Boy am I glad I don't have any teenagers these days...or maybe not

Thanks to Time online: http://techland.time.com/2012/05/03/92-teen-text-terms-decoded-for-confused-parents/

"These 92 terms are among the most popular, but know that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

1. 143 I love you (popularized by no less awesome a source than Mister Rogers himself)
2. 2DAY Today
3. 4EAE For ever and ever
4. ADN Any day now
5. AFAIK As far as I know
6. AFK Away from keyboard
7. ATM At the moment
8. B/C Because
9. B4 Before
10. BF / GF Boyfriend / Girlfriend
11. BFN Bye for now
12. BOL Be on later
13. BRB Be right back
14. BTW By the way
15. DM Direct message
16. DWBH Don’t worry, be happy
17. F2F or FTF Face to face
18. FB Facebook
19. FF Follow Friday (Follow Friday is a recurring topic on Twitter. Each week, users post lists of people that they think others should followusing the #FF or #FollowFriday hashtag.)
20. FTL For the loss / For the lose
21. FTW For the win
22. FWB Friends with benefits
23. FWIW For what it’s worth
24. FYEO For your eyes only
25. FYI For your information
26. GLHF Good luck, have fun
27. GR8 Great
28. HAK Hugs and kisses
29. HAND Have a nice day
30. HT or H/T Hat tip or heard through (usually referencing news or an informative link)
31. HTH Hope this helps / Happy to help
32. IANAL I am not a lawyer
33. IDK I don’t know
34. IIRC If I remember correctly
35. IKR I know, right?
36. ILY / ILU I love you
37. IMHO In my honest opinion / In my humble opinion
38. IMO In my opinion
39. IRL In real life
40. IU2U It’s up to you
41. IYKWIM If you know what I mean
42. J/K Just kidding
43. J4F Just for fun
44. JIC Just in case
45. JSYK Just so you know
46. K or KK Okay
47. LMBO Laughing my butt off
48. LMK Let me know
49. LOL Laughing out loud
50. MM Music Monday. Another recurring Twitter topic. In this case, users post a song or two that will get your week off to a better start.
51. MSM Mainstream media
52. NAGI Not a good idea
53. NM Never mind
54. NMU Not much, you?
55. NP No problem or Now playing (as in “My MP3 stream is now playing LMFAO’s Party Rock.)
56. NSFW Not safe for work. If this is attached to a link, you’re strongly advised not to check it out while in the workplace or any other venue where inappropriate content would be, well, inappropriate.
57. NSFL Not safe for life. Usually a humorous disclaimer that something formerly innocent is going to be irreparably sullied if you click the link.
58. NTS Note to self
59. OH Overheard
60. OMG Oh my God
61. ORLY Oh, really?
62. PAW Parents are watching
63. PLS or PLZ Please
64. PPL People
65. PTB Please text back
66. QQ Crying. Rather than an abbreviation, this is an emoticon, a picture created in text. The tails of the capital Q form tears, while the circles are the eyes. Saying “QQ” aloud also can mimic the “boo hoo” of someone who’s upset. Usually used sarcastically or contemptuously.
67. RAK Random act of kindness
68. RL Real life
69. ROFL Rolling on the floor laughing
70. RT Retweet. Similar to forwarding an email, Twitter lets you echo other people’s tweets for your own followers to read. In some cases, folks will ask for something they’ve said to be amplified by saying “Please RT” or “PLS RT.”
71. RUOK Are you okay? In Australia, #RUOK is a regularly trending topic, following a government initiative called RUOK Day, which raises awareness of mental health issues on social networking sites.
72. SMH Shaking my head
73. SRSLY Seriously
74. SSDD Same stuff, different day
75. SWAK Sealed with a kiss
76. SWYP So, what’s your problem?
77. TIA Thanks in advance
78. TIME Tears in my eyes
79. TMB Tweet me back
80. TMI Too much information
81. TMRW Tomorrow
82. TTYL Talk to you later
83. TY or TU Thank you
84. VSF Very sad face
85. WB Welcome back
86. WTH What the heck?
87. WTPA Where the party at?
88. WYCM Will you call me?
89. YGM You’ve got mail (to alert your texting partner that you’ve contacted them via that staid old email thing. That’s sooo 2001!)
90. YMMV Your mileage may vary
91. YW You’re welcome
92. ZOMG Oh my god (sarcastic)"

The above is just a sampling of several of the acronyms the kids use for texting, oddly enough they do make a lot of sense and some I have even used for myself.

