We lost another small soul in our lives...

If any of you have been wondering how our nearly thirty-one year old cockatiel has been feeling the answer is not too good for maybe two whole months, and last night he lost the aging gracefully battle with the ultimate ending, death!

I know that most feel that all creatures should keep up with life’s trials and tribulations by denying most of them, and just dance the days away…Well Charlie did that!
He never let his age get in his way in preventing him from doing whatever he loved to do.
Pooping, eating, singing with his outdoor friends when the windows were open, playing with his cage toys, he was a very well rounded and healthy old bird! And yes we were very saddened to see him go.

But we provided him with a fine send off, just the immediate family saying a few words over his gravesite throwing some dirt over his simple brown box coffin, this was all on our compound’s grounds right under the Ponderosa Lemon Tree where many of his friends had hung out, nearby the fishpond.

Charlie was there for all the other cats and dogs that came after him, and they were many that made it into our family’s lives. He chose wisely with whom he befriended and was extremely particular in those decisions, he would make a fuss and go berserk if he didn’t like you and just watch you if he did. But you gotta love the guy since he enjoyed learning whistles from my niece who passed away a couple a years ago, the eldest niece we had, the whistle was the wolf one, and he would repeat it back to us or just brazenly use it at will. He also would imitate the whippoorwill, which I don’t believe we had any down here in Florida, but that one must have been a leftover from NJ, what a memory he had.

When he was young he had been finger trained and we even have a picture somewhere of him standing on the back of our first family cat, named Puffy a grey and white, soft powder puff female, and also in that picture was our first male Yorkie, Benji, named for that famous one, and he was as bright as the movie one too.
An era has ended.

The house is a wee bit quieter today, since even while he had been so ill he did find the ability to vocalize sporadically, and we shall miss that very much.

Sadly, I would complain about his mess and even when we moved here we had tried to give him away, but nobody wanted him…I would tease our sons that he would be living with us well after they were grown and on their own and sure enough I was right. At the time we had gotten him they were six and three, and now they are 34 and 37 and long on their own.

On those memories I must admit with a bit of sadness welling up in my throat I will bid the old bird one last fond farewell dear old friend; it has been interesting and entertaining!

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

Around we go and nobody knows where we will end up...

It is true that Hubby has had it basically with his Mom since she called the evil daughter and had forgotten why she had been told what she had, had happen to her back in the fall of this past year.
Since this went down it doesn’t mean that we have not been worried about her and her well-being because we also know that the helpful always there for Mom neighbor has also washed his hands of her for the same reasons.
And so I have taken it upon myself to call her daily to make sure she has eaten, taken her medicine, etc., and today I asked if she had someone to take her to church?
Unfortunately, she was waiting for that kindly neighbor; she always goes to mass there around 11:15 A.M., and he had been taking her. So she was waiting for him, she forgot that he told her no more and that is because she told him that she thought he too was out to get her and had told him so. I asked if she had heard from her daughter that maybe she would be taking her, meanwhile keeping her on the phone the whole time she was waiting to be picked up, but no one came to do that mundane task, not her neighbor, not her daughter, no one.
Smack in your face reality!
I asked if she had heard from her daughter or had she been taken out to eat or to the grocery by the daughter, no was the answer to both, only to the banks and that her daughter was picking her up tomorrow too, to go where I asked, she said we have an eleven o’clock appointment at the bank.
She started crying and even said she felt faint, I called her bluff and asked if she is living in the 1890’s and perhaps was getting the vapors? She began to laugh. I also said what happen to the tough lady who raised three children basically by herself and never let anyone push her around?

But she did want to get off the phone but honestly she said that she had to go to the bathroom, and so I called her back within the half hour to see if perhaps her ride was just late, and guess what I got a new woman!
One who was strong and forthright and realized that what I told her about seeing a doctor for her memory and walking difficulties was what she was going to do to take care herself, and she was calling the daughter up to tell her not to come to tomorrow! YEAH! Which she thought of all be herself I must add.
She had already last week asked for her check back from her moving down here from that independent living place but she had not received it, and insists that it was all her change of heart that no one influenced her, huh, ok…

I did mention the option of getting a home healthcare worker perhaps to come in to help her remember to eat and take her medicine a few days a week, and that perhaps Medicare would pay for it, but at least she would have someone to remind her. I said then if she wanted to stay put that could be another option.

