteran star and the undrafted rookie would have had major taxable prize/gift implications because the truck would have been taxed at Brady’s considerably higher income with an additional gift tax for transferring it to Butler. Chevy stepped up and changed the awarding of the prize directly to Butler, taxable just as a prize at his income. Three-way awesomeness!


But on Sunday the news wasn’t so celebratory before the game in Toledo. We had snow, tons of it, falling. I’d already made a call for Rapid, LLC., our fantastic plow guys, to come over to do clean-up Sunday night, after the snow stopped and after the game if they had the interest/opportunity to watch. Yes I know we aren’t their only customers but the snow wasn’t supposed to stop until Sunday night, so maybe they’d have some time before they had to head out. It’s a small local company; they’re leaving home to go to work, not a garage with an army of plow tanks.

We were at a Level 3 Snow Emergency, no one who wasn’t medical, street maintenance or media out on the roads. How that started and played out was the darkest part of Sunday. Mayor, D. Michael Collins, held a press conference where he said that the Level 3 would start at 3PM. While driving home after that he suffered a cardiac arrest and his SUV drove into a utility pole. Two people called 911, and with the 911 operator’s guidance, pulled him from the SUV and started resuscitation as he wasn’t responsive. I listened to the 911 recording on The Blade website; they found ID and at that time realized who it was. Mayor Collins was taken the University of Toledo Medical Center where he was listed in critical condition. He died yesterday afternoon when he was taken off life support.

I feel a loss for my city because while it’s only just a little more than a year since Mayor Collins took office he faced so many challenges so well. From losing 2 firefighters, to record snowfall, cold and the snow removal crisis that accompanied that last winter to 2 days without drinkable water to start August and the call left to him when it was safe to drink from the tap again, and he handled them all with strength of character and reassuring confidence. But I think for me personally it’s also shown me how much smaller Toledo is than Detroit too. As a citizen the loss is personal too. Maybe it’s that I actually live in the city where I lived in Detroit suburbs; the mayor of the big city in the area is a choice on my election ballots. Maybe it’s that the mayor lived a block away from us. What I definitely know is that in a year he stretched the shoes in the Mayor’s office enough to make them even harder to fill in the special election that will be held in November.

Please visit The Blade to read about a great man with a personal history that built him into a great mayor. Unlike so many in politics he didn’t create problems, he solved them.

Toledo mourns loss of Mayor D. Michael Collins



In the closer personal Naniland my daily Lasix, water pill, and I have reached a tentative truce area. Simply if I don’t take it I can feel It; my legs swell, what mobility I have is compromised and I feel awful, part because with the swelling I still don’t drink enough water because rising up from the chair to go to the bathroom is painful. The anti-Lasix stance was self-destructive at best. So here is my wake-up to midafternoon ritual that’s worked well for me for the second half of this week.

Wake-up time is when my lower back and legs ache the worst. Bless David, he helps get me through morning stretching and downstairs and once he knows I’m down safely he goes back to bed because it’s usually before wake up time for him. Then I have my morning coffee and breakfast. Notice how I prioritize there? Starve me if you will, but don’t deny me my coffee! I take the Lasix after I’ve had a chance to really wake up and when it calls me to the bathroom I drink 2 Nani-gulps of water. 2 Nani-gulps usually empties a 16-oz bottle. I have no idea why, but it works. The urgency is down and the 3 times and hour bathroom trips have gone down to about 3 in 2 hours. I’m also keeping hydrated and feel a ton better during the day.

I Can Has Do Over!

I’m starting over on my reading for this year. I didn’t think the idea of having two books at a time is bad as long as I accept that the paper pages will go slower than the e-pages. The current paper page book is a hard cover. I’m slow at reading it and slow at getting into the story. That's not because I read slow. Until my first ereader in 2010 I always read slow and had to work to do that. My reading comprehension has always been great, I scored well in school, the Mensa test and thankfully I didn’t need to reread chapters to take tests in college. I just read black on white paper slow. But I read the whole Harry Potter Series, Gone With The Wind and the awful fan-fiction sequel, Scarlett in paperback or hardcover, the current book I just not captivating me. It does interest me though and books that have been slow but interesting to start in the past have often ended well for me. So, while it’s hardcover and honestly, I drop it a lot, I’m going to keep reading.


I think the problem was with the eBook I started with. I was reading that one at night because I wanted to get it over with, but I seemed to have100 pages left every time I looked. Here is the “When I stopped review” that I put on Good Reads when put it in my “did not finish” file.