Boy, I feel for all you parents/grandparents, out there and we would be the grandparents out there too, since that is where our age numbers roll on the upper end and since most of my friends have teenage grandkids, some older than that and a few with younger.

Any-who, we don’t and sure many a day I wish we did have.

But until they figure out how grandparents can give birth to grandchildren without being from some loony inbred background wacko people there is no manufacturing of them even if you do yearn for them on many an occasion, except when the word comes down on the newest sneakiest way to not let Mom or Dad in on things like their live, school, friends etc. then I take one heck of deep breath and say whew!

We may have been lenient parents with a lot of trust in our sons own judgment but we did always know who their friends were and where they would be going with them.

  It’s very tough today, when ours were growing up during the seventies and eighties, since they were really well grown by the 1990’s and not much worries then, but they could not do what they kids today can do with all their techno devices.

Between sexting, sending those naked photos to people and or actually performing a sexual behavior that’s all very scary I would think to any parent!

And those predators all over the Internet, yes they have been around way too long.

As much as I would really like a few of our own like those adorable kiddies you all post, I wish you wouldn’t, due to what the latest info is on posting all those PICS, people steal them and use them for not nice things.

Hubby is retired law enforcement, as you all know, and even years ago it was going on with the predators on line, but now it is way out of hand and I believe worse due to what I can glean from news reports.

Even our PICS were high jacked and posted online under my name though, I suppose in a tag and that is one of the many reasons I do not post too many PICS except the ones that no one can alter and you too should be more cautious. Weekly there is another story about young children or teens having their pics used in some way other than intended, just be aware and more careful please!

Thinking now about the text messages when done while driving is extremely dangerous, but of all the stuff out there I suppose they are the least of most parents worries, hmm?

They appear to distract so many from talking directly to people including their families they show on TV, I could be wrong since we do not have that issue here personally.

All I do know is that as a village we should if we could tell children to be careful with their choices… who am I kidding would they listen?

Perhaps.

But didn’t we all think we knew better or more or no one understood us at one time or another… I suppose the old adage the more things change the more they stay the same, and yep they do.

On that note of sure it is, and still jealous of all you grands, allow me to be the very first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask all of you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Update: I found out from that IRS related number that when that additional info was mailed by us snail mail two weeks ago they feel that it takes ten days to receive it and then another six to eight weeks to process it and that they cannot confirm or deny that they received it! A BLANK PAGE! CRAZY! PS I do go daily to irs.gov to see what is going on/status by hitting “where’s my refund” and it still says "in processing", but will enter a date of arrival to us when known, yeah sure, and they probably will try next to sell me some swampland in Florida or New Jersey! LOL!

Where's my refund?

This is the first time in about six years that we are receiving a refund, since retired we have been breaking even, not having to pay and not getting a refund, in other words zero both ways.

Who said being middle class doesn’t have its rewards.

Taxes are simple although we have to continue to file due to not being destitute I suspect, we own things, a home a boat and a car.

And sure we pay taxes on all those things and receive statements for them as well as us also telling our online tax preparer all the amounts, but until this year we have been zeroing out.

Oh that is not right for two years we got back what they took out of Hubby’s pension and then there was the year a woman at the IRS gave us monies that she shouldn’t have but it had to be paid back two years later with interest, whew what a mess just $500! And they admitted that it was their mistake.

Any-way, now with this Healthcare.gov or Obamacare for some reason with me paying actual out of pocket premiums totaling $6176.61, not including that twelfth month that they had received an additional $274 of subsidies from last year in health care premiums with an actual cost of my insurance coverage for 2014 at $9464.61that Florida Blue received with that $3288 pay out from the subsidies for 12 months although I had only 11 months of coverage. Does the total price of those premiums seem as obscene to you as to me?

So after filing our taxes in the beginning of February with info for direct deposit as we had previous years for them to not snail mail but put it right into our account like most people here I sit March 20^th wondering where our refund is, thus our title tonight.

I have gone online to irs.gov and filled out the info they requested and get the same response “in processing”.

We did have a glitch, actually they had one, asking for a form’s second page that said we did not have to fill out due to answering the previous page question according to what they needed to know, and so it was kicked back nearly two weeks ago and we quickly took care of it, and now I realized that the additional phone number was sent with our copy of their letter and now I am on hold to check to see what’s up. The hold message said it will be fifteen to thirty minutes for assistance.