Long distance care of the elderly with memory problems is not easy; all we can do is check as often as possible. Oh and do you know what the last thing is she said to me was? That she loved us both, me and Hubby that is and we said it back to her… that makes it seem all worthwhile…


Not really…since Hubby and I have been going loony from all this! LOL

On that pleasant note good night to all and to count your blessings and we will too!

Freedom of speech...YEA!

I am an American!
And I do believe in the freedom of speech!

But I thought the way it was written in the Bill of Rights as it being in the first amendment of the Constitution that if you insight to riot, then you lose that right?
At that time it referred to yelling fire in a crowded theater, but today wouldn’t it go further to create an atmosphere also to anger a mob or group of people that causes an environment which makes them feel the need to commit violent acts?

Come on people is it not true that all the negativity being spewed about this administration decisions are harmful to all Americans to some degree?

It is disturbing to me and many others that the threats of harm to people voting as they feel in their hearts for what they truly believe in to be helpful to others this should not cause them to be fearful of having an opinion. Too many do not agree.

Constitutionally we are all reading into the actual wordings with our own slants at times; don’t you agree?
Many interpretations are how we see what our forefathers were actually trying to say and to pass that down to us.

Some believe that the way they read those documents are the only way, and I must admit people do also have reasoning to go on with reading the Holy Bible in any edition. I cannot speak for other faiths only the Judo-Christianity ones that I am mostly familiar with.
But gosh over the years I have been shocked in what people think all those stories told really meant.
And so has the way people paraphrasing of our official papers stating how to run this fine country that we are lucky enough to live in.
Sadly, I bet the authors of those documents would be horrified of what we think they were telling us to do.

As an American I bet you know it is also OK to disagree with people about those aspects of interpretations, our differences from what you believed to be the case?
I know right now you are thinking WHOA… Tobi why so vague in what you are trying to say?
All right then I happen to disagree with many people who think they are right, and voice their opinions with full media coverage unlike my one dimensional shouting from this venue, unfair and not loud enough for all to hear!

In three months, children of pre-existing illnesses will benefit better from this new healthcare bill, which is good, but personally I will not since it will not be going into effect until 2014 for adults with pre-existing.

Contrary to many uninformed people not all uninsured are poor. I personally only do not have health insurance because I am pre-existing, and I have said this before way too many times to remember that I would much prefer to be paying off premiums rather than paying off my hospital bills and surgeries, which I am doing right now and that would be the same price as all those premiums! It does seem ridiculous to me that people think it is welfare. I suppose those are the same ones who currently receive Social Security and Medicare? Surprise so does my Hubby receive them, but not me! I am missing like two or three credits for disability, and I am too young for Medicare and our INCOME IS TOO MUCH for Medicaid! Hello fellow Americans, wake up and learn all the facts before assuming!

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

PS Bro-in-law if you are so well-off why are you still working your butt off…; living above your means, are you? Hubby retired nearly four years ago due to his injury and we were smart enough to scale down twelve years ago due to my illness so we are financially capable of paying our bills without having to work a few jobs like you and have enough, since physically we are unable to anyway! So stop bragging about all you have; its getting old and very annoying, and a wee bit mean too!

Fix it, work it, fix it again...

Foreclosures are still way up there nationally and now the government is trying to rework loans along with encouraging financial institutions to reduce payments for people whose homes are worth less than what they initially owed, upside down, and paid for them, with throwing an additional 14B (billion) at them (the banks et all.) to do the right thing! I say… if only!

We all know how we got into this mess… greed from the banks and the people who refinanced at ridiculous amounts, when their homes were way over valued and now are literally just shells of their former selves, at pennies on the dollar.
Neighborhoods have turned into ghost towns all over the country.