The Lost Code by Keith Emmerson

I know this is a "young adult" book and sometimes I like to take a break from heavier reading and enjoy some light reading. I got as far as 178/276 pages and I couldn't bear the fact that there was still 100 pages to read. This wasn't the fluff mystery I was expecting it seemed to lose another screw from the reality cap with every chapter. It was taking me forever to read because it just never made me actually want to read it so I never picked it up. Maybe I'll finish it someday but for now I'm letting my brain wake up again in the worlds of murder and political gain. :)

So starting February 1 my new goal for the year is 22 books read, 22 reviews that I’ll post here. It’s the same hard cover in the “currently reading” window at the left but new e-title.

And so the do-over begins! :)

It's My Half Birthday!

I’ve never made it a secret that I’m not a fan of winter. In fact I’ve done a pretty good job of painting myself a an anti-fan of winter. So what’s an optimist to do to keep from falling into winter blues? Well, as a child of the summer, I celebrate my Half-Birthday! I’m not looking outside at Mother Nature’s gag-gift this year; in 6 months it will be the heart of Leo entering into the dog days of summer when even cats find shady spots if they are outdoors. (which is only acceptable if they are rural barn cats, a little safer from traffic than urban cats on the streets and cats and dogs on the farm should always have access to clean water!)

Now my half birthday isn’t celebrated as a festival and I usually just do something special for myself. I might order a pizza today; I discover a thin crust pizza with white sauce, bacon and veggies at Marcos. I add green olives and banana peppers to it for a little sour bite and it’s SO good! And it’s only 18 points for half a small. Of course since David doesn’t do pizza, it would end up being dinner tomorrow too since I can’t reheat on my own. Unless I didn’t refrigerate overnight. I like cold pizza fine but I don’t care for it chilled. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll just ask David if he’d drive trough and bring me home a McLatte.

One fun thing I did for myself for my half birthday this year is a 2-page scrapbook layout. I had a kit that was a set of journal cards that I really wanted to play with for a while. According to the dates on the files, it was May last year that I got the kit Hello! by Scrumptiously. I wanted to do a pocket-page type layout and I knew I wanted to do a totally narcissistic layout about myself. I’ve said before that scrapbooking is both a loving and giving hobby and a totally selfish hobby all in one. It’s saving your, memories to share with other people but it’s also putting yourself as the keeper of history. You get to be the dictator of the future by directing the past. I actually think that’s fine as long as you aren’t blatantly lying about the resent it’s a wonderful series of family heirlooms for generations to come. I also think that selfishness manifests itself in vanity. Too many scrapbookers don’t include their own completely separate from others in the family thoughts or photographs in their books. Generations later relations and even family friends will wonder about the person who assembled the books. What did she or he look like, what were they doing? That’s just my little scrapping soapbox.

Of course, there’s plenty of me in my scrapbooks because I do think that way. I try to be vain for everyone and use flattering photos of us all so generations down the line multiple greats of nieces and nephews will marvel at what an attractive lot we were. But I want my scrapbooks to hold memories, lot of them, but I want my character and sense of humor to be in them too. I want to look back at my books and remember how much fun being me has always been. Oh yeah, and how attractive we’ve always looked too!

Also my half-birthday 2-pager uses those journal cards and prompts to put a time-capsule bubble around my brain at 48-1/2 years old. Making “right here, right now” ordinary day a time capsule page every now and then is fun too!

 

Credits: Hello!  by Scrumptiously and other papers from my stash

The pages are full-resolution if you want to enlarge them and read on the pages, but if you want to read what they say in simple written form, the contents of the cards are right here:

So there’s my self-indulgent answer to the winter blues. For my birthday festival I encourage everyone to have ice cream to celebrate and last year it was to buy ice cream for a kid. So if you want to celebrate my half birthday with me have a cookie. That’s nice to go with hot cocoa to shake a winter frown away. If you like the snow and ice, go enjoy it! And have a hot cocoa for me when you get in because if I was there, you know that’s where I’d be!

Find the happy, everyone!

I Am Defined

Happy Sunday everyone! Unless you’re reading this tomorrow or on any day that’s not today or some multiple of seven from today, then happy whatever of the six other days this happens to be.

I have finally been defined with a definition I agree with. For years and years I’ve taken forms of the Meyers-Briggs tests, including the all out test that I took for a job interview many years back, and the results always start with E, calling me an extrovert. I’m actually consistently an ENTJ; Extrovert, Intuitive, Thinking, Judgmental, and the description of an ENTJ fits me pretty well except that I am not that outgoing. I’m outgoing when I need to be, when I have to, but I treasure my alone time too. As a rule, extroverts can’t stand being alone. I took a test online that tells what kind of introvert or extrovert a person is, because I love taking personality tests no matter how corny they are although this one is less corny than others I’ve taken, and it doesn’t call me an extrovert. According to my results I am an outgoing introvert. Which if you look at this description; 8 signs you may be an outgoing introvert, it fits me perfectly. And I love the fact that it doesn’t call me an extrovert.