Any-who, it is not an enormous amount of a refund to many but to us it will be helpful with all our additional expenditures over these last few months, my out of pocket co-pays of my MRI’s and Skipper’s ultrasound totaling a few thousand that have been paid but we are still having to pay an additional payment to the hospital from my emergency visit and it is more money for us to have but not nearly as much as what has been spent on those things.

Normally, when you have a refund direct deposited the wait time is no more than twenty-one days if filing electronically, but otherwise six to eight weeks snail mail wise.

So far it has been forty-four days for us, more than twice as long.

It could be the fact about that glitch with that extra page with nothing on it that they insisted they needed that was resent about two weeks ago, and that is around fourteen days so next week should be right for them to direct deposit, I would think.

But why haven’t they given us a date instead of just stating that it is being processed?

Yes, I am the squeaky wheel, and sometimes it does help and sometimes it doesn’t help to ask, since most governmental departments say stock statements when it's done it will be done, except if you owe them money, hmm?

Sure its is always the same they owe you and when its done it will be there but if you owe them we wanted it yesterday with interest!

Fair?

Doesn’t seem that way to me.

What if we charged interest would they pay it, no!

I am sure many of you out there have thrown that idea around too.

Still waiting…

I don’t feel like being that rude to you so all I can say is to stay tuned and hopefully by tomorrow’s blog I will be able to tell you.

On that note of whatever will be will be, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy spring and good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

PS To my northern friends the snow will eventually stop, we all know that!

Establishing a relationship with Medicare or...

 

The realization of knowing you may not know as much as you think!

For most Americans that have had jobs throughout their lives a portion of their paychecks had been taken out during those years to pay for their futures of having medical care in old age, with a program called Medicare.

Now that I am going to be of legal age, within months, I have been told that since my birth date falls at the very beginning of the month I am able to begin this more reasonable medical coverage, by a couple hundred of dollars a month less than what I have been paying these last couple of years, and even with a slight supplement payment, all my co-pays will be ZERO, ZILCH, BUPKISS, NADA, NOTHING, NOT-A-THING!

Yes, we have had a two and half hour in home visit from a representative of one of the many, many insurance companies who have been sending literature and calling all vying for our meager dollars…but seriously this is so much better coverage and the premium output than what I am doing now.

Zero co-pays for medications, “0” for office visits, specialists or GP’s and yes there is more, with NO networks all your own choices, only a yearly payment of $147 deductible for Part B, Excess fees- are rare, co-pays some office visits of those who accept Medicare but not all types a maximum of $20 and up to $50 for an ER visit if not admitted to the hospital!

My Copaxone has much larger co-pay but I did call my co-pay angels, the Assistance Fund, and they said I still qualified for them to cover that even at the higher amount, whew!

This is called the “N” plan that is with Banker’s Life who is Colonial Penn, so it is legit.

And no, we did not commit yet but Allison their representative made another appointment with us for next week.

Meanwhile we have another person from another insurance company coming here in the earlier part of next week!

Stay tuned.

Last night I got another scare with a bill from CVS Specialty for my Copaxone from December 15, 2014, saying that they were not paid my monthly cost for my medication that is over $4600 and were asking for me to pay. I called them and said that it was not right and that it was a mistake.

Florida Blue had paid all of my previous charges for this medication, why now, even the ones for this year had been paid. Their billing at CVS said that I had been in a “grace period”. I said what! And then I thought about that stupid penny underpayment, but wait that was for this year, not last, besides now they still have a penny over since I paid it twice, once originally when they said that I had it wrong and then again when they insisted they did not receive it!

Sure enough the final decision was to call Florida makes me oh so Blue non-healthy stress causing insurance company and too bad for you as clients company, and any-who they said that of course they had that month’s premium payment received on 12/2/14 so all was good and there was no reason, “logically”, my additional wording, of why it was not paid! It was immediately rectified during a three way phone call with me, FL B and CVS billing, done and done!

Ta DA! I ask you is this necessary to try and see if my heart is functioning monthly with their absurd errors in bookkeeping in their billing’s department, seriously?

I say a nope, no, nada, no reason for their incompetence and for them to consistently do this to people, any, but especially the ones with chronic illnesses that stress can cause more severity!

All is fixed now so I have been told.

And they even called later on to tell me that my monthly delivery of my Copaxone would be coming tomorrow/today, and it did!

What will I complain about when I bid them a fair farewell/SEE YA DON'T WANT TA BE YA!

