Hubby's Birthday!

60 years and counting! Today was Hubby’s milestone… his sixtieth year on this planet!
What a lovely evening we had with all of our neighbors and our number one son!
Pizza was on the menu with antipasto as well as a veggie platter … with beer and wine…oops! Guess who forgot the most important thing…the cake!

It wasn’t that we didn’t have one; why it was as snug as a bug in a rug, but in our freezer, and brilliant person here just plum forgot about it!

So now just three are left, Hubby, me and number one son who is staying over and so we are each having a piece of the special marble strawberry butter-cream delight!

Dishes are done, leftovers are all put away and I am very pooped, so I will bid you all a very pleasant good night to all and to all count those blessings and I will too!

What a family!

Geez… Sis finally chimed in with her version of the, ‘Mom Story’, and of course it was all her Mom’s fault! The newest version is that the four foot nine a hundred and twenty pound eighty-eight year old assaulted her, a fifty-six year old around two hundred and fifty pounds at five foot six inches! I know it; sounds crazy to me too!
But here’s the rub…Sissy states that after taking care of her Mom for four whole months that this so-called assault happened out of nowhere and for no good reason…huh?
Besides this whole drama started in August as far as we know; we had spoken with Mom in both her hospital stay and nursing home too, and Mom’s been home a month, according to her stable intelligible self who we had the pleasure of speaking with; now count with me people… August to September is one month, and September to October is … let me see, duh…2 MONTHS! Plus Mom was warehoused in the hospital and the nursing home, as well as her brief stay in the funny farm residence check-up, two or three times as far as we know.
Another lie sissy! OK, Mom it is true has had a history or sort of a reputation with her children for being difficult to get along with over the years at times, but… some Moms just do have that contrite perspective with their youngins, and that is just a fact of life, which at times most parenting can be a crap shoot at best and at worst some may end up in jail.
Bro on the other side of the country suggested to sis to call the cops on Mom, (shame on you Bro; on your own Mother!) due to the assault; but no, Sissy says she didn’t, and Mom says different…not only were the cops called but an ambulance too to take her to a funny farm testing zone, and….Mom passed all the tests and was allowed to go home!
Sis insists it was Mom’s neighbors that suggested it all and now they have decided that Sissy is not the one to be considered a friend, and have given her the cold shoulder and are on Mom’s side once again.
Ooops, talk about backfiring ideas.
Any-who, wonderful daughter and sister has divulged all these informative facts in an email to us, in which she also solicits her desire for us to call her after all these months of no follow-up access as she promised, never ever calling us or sending us any information what-so-ever. I bet you can guess what Hubby has said we should do, no? Yes, he said no emails or phone calls to this person who is supposed to be family.
PS She says she’s not done with the prospect of having her Mom committed!
We all know who should be… don’t we?
I am so disgusted with all this baloney!

But I will wish you all a good night, and just remember that you cannot choose your relatives only your friends! Hint here to couples thinking about marriage, always ask to meet the family first, and temporarily move in with them!

Sorry folks!

