Millions for Mammograms fulfilled, free diabetes A1C testing, and Viet Nam Memorial...

Today definitely made up for yesterday; it was an action packed busy day!
Do any of you remember that I applied for a low cost mammography program locally, and was willing and able to pay at a discounted price?
And the program I seemed to finally qualify for was the Millions for Mammograms program? Well, that’s where I went today, and it was for free at the hospital, wow and this year it went digital, I know… but not anything like our TV’s that have been all too often losing their signals or turning into pixel puzzle pieces when its trying to find itself, oh no, this was clear and precise with immediate results, and I am good to go for another year! Although, it was a bit scary there for a few moments when they had to retake my left one; that bad girl has already had two of my three lumpectomies, and I got worried. Fortunately, they alleviated that when they said all was well on the retake, may be I forgot to smile? LOL

Did you see it? Walgreen’s is becoming our medical outpost for this and that well I just found out that besides giving seasonal flu shots like we went for weeks ago for $24.99, they also offer, once a year A1C diabetes testing, and so I went there to get the freebie and I went down even lower on the test to 6.0 from the 6.2 three months ago, and the 7.1 nine months ago, which is really great! Now I know there’s really nothing to worry about, peace of mind is priceless!

While at the hospital I also got a handle on when they will be FINALLY giving the masses the H1N1 flu shots and where, our convention center next Wednesday from 10A.M. to 3 P.M., but you still must meet the criteria, being a child, young adult, pregnant or a person with a chronic illness or a care giver of some one who is chronically ill. Please don’t stand or sit in line if you aren’t of these people, most at risk who must get them first please.

Did you know that the initial chicken fast food place is asking too much for there meal deals? Well, neither did we, and we left and ended up going to the golden arches and paying half of what the other wanted and received two meals! Now that’s a deal.
Any-who, Hubby went in and picked it up and we drove over to the park by the waterfront where the Viet Nam Memorial is on loan and would you believe…they had no picnic tables, just benches…I know… so we ate in the car!
And then we ventured out and was saddened impressed and overwhelmed with the shear enormity of the quantity of names, all from our era that were killed in the war that wasn’t called a war, it was called a police action. The realization and memories that it invoked in us are difficult to express, but it’s like most things with this magnitude of screaming witnesses you had to be there.
Many children don’t understand that it was the first televised nightly war, and the remembrances are chilling.

You see? I told you we were real busy today. We packed utility into fun and adventure, and that’s a good thing, don’t you think?

Good night to you all and to all count those blessings and I will too!

PS the weather here was perfect today in the mid seventies most of the whole day!

As days go...

This day was quite uneventful.
Thinking and writing and reading in glimpses seemed to be the trend with this crazy weather that we are having…COLD! (Let’s put it this way … it was in the sixties for a good part of the day and only hitting seventy for a short period of time, maybe an hour or so. That’s COLD for here in southern land!)
Comfort food too, and so tonight we ate the pressure cooker pot roast that Hubby and I made together, mostly me but he did help a bit with the potatoes and squash peeling and chopping.

What is it about the colder weather that makes most human beings think about small comforts? Food, socks, sweaters etc. all give one a fuzzy feeling of perhaps childhood when Mom would say things like: take this, do this, or eat this. Yes, that does sound right. Moms, weren’t they always the ones who set things right when the world would occasionally go spinning out of control? They would be the leveler, the even keelers, and the ones who knew how to set things straight and make everything all better once again.

And so why is it so many adult children (a very real oxymoron), treat their parents like children when they still have all their faculties? I can somehow understand that mean well behavior of reverse roles when parents do have some form of senility, but why when they do not? Unfortunately, my parents both passed away when I was still in my thirties years ago so I have no one that I can treat either way, but my husband’s Mom, who we see quite infrequently, since we live so far from one another, and I do try to treat her more as a friend than anything else. I suppose there is no handbook on how adult children should behave when dealing with their parents in any situation that may arise, but there should be. I know, I know, we really weren’t sent home with one, and for that matter of fact neither were they when we all had our own children! Trial and error was how it worked in the raising process. I do know there are many doctors who presume to know what to do in each and every situation, but do they really? No one is perfect, a revelation to us all, I know that is written somewhere in stone, but go with me here… What about the Golden Rule? Why can’t we just treat people how we want to be treated? Simplicity at it’s finest, what do you all think?

On that provocative questioning note I will bid you all a good night and tell you all to count those blessings and I will too!

Rain came and went but left our rain barrels once again full to the brim!