Don’t know, but I am sure I will find a new way to do a happy dance!

Just two more months, thankfully!

So that’s it for tonight with personal info abounding. I will be even saving a couple a hundred a month that is earmarked for paying down the car loan, we already pay additional on our mortgage each month for the principle to be paid down for few years since that HARP refi, and after all that we would like to save for a vacation perhaps?

Who knows…?

On that note of counting my chickens before they hatch, making me a bit nervous, as usual, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all those overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Sign language

American Sign Language to be specific is a wonderful thing to know. 

Thanks to the below site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language

The American manual alphabet. Letters with asterisks are shown from the side (*L left or *R right), rather than as the viewer would see them.

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/concepts.htm

The above link has a video with a beginning of 150 phrases/words signed.

There are so many ways to learn signing online and classes too locally!

The reason I mentioned this is because lately I have been signing with Gus, and yes he can hear, probably better than you or me.

But it has made him realize when he makes me “happy” by his proper behavior with my thumbs up sign and hands spread open, shaking like jazz hands meaning happy and overly endorsed more with a great big smile!

His reaction is one of prancing around and tail wagging, and so he does know the significance what the signs mean.

Of course we both reinforce his proper behavior with his individual pieces of kibble and a pat on the head with a scratch around his face. He still looks bewildered at times and so I make sure that he knows that touching him is a positive thing and does not hurt and he should therefore not feel cornered or whatever seemed to be his reasoning for growling and snapping, and no he has not done that in more than a week now.

We also had learned the American Sign Language alphabet when Number One Son was in scouts over thirty years ago.

Fast forward to when Hubby had been a deputy doing community policing in the beginning of his career he was on many local boards of directors for non-profits and one of those was H.I.P., which is the acronym for Hearing Impaired Persons.

At that time, in the late nineties early two thousands, we were all set to take their course for the whole shebang of learning phrasing words etc. in American Sign Language when I ended up needing my hand surgery, oops!

So it was put on hold and sadly we never did go back and since by then Hubby had gone over to the marine patrol division, his dream job. Although, he had loved the community policing too and received many atta boy accolades, plaques etc. for his handling of many groups and people way back then!

When we had had our wicker store in Toms River NJ, way back in the early 1980’s before moving to Florida we had had a couple come in who were deaf and oddly enough with the little I knew of signing I was able to communicate with them, plus they were very kind and understanding and patient with my spelling everything! LOL!

So, in the end it is something that could be beneficial in so many ways, even just to teach to children to learn to understand others or to not yell when expressing themselves… oh I don’t know for the fun of learning something new and different!

On that note of whatever floats your boat allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly to count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Happy St. Paddy's Day! Erin Go Bra/Bragh/Braugh!

Erin Go Bra/bragh/braugh!

Actually either Erin go bragh or braugh is correct and means Ireland forever!

As per: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_go_bragh

While on the other hand Erin Go Bra seems to mean going braless, but not according to legit sites or perhaps, who knows?

As far as our celebration has been going on this St. Patrick’s Day when everyone says they are Irish, even in this home or German, Russian, English and many other eastern European nationalities, but not a true Irishman or woman in the mix, we had our corned beef and cabbage as well as a green drink/libation, but the only ones in our home were icy ones leftover in our freezer Margueritas, not exactly Irish, but green just the same!

You see that our nightly wine dance stopped about a year or so ago, due to the high caloric intake of the wine, and medical professionals confusing the heck out of us with one week saying that at our ages it was good for us then weeks later saying no it was not!

So we made a compromise this year and decided that for holidays we would imbibe, as we all know that most everything in moderation couldn’t hurt, true?

And yes, the only alcoholic beverages we had in our home were the two Margueritas that of course were green, lime juice infused green, but did add a colorful addition to our dinner table.

Also for desert I happen to have butterscotch pudding in the pantry that was fat free and sugar free that was to be made with fat free milk which I did. Many would say that it was taste free, but I beg to differ I licked the spoon and it is delish!

Another horror story I can tell now that we are all done, and our 2.23 lbs. of corned beef is gone, as well as the small half head of cabbage, two medium peeled and quartered potatoes, a large dose of small carrots, half an onion and four cloves of garlic and one bay leaf, no salt beef bouillon and a wee bit of flour to make its own gravy while cooking in my pressure cooker in stainless since that aluminum one was gotten rid of years ago! (Even then rumors were said about aluminum pots causing Alzheimer’s) The whole shebang took a little over an hour for fork tender meat and veggies…oh the horror part was me soaking the 50% less sodium corned beef in cold water for hours in my stainless prep bowl, changing the water three times, and even then it was plenty salty believe me, I did use the peppercorns that came with it too!