I’m in the midst of a reading dilemma. Remember I said I was going to have an upstarts book and an ereader book going at the same time? Well, I did that. If you look at my Good Reads widget on the right, there are 2 current books listed. One is a hard cover that I got in a book swap and one is an e-book, young adult fiction. I read the Harry Potter series, and the Trylle series in the beginning of 2013; don’t judge! ;) But my current problem is that I’m just not really into either one. They’re both okay, but nor riveting at all. I have a Baldacci paperback in waiting and thanks to Christmas gift cards for both Barnes and Noble for the Nook app and Amazon for the Kindle app, both on my iPad, I have a couple lists of loaded and ready to read books on the tablet. I have a goal of averaging 2 books a month and I’m not even half way through either book with only a week of January left! January and February are usually good reading months for me. I have to come up with a plan to get myself some reading time so I can catch up and start some bocks I’m more likely to MAKE time to read.

I was talking to a friend from our MS support group about the things that make MS easier to live with today than it would have been years ago, say in the 1940s when it was first diagnosed and recognized as an actual disease. Without MRIs, there was no apparent scarring of the myelin to see on the brain or spine images and while it wasn’t a death sentence for sure, it did affect life expectancy just because they knew so little about it. So much about diagnosing and understanding the disease has improved in the many years since then.

The first disease modifying medication was approved for use and became available in 1993 and more medications became available after that; all injectable. The first oral medication was approved in 2010. That was my first choice in 2011, anything to avoid needles. There are 10 medications an MS patient and their neurologist can try, depending on what side effects you want to chance. But just think;25 years ago there were NO options. You were diagnosed, treated the symptoms as best you could and you knew the disease was going to progress with no way of slowing it down.

Back in that day, just prior to a drug for the disease, it wasn’t considered a disability. In fact the ADA was a baby in 1990 with members of congress that still didn’t want it to pass. We MSers were still destined to end up in wheelchairs and there were still people fighting tooth and nail not to have to widen a door for those chairs or anyone else with a wheelchair, walker, cane or just limited mobility or allowed mobility for breathing or heart conditions. We have advocates and are encouraged to be self-advocates in the fight to continue living instead of just existing as helpless invalids; we became legally valid!

But we really acknowledged the internet, tablet, smart phones. The internet means we aren’t hopeless and lonely when we are at home. The incredible ability to reach out to others like us and be cyber support is fantastic. I couldn’t live without my iPad. With the numbness in my hands that has me dropping things all the time and unable to write having my planner and several reading apps in one device, with a padded cover and replacement insurance on it, is such a blessing It also has a notepad, radio and MP3 storage, camera and my social media apps. And it has speech-to-text for every app I’d type in, a godsend for the times when my “fumblehands” just aren’t up to hitting the right keys. This is not an ad for the iPad. It’s an acknowledgement of how technology makes disabilities less disabling. There have been many times in the past year that speech-to-text software,, like Dragon on my PC, has written this blog!

It’s just amazing and wonderful. How many times did I watched Star Trek episodes where someone was carrying around a tablet with information essential for their job on it? I’m just waiting now for the hypo spray that will zap my MS all together? THAT’S something I’d take to our support group for “share and tell!”

My final note today is for everyone in the areas where the current storm is headed BE CAREFUL! The nasty winter storm the Weather channel is calling Juno is supposed to dump a TON of snow and nastiness on the east! We have relatives and friends that are expected to get in excess of a foot of snow. My friend Edna of Miss Edna’s Place will be seeing it in her part of New England as well, what she describes as feet of inches predicted on TV. If you are in the areas getting snow and hurricane winds, stay as safe and warm as possible and the rest of us please send good thoughts and prayers for them. We’ll get a few inches in Toledo and I’ll complain as I see it falling but then I’ll remember that I don’t have it so bad and check Edna’s blog or ask David if he talked to any of his brothers.

Keeping Very Busy

Are there any statistics on how soon people break resolutions? Now, I don’t do resolutions, it’s projects and goals for me; it leaves room to do many at once and catch up things that fall behind.