The remnants of Ida accomplished what we had hoped for, a very good dosing of water on our lawns, gardens and filled our 110 gallons worth of rain barrels!
So we are good once again for now…

Last night we were notified that our elderly neighbor, in his early eighties, across the canal had been hospitalized once again with congestive heart failure and cirrhosis of the liver, and remember; even that is an illness friends! He is a very fine gentleman and we wish him a speedy recovery, and yes, he can recover from the congestive heart failure he has before. So did my step-mother’s sister; she did it for years, she had congestive heart failure on and off and outlived my Dad that died just five and half weeks after his stroke at seventy-nine years young, and she was still hanging on, again, and well into her nineties! Another person we know was also diagnosed with cirrhosis in his thirties, and is still alive nearly thirty years later today!

Today was Veteran’s Day and we had the where-with-all to put the flag out, but stupidity kicked in and we also put that Get Well card out into our mailbox to go to the above mentioned neighbor, what’s wrong with this picture? No mail today, a legal holiday; silly us!

I failed to mention that this week also marks the fortieth anniversary of Sesame Street, which had been a mainstay in our home with our sons when they were toddlers. I believe it was very responsible for their social awareness besides being the usual alphabet and numbers teaching. My favorite quote from the show is, “People are like flowers they all come in different sizes, shapes and colors and are all beautiful in their own way!” Don’t you just love that? I do. Acceptance for differences has shown through with both of our sons who were born (respectively 37 and 33 years ago) just in time to enjoy the best children’s show ever!

On that pleasant note, I will wish you all a good night and to all count those blessings and we will too!

Local ties to Fort Hood, and we have a famous memorial on loan too!

Justin Johnson, a 21 year old local military fellow from right here in Port Charlotte, was one of the injured at Fort Hood. He had a visit today one on one from President Obama! Perhaps nationally you may have heard about him, he was on the phone speaking with his Mom when Hasan shot him, his mom thought he was playing a video game and she told him to lower it. She flew out to see him. He is on the mend and should make a full recovery thankfully!

Right now we are finally getting a bit of rain from the remnants of Ida, and it sure took her long enough to bestow her drizzle upon us. Boy, did we need it we are way down inches wise.

Now we are lucky enough to also have a woman who won one of the Publisher’s Clearing House $10, 000 prizes too today, Gladys Neville!

Last but not least in the recognition for a small town department…We received the traveling Viet Nam Memorial Wall and it went up today and will be locally displayed at our waterfront park in Punta Gorda until Sunday!

Today Hubby and I went to the craft store and picked up some baskets, ½ price sale, for the slide out in the laundry room, but although we measured them they proved to be too large and so they now hold our necessities above me in this computer cabinet, which looks more like a breakfront. I did have smaller baskets in the cubbies above but now they have been given the task of holding my crafts in the slide out in the laundry, three of them fit perfectly and the last one I put in the top of my closet for anything I may desire!

Locally again, Collier County, Naples, 77 children have gotten the wrong flu shot not the H1 N1, but to the good it shouldn’t hurt them since it was just the seasonal flu shot.

Good night to all and to all take care and count those blessings and we will too!

Small miracles, anniversary of a wall coming down, and Ida's track

My Hubby’s Mom answered her own phone in her own condo today!
We had been calling for weeks and getting no answer, sending cards and letters etc., and nothing, so this is quite a happy unexpected relief!

Perhaps you recall that Hubby’s sis had taken over Mom’s life saying she (Mom) had lost it, and even when we spoke with her she had not been too coherent, and so we did believe somewhat that senility may have moved in on the eighty-eighty year old. And his sis felt it was up to her to take over, even though she has two older brothers but they both live far from mom and sis who are in Pennsylvania, us being in Florida and the other oldest brother in Washington State. So phone communication and writing were the only way to keep in contact and for over a month neither had any response, scary! You see sissy would not speak to us, and so we kept trying Mom at home and only got her machine, and sent letters and notes etc.
So when she answered her phone like nothing was wrong today it was an odd but very pleasant surprise. She said how her daughter tried to commit her and take away all her possessions and had taken over power of attorney. Even said that the grand-daughter, her daughter’s daughter would be taking over the condo with her boy-friend!
Mom got her own lawyer and fortunately took back her power of attorney, and moved out of her daughter’s home and back into her own condo home nearly a month ago!
But never called us or her other son, and told us her answering machine is not working right. She also had to get her locks changed since her daughter had keys to both the condo and its mailbox! If we only knew, I feel awful. But one lovely thing is Mom is trying to make arrangements to visit us soon, possibly by Thanksgiving, and we will be very happy to see her, you betcha!

And the wall comes tumbling down! Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down. Wow, was it that long ago? Another miracle that keeps on giving, freedom to all people!