The aroma in the house was intoxicating, so in realty no need for green alcoholic beverages but we did anyway and I am still nursing mine for this last hour and it is nice.

Yes, we eat early, five nightly, evening!

Breakfast at nine, lunch at noon, twelve P.M. for all children who graduated from high school around the 1990’s in Fort Pierce Florida.

That always reminds me of the high school grad I hired to sell our jewelry cleaner in their Sam’s Club, a cute gal, a previous cheerleader with that kind of personality, but when I said to meet me at the club for training at noon, she asked, “What time is noon?”

Scary, but I did hire her and she was able to sell in spite of that lack of common/ universal knowledge. (Yes, that was my job recruiting, hiring, firing, training demo people, also doing cost effectiveness sheets, payroll at the five Sam’s Clubs in five counties in Florida in the early 1990’s that were all mine and I would drive three thousand miles a month, but I did have my car, gas and hotel and food all paid for.)

Who knew that so much was lacking in the public school system there and then, this was twenty years ago, and my sons at least had much better educations in Ormond Beach FL, and prior to that NJ. They are both college grads for years.

Back to my titled topic of St. Patrick’s Day; which for some odd reason is on March 17 ^th this is not the day of his birth today; it is the day of his death.

See, now I don’t know if you were like me but I had that wrong.

But the Irish are the ones who always have been known to celebrate life not death with very happy wakes; oh that’s right that is what a wake is at their deaths, got it!

For some more info on this day goto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Day

On that happy note allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night, you really can’t have too much happy, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask all of you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Finding common ground/interests is a...

A crap shoot to say the least.

Funny, WORD, i.e. program, feels that the above statement should have been, “crap shoots”, huh?

Being grammatically incorrect is more fun.

Many who read this hack job, in other words this blog of mine, nightly have found it difficult to follow if they are English grammar purist and might have even given up on my technique of expressing myself nightly here.

I have found that many a time even with the use of this archaic grammar and spell check minimalist editing process in my WORD Program circa 2003 at times I go off the rails and go with my own gut way of dialect/speech patterns, the real me; I call this method realism. I write as I speak, and I suppose that I am NOT always grammatically correct then either. Gosh if this were a novel I would not feel as guilty, since characters created have those rights of rich true tones without hoity toity overtures of proper speech.

Life is so simple except when you do things that you feel must please others…Oh okay, all of us have gone through life trying to please people, usually starting with our parents and the rest of that inner circle of people who say they love you no matter what. Then why do we try so hard to please? Continuing on to school and yes there you are again trying to please that teacher, boss, then a spouse, a child and on and on we go…

Why do we always put such difficult unrealistic pressures on ourselves?

Many call it “a conscience” is good and makes us stay on the right track, and no argument here, it sure does… within reason, hmm?

Good angel, bad angel syndrome happens around puberty when you want to belong to a group that might be the actual bad angel one but good angel tells you uh, uh!

How you finally react will determine a lifetime of pain or joy, just by that simple decision.

Or not, of course not.

I’m not a psychologist, so anything I say here carries no weight in the bigger picture of things, but at times I do show proficiency in common sense, but not always, than I would be your deity, huh?

Most of us grow up in spite of any mistakes large or small of judgment, and usually keep on making many mistakes throughout life, that’s why it’s called life and as people none of us are perfect.

And many of us go on to live happy, healthy, successful lives periodically in spite of all that; even me.

At one time I was all those things mentioned above.

Time has a way of catching up with you and changing some things.

All in all the one thing we do have in our control is how we look at the world, either by being happy or by being sad, most days I chose to be happy.

I may be considered fat, dumb and happy by some but by me I am mostly two of those things and I will let you guess which two.

That’s the spirit laugh!

Tell the world what you really think, but in code or gibberish like me.

I have cooled my heels on some op ed pieces due to the controversies on the bigger more important ones, and who really cares about what I might be thinking anyway; bloggers have been killed, but you all know that.

You are very smart people.

Sure the bloggers were international renown at their jobs, not like me, but one never knows does one? Ten countries still read this.

In conclusion, I am more like THE SEINFELD SHOW than most will care to admit, why? I have no idea, but I insist I talk often about nothing and I thought that was their claim to fame too?