How soon we forget… this afternoon I received an email from Facebook reminding me that two of my so-called friends’ on that venue are having birthdays, which are next week and that I should send them a gift or some other form of recognition of the occasion. They are people who I barely know, and personally I would prefer to call them acquaintances, since one of them I had only briefly known in high school and the other is just a friend of a friend, and besides when I had my birthday this past summer I didn’t hear from either of them about it at all!
Ok, maybe that is a wee bit harsh, but you got my point.
Perhaps, it’s the fact that I don’t like being told what to do, aha!
Yep, the mother of the world telling all of you what to do nightly…doesn’t like to be told herself what to do!
Shame on me!
Somehow that one short email annoyed the bejeebers out of me.
And so tonight I have decided to watch my own P’s and Q’s, is how they say it, yeah like a hundred years ago they used to say that! But you all do know what I mean; I am quite sure, how do I know that you ask?
Because none of us really appreciate being told to do most things, am I right or what folks?
Adulthood has many benefits and one of those many is the fact that we should know what to do whenever we need to know what to do, is that clear? I betcha it is; as clear as mud that is.
Lectures are for teachers in classrooms where we actually seek out knowledge on topics we are unfamiliar with and so we can learn whatever we feel that we desire, correct?
But, learning is a never ending part of life as much as breathing and when we stop one the other is sure enough to follow, don’t you think?
I suppose that is my rationale.
When I was a child, before computers, BC, and before the Internet, IT, whoops that one isn’t as funny!
Any-who, there used to be encyclopedias, you remember them 20 something volumes of heavy paper and cardboard, and as that child I would find myself looking up one specific thing, but then moving onto some other thing within the pages of the original thing, go with me here…and so I find myself doing that today with the Internet, and boy am I glad. Even with only one good eye, and a brain, fortunately that hasn’t quit on me yet I still have an inquiring mind, ha! That used to be the tag line for the Philadelphia Inquirer, inquiring minds need to know! But that referred to aliens from outer space landing here or there or multiple headed footed animals and such.
I am interested in it all, not just animal oddities but our worlds oddities that is and everything in between!
And whenever I get a chance I do read about them in whatever form they appear, be it books, magazines, or even here on the net.
And so I apologize to all others of the world that I may treat without that thirst for knowing that I have, but that my friends is assuming and we all know what that means…

Good night to all and to all count your blessings or not, but I may very well might, may be doing it!

Usual here, but not everywhere...

Our weather appears to be back to what we like to call normal; in the balmy eighties, and right now at this evening hour of six P.M. it is just around seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit! Our only problem is that fire season is not yet here, and we are so very, very dry!

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the country is having weather unrest! Stormy weather or cold temperatures, but that’s what you get when you choose to live where seasons are a priority.

Page Field, Fort Myers had an air show today, and a father and son took a $20 plane ride, and the small plane crashed….but thankfully they all survived, even better they were all treated, including the pilot and released at the local hospital there. I sure hope that pilot refunds their money!

Now I could be wrong, I have been many times before, but don’t most places in the civilized world have a seatbelt law? You see, the reason I’m asking is we do have one here in Florida, but I still hear nightly on the news whenever there is a traffic crash and there is a fatality they sadly say and they weren’t wearing their seatbelt! How many times do we have to hear that horrible lament? People, put them on! It’s the law, almost everywhere, even if it isn’t; be smarter than that!

We no longer drive gas guzzling tanks like in days of yore, when we boomers were children or even if your own were born in the nineteen seventies like ours. Yes, I would say we drove tank like vehicles, but gas was cheap and we didn’t know any better. I can remember our eldest, lovingly nicknamed ‘Houdini’, due to his ability to escape from his very well strapped in toddler self from his car seat, and yes we did have them and tried using them too! But, number one son often would magically escape his confines of the mess of spaghetti straps and joined me in the front seat of my 1966 Chevelle Malibu while in transit from here to there! One time in particular sticks in my mind all these more than 35 years later, when a patrol car, yes police vehicle suddenly pulled out in front of me without benefit of any warning like a directional light flashing! I slammed on my brakes, and cursed under my breath to my small child’s unknowing being of what it meant (I HOPE, at least he says he doesn’t remember) who had just banged his beautiful little towheaded topped noggin on my rear view mirror, but fortunately without a scratch or even a cry. But boy was I mad! At the cop, of course, so mad so that I cut him off while using my indicator light and hand motions for him to pull over and he did and I gave him a piece of my mind! He apologized and thanked me, huh? Yes, that’s how I remember it, and I was maybe twenty-four years old or so at that time. I hope that peace officer was more careful after that, but who knows… One can only hope you get through to some people.

So now in this day and age where the seatbelt and car seats have evolved into true protection for us and loved ones and so use them so you don’t become another statistic! Ya hear?

Tobi’s orders, please! I wear mine all of the time.

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

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!