So there are a few things I’m behind on. Blog reading and writing is one of those things, Much of my online “work” has been distracted. If you noticed there is a GoFundMe link in my side bar. My good friend, Sheri, spent 10 days of the beginning of this year in the hospital. She went home Thursday night and hopefully goes back to work Monday. Sheri lives alone so she is the only breadwinner in her home. She’s been stressing and I’ve stressed for he too. The bills don’t go away and the biggest bill is waiting in the wings. Where her normal budget is based on mandatory overtime at the job she’s had many years, now she’s used all her sick time for the ear and has about a week on disability that’s less than half her non-OT paycheck. So she has all her regular bills plus a giant bill for the deductible and out of pocket limit for the year all at once coming from the hospital. See a reason for stress?

I’d write her a check for everything she needs to stay afloat if I wasn’t sure my check would bounce higher than a 10-cent superball. What I could do for her was set up the fundraiser. I realize that dedicating my time to this for Sheri will eat into what I can earn for Walk MS but my disease will earn tens of thousands of dollars this year. That makes me happy, really it does, but Sheri will get buried by the financial rubble a hospital stay drops on someone. She is a friend that makes the trip from Michigan to visit me when she is on vacation. She pushes my wheelchair when we’re someplace I can’t get to with the power chair. If my fundraising can make me rise from this chair this year but Sheri will be going without to pay the monthly bills to the hospital without ruining her credit, well, I think I’d rather have her okay and stable to push my chair. So, while I have my page done for Walk, I’m encouraging everyone to donate to helping one person at a time this year. I’d rather be okay with the people I call mine than great alone. Remember I started 2013 in the hospital? I’m not trying to keep a roof over my own head, but I don’t let David pay my medical copays. I have three payments left on that bill. Out of pocket limit all at once when you still have other bills (office visits and prescriptions aren’t part of that limit) is HUGE.

I’ve had some other friends who are dealing with issues and making sure I have time for them comes before blogging, scrapping and working on ways to make the house more accessible!

Credits:P52 Basic Blocking Templates by Digitalegacies Designs, All That Glitters is Snow, Begin Again, My Favorite Brew and Nite At Grandma’s by Aprilisa Designs; When Skies Are Gray by Gingerbread Ladies; Smooches Cardstock by Digital Scrapbooking Studio; Let It Snow and In Then Kitchen – Cooking by Little Rad Trio; Important To Me byu Simple Girl; Chocolicious by Magical Scraps Galore; Journal Cards by A Little Grace and Mercy; Jilbert’s Bits of Bytes; Kimeric Kreations; and Connie Prince

I am a few layouts behind on the page-a-day goal, but only a few and my Project 52 is current! I’ve finished the layouts for weeks one and two. I did week one like I did last year’s layouts , in quadrants. I’m mixing things up a little thus year. Week two has a little different base.

Credits: P52 Basic Blocking Templates by Digitalegacies Designs, Afternoon With Grandma by Little Rad Trio, Attitude Adjustment by Inspired Designs, Better Days Ahead by Aprilisa Designs, Chill In The Air Ginerscraps Monthly Mix, Distressed 1&2 by Created by Jill Scraps, Falling 4 U by Keystone Scraps, Good Reads by Aprilisa Designs, I’ll Be There by Trixie Scraps, Owie by Blue Hearts Scraps & Luv Ewe Designs, Rainy Days by Ginger Bread Ladies, Journal Cards from Doctor’s Orders by Studio Meagan’s Creations and Second Chances by Mad Genius Designs

After 53 weeks of the quadrants it was a little uncomfortable ding it that way. I think I’ll probably do mostly quadrants but mix it up with a different base template here and there. I’ve also been making an effort to use journal cards, like would be used for pocket scrapping.. I have a bunch of them that are in kits or were freebies but I’m also making my own. I don’t think the journal cards are a huge difference from the mostly translucent mats I used last year, but I do see it as a way 2015 is unique from 2014. I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel here, I just watched a video about Project 52 scrapping and it prompted me to look at the pages from 2012, the only other year I’ve actually competed this project and really see what aspects I liked most of each.

I really had fun last year with this cupcake:

It didn’t appear for the first time until the second quarter of the year, but it appears in the 2014 book 7 times. A recurring element was fun! This year’s element has already made its premier appearance. It’s not due to return for a few weeks now.

I made a full set of four templates for bases for the 2-page weekly spreads. You might recognize the first two from the layouts I’ve shown above. The second two are created to work for my dally bocks, but they are also great for pocket scrapping or a blocked scrapbook page. Clicking the preview will take you to the download page. Look for more Project 52 things as the year progresses!

That’s all for now; reading time!