On that note of what, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

I wish I knew

More about all things family that means my Mom’s as well as my Dad’s.

My cousins have been working on our genealogy for years on my Dad’s side, but Mom’s side’s mystery lingers large.

Most of that side knows very little, since I did ask.

I do know that Mom’s Mom is whom I was named for, after she was killed in a car accident six months before I was born, at a mere fifty-seven years old. Grandpa and Grandma were driving from New Jersey to Miami back in late 1949 or early 1950, never made clear. Grandpa had a heart attack and that is all I know he ended up in the hospital and she ended up dead. It was my Mom’s last time that she would be willing to fly in a plane, since the whole experience was devastating to her, naturally, and she never wanted to fly again or drive a car.

Mysteries are rampant on my mother’s side and that is why I thought it would be very interesting to find out more.

She had a bunch of interesting cousins involved in the arts and an aunt in particular that was legally blind who was an artist and a Bohemian or Hippy before it was in vogue and lived and worked in Greenwich Village NYC during the first part of the twentieth century for many years after, I think her name was Minnie. And a first cousin who was an actor and voice over artist named Mason Adams who was Lou Grants’ boss, yep the show with Mary Tyler Moore. His son attended my Mom’s funeral back in 1982.

And that is part of the reason her Mother’s maiden was a very common name, and although I do know that her Mom came from Liverpool England around 1877 at the age of two.

My Mom was the oldest of five and all are gone now, and my first cousins are slowly diminishing too, either passing away or not interested in being very close. Most are spread hither and yon.

When we were able to talk there was a story that one told me about my Russian Grandpa, my Mom’s Dad that he killed a man who was raping his sister way back in the early 1900’s in Russia, he came here after that. But my Grandpa was a sweetheart and I tend to believe its feasibility of it all, he would protect his family no matter what as fantastical as it may seem to most. But that is way over the top from the man I knew, until I read the below information that I must have forgotten from my world history class in high school.

“The revolution of 1905, an unprecedented empire-wide social and political upheaval was set in motion by the violent suppression on January 9 (Bloody Sunday) in St. Petersburg of a mass procession of workers, led by the radical priest Georgiy Gapon, with a petition for the tsar. Bloody Sunday was followed, nationwide, by workers’ and students’ strikes, street demonstrations, spates of vandalism and other periodic violence, assassinations of government officials, naval mutinies, nationalist movements in the imperial borderlands, and anti-Jewish pogroms and other reactionary protest and violence. In a number of cities, workers formed Soviets, or councils. At the end of the year, armed uprisings occurred in Moscow, the Urals, Latvia, and parts of Poland. Activists from the zemstva and the broad professional Union of Unions formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, whose initials lent the party its informal name, the Kadets. Some upper-class and propertied activists called for compromise with opposition groups to avoid further disorders.”

For more info goto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia_%281892%E2%80%931917%29

He was the type of grandpa you would sit on his lap and he would give you presents, mostly money, and he loved to garden. He had been a dairy farmer when he first moved here that is Bayonne NJ and sold his land and farm to Borden in 1913 and became a housing developer in Elizabeth and built developments and apartment buildings as well as hospitals and a Y even. He died in 1958 from another heart attack again while wintering in Miami and that is the winter of 1957/58 that Mom and I trained, via train travel, down to see him in the hospital and then he passed away.

Amazingly with all those incredible bits of info I do not know my great grandparents names or my grandparents siblings names or those who came before them… now that would be very interesting to find out through genealogy.

Oddly enough when my cousin told me about what my grandpa had done my reaction was one first of disbelief and then mulling it over ever so slightly I said that felt that Grandpa was a hero saving his sister like that!

My cousin was speechless or if not that I somehow have forgotten what he did say to my response, but I do not believe he thought I would take it that way and that he was trying to shock me and we were adults at the time not kids, within these last ten years or so if I recall.

Geez, if anyone out there is from my Mom’s side I would love to hear from you and perhaps we could hash it out or maybe they know what I don’t or more or have been secretly doing a search genealogy wise.

Any-who, on that note of way too much info, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Below is my Mom’s family, that is her mom and dad and her siblings, each two years apart in age, for her Sweet Sixteen circa 1927 picture. She is the one in the middle on the chair the eldest and from this picture I am sure you tell why she was chosen to play Anne of Green Gables in her school play. Dark auburn hair and pencil thin.