At the time most took that extra money and bought themselves a piece of the pie, that is the lifestyle pie with either fixing their homes up or buying fancy cars, vacations or who knows what, but many were just trying to get lower payments when those interest rates had gone down, not those ARM’s rates of course since most adjustable rate mortgages that give you a low starting rate but then go sky high over the next few years with caps of almost twice what your initial payments were due to the interest going there too!

But we did the fixed rate 30 year reduction one at 5.12%, so we are still good, which we did do in 2003. And so far our home is still worth nearly twice what we paid for it; at least that is what zillow.com and our insurance company thinks, since they charged us higher premiums for more coverage for our homes value.

Most people were innocent to what they were getting themselves into in this foreclosure mess or lost their job through the bad economy and at no fault of their own, and I truly feel that we should take care of those brethren, but the greedy flippers, nah!
Those are the ones who bought a bunch of home on the cheap and thought they could get top rental price for those little muffins or sell quickly at a big profit, well surprise… no one could pay those premium prices and so they defaulted on their mortgages, which trickles down to the populous, and that means us of course!

“What a mess!” I think of Betty Davis, the actress, saying that line with one hand on her hip and the other in the air waving, but she was not referring to this mess… or was she?
She was a woman who went through, ‘the depression’; perhaps in those films those lines had subliminal or futuristic meanings; Hollywood in its hay day!

FDR did do a great job then, not unlike Obama in trying to do now, by taking the bull of misery by the horns and reacting in a positive way to ‘Change Things’. Tightening up our belts, learning again how to handle money, paying for what we need, not using credit unless you know you can pay all of it off at the end of the month! It’s simplicity at its finest; in other words using ‘common sense.’

We as a nation have to go back to basics, perhaps study the way our parents or grandparents lived and managed their monies, since they were the ones that knew how to save for a rainy day. Do we all really need immediate gratification? What happened to saving up for that special big ticket item?
Listen, America I do believe that we can all do it and we really have to learn to live on less and manage on that. As hopefully more jobs become available for the unemployed masses businesses won’t be able to pay those higher salaries and so we must learn to do as much as we can with less of that green stuff, called moola, money, cash or what-have- you we are an educable nation! And now we have the ability and absolute need to reeducate us all!

I have stepped away from my soapbox folks, and so good night to all and count those blessings and we will too!

The Dye Is Cast...

Hubby’s sweet old Mom was too determined to not let well enough alone, and so she called her one and only daughter and that she had said had tried to commit her, and we know from her neighbors and the banks and attorneys that dear child also tried to steal all her money!
In fact Mom spent most of the day with that darling child of hers.
Lovely sweet Sis took Mom to here and there and mostly to her banks, for what we do not know?

Unfortunately, Mom has taken advantage so much of the neighbor he too has had enough.
He says that she has been right behind him when he has arrived home from work with his key in the door and expects him to take her out to dinner nightly and then to take her into his home and give her wine also nightly.

She was trying not to be honest on where she had been all day since her neighbor called us stating that she left earlier in the day and that when he tried several times during today to call her, he could not reach her. By the time he called Hubby he was worried, but called back moments later saying that she was now home, and wouldn’t tell him where she had gone or with whom.
Hubby lost it! She did finally confess to Hubby that she had been out with her daughter and to the banks and other places. Hubby was upset and asked her point blank and so you want her to put you away and steal all your money again?
She said who said that she did that?
Why you did Mom, but so did your neighbors and the banks and the lawyers that did the dirty deed on her behalf, Hubby reiterated back to her.

She definitely needs medical help, especially in being diagnosed with the dementia she does have! We have spoken to the Alzheimer’s Association care givers and they agree that she has many signs and symptoms that need to be determined and appropriate action should be taken to get her to the neurologist she needs to see, but now it appears that she will either be neglected or put away!

To be fair Hubby did ask her if she was going to move to Florida, and she said, I don’t know.
Well, neither do we, so sorry!
Sis is closer and has the upper hand now with just that being a factor.