Ida the storm seems to have budged slightly a wee bit more to the eastern projection instead of the straight on Gulf one, which means that our panhandle, Pensacola, and our capital Tallahassee will be getting quite a bit of the storms wind and rain. It may very well mean that Louisiana maybe in the clear this time, whew!
Truly they have had enough for a millennium, and us too!

Good night to all and to all take cover, be careful and don’t ever stop trying when it comes to people! Count those blessings when and where you can.

900 Venders One Venue , a Flea Market!

For a few years now I have wanted to go to one of the attractions that somehow I had missed in this overly attractions wealthy state in all of our over twenty-three years of living here. A major flea market just south of here, I’m not going to mention it by name because my critique of it is not going to be very favorable.
It hawks itself as being the largest of its kind with being on over fifty acres.
But that is not what I have taken to task, for that much is true, thank heavens for my scooter and all those benches for Hubby to sit and rest on while he caned his way around this truly enormous place!
The problem is not necessarily with this particular place, but the concept of the flea market itself, why we even have two of our own locally that we have tried as well.
Even while still a northerner I am sure we had been once or twice to those up there.
And I seem to always come home with the same feeling, why did we bother?
You see now here’s my problem, and it comes from a bit of experience with retail since that’s what I did on off for many decades and also went to college for.
I never find a bargain and feel that the venders are just using this location with a very low overhead to make a larger profit. Now nothing’s wrong with that; this is America and capitalism is alive and well, but for some possible naiveté on my part I almost always look for the deal, but never ever find it or this time even what I had made on my mental list of a couple of baskets in wicker (not one in the place, the storage type that is), large tropical decals that look like etched glass (yes but three times the price of the home store, huh?), and a reasonably priced Buddha garden statue (not a one) for a reflecting sitting area in one of our gardens, no luck what-so-ever. I am stuck when I do this. I surely cannot change my mind on my objectives, once my desire to get something I want or need, I am like a dog with a bone, and nothing else will do. And so consequently we came home with nothing but full bellies from our lunch there (also not that cheap, and lacking in ambiance) , oh, all right we did come home with navel oranges, five in a bag for two dollars, and they were the size of an infant’s noggin!

Hurricane Ida is heading for the United States, well, so much for meteorologists knowing the future too! Louisiana, Governor Jindal has already declared a state of emergency for his state!
We here in southwest Florida are supposedly not going to get it too bad from just its outer rims, some wind, and some rain, but they also said Ida wouldn’t become a hurricane again, so we will keep our eyes and ears tuned to the boob tube, by gosh! Who knows it could make a sharp turn like Charlie did!


Good night to all and to all count those blessings and we will too!

1974, 1998, 2009 do you know what they all have in common?

The years 1974, 1998, 2009 are all representative of a commonality, and that commonality is those were the years that they made the movie Taking of Pelham One Two Three and put it out there for human consumption. Unfortunately, each year was not as successful as the previous one, so the critics say. And not because of the casts which were all top notched.
1974 info and cast: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072251/
1998 info and cast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Pelham_One_Two_Three_(1998_film)
2009 info and cast: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1111422/

I think sometimes the powers that be in movie land won’t let well enough alone, some things should not be remade.
What do you think about that?
I’m sure you do have an opinion.
Notice how some of the truly great films have not been made over like ‘It’s a wonderful life.”, “Gone with the wind”, “Close Encounters”, E.T.” I know, I know those two you may not put in the same class as the first two, but in my opinion they are great in their own right. There are so many more I just can’t think of right now. Wait here’s a few more: In Cold Blood 1967, To Kill a Mocking Bird 1962, To Sir with Love 1967, great movies not remade so there! And yet they are timeless!

The reason I mentioned the first of the movies in my dissertation tonight is because the 1998 version is on the TV right now as I write this.
And we, Hubby and I thought it might be interesting to see this one, and so we are.
This cast has familiar TV personalities in it.

New topic: Just thought I would let you in on a new project that Hubby began a sliding drawer in the laundry room. Sadly it is going in where we used to have Casey’s litter cut out, but the new unholy door has been ordered from the same company that initially put the cabinets in the laundry and should be here by next week. Meanwhile Hubby is preparing it for the slide out for some baskets to utilize for a craft container closet.
Some may think that we are a wee bit heartless to do this less than a month since Casey’s demise, but it was blessing in disguise he was so very, very ill! And so I am as reckless as the parents that made their college bound offspring’s rooms into an office or home gym, please forgive. PS we went with the office. Life goes on…

On that note, good night to all and to all count those blessings and we will too!