Last night, Mom did ask for Hubby to come up to help her with picking out her items to move with, but he said that he cannot afford for him to go up there twice, and that he couldn’t leave me twice, due to my limitations (she never accepts anyone else’s physical problems even in her younger years, she just seems to have never had any compassion), and so this is probably why she did this!
To be fair she thought that if she wrote a check it would make it all better, but Hubby explained that he can come up only once, on our own monies by the way, after she settles in down here which he wants to help her with, and then he would go up there to make the arrangements for everything else to come down and to be put into storage so she could go through it all at her leisure. All said for the nth time!

Her neighbor and his younger girlfriend were going to help Mom pack the few items she would need to take and that would be here on her arrival.
All I have to say is too bad…
Too many people involved in this woman’s life who think they each mean well…meanwhile she was having a ball doing her old fashion manipulation, sorry but its’ true! I hate to be a bearer of reality but this meek old lady was a whopper of a manipulator from the onset, and I have know her since 1968 (Why that was forty-two years ago and she was only 47 then!), when I met her, and to each one of her child’s intended from our weddings and births of her grandchildren etc. Each one of the children left the nest as quickly as possible due to her being a wee bit overbearing. Hubby’s father was not allowed to attend our wedding or she wouldn’t come. Even at Sis’s he wasn’t allowed; Hubby gave his own sister away! She wanted to disown our first born if he was not brought up in her faith, but I soothed her after six months of her not speaking to us, and ever since I have never let her get away with anything with me! Now her behaviors have been significantly amplified, in that negative way unfortunately.

Sadly, Hubby has had it with her due to this contact with the enemy, her worst enemy so she told us, her daughter! And so now he feels it is over, and he can’t do anything, and Mom will be probably committed by his Sis, and she and his older brother who we have not heard from since he knew she was here for those eight days.
And who Hubby thinks is in cahoots with Sis, since he felt it necessary to let my Hubby know that he was executor of her will, and Hubby said she turned that over to him. He snidely mentioned that he has no mortgage and that we do, since Mom had given him property and he had sold it and paid it off and that it was out west, and I told him that Mom had offered it to us first years ago and that we had said to give it to him (brother), because he was closer to it! Then he shut up.

I suppose this was airing the dirty laundry night oh well as the world knows there are two sides to every story and I do believe this saga is still not completely over, but who really knows for sure…

Good night peeps, and count those blessings and we will too! :-[

Dial 'M'

For Mom, but of course!

I spent most of the afternoon trying to find services that would assist us in helping Mom get down here for her new wonderful life with as little discomfort and anxiety as possible.
She has become overwhelmed with not understanding she has minimal stuff to pack as if she was going on an extended vacation and only a few pieces of furniture to be marked for the move with masking tape we suggested.

Hubby was up to his wazoo getting the yard in order mowing and trimming the grass and blowing the pathways. Fortunately, he has all the proper tools for all that.

I started the process of getting the two page list of numbers by calling our local dial-a- nurse explaining the situation with Mom and her health issues and so she was extremely helpful and was the main reason for the laundry list of available services, which led to additional contact numbers that we have been consistently utilizing to find our way to resolving all of Mom’s issues! More fun tomorrow since we exhausted the calling by running into the evening hours when they close.

Another issue that reared its ugly head was that while we had a short break form this difficult exhausting effort our across the canal neighbor rang our bell and delivered a flier from the memorial that had our demised neighbors picture on the front with his dates of born and death and a very inappropriate poem on the inside. Let me try to paraphrase it, since I ripped the thing to shreds in anger, but Hubby pieced it back to read it too oh ok, basically it said when we die we either go to heaven or hell and good people will go to heaven and the bad people go to hell with all of their friends, huh? (Author unknown; I don’t blame them for not wanting to take credit for that!) Before I read the ‘thing’, I did invite our neighbor in but oddly enough he said he had to go before I read it, odd and sub sequentially causing me to become extremely upset when I did read it!
So upset that I called them to express my feelings which were very acidy with anger at the ludicrous poem of insult to all who believe anything opposite.
Well, maybe the daughter of the man who died and actually did distribute it at the memorial thought it was light and funny, but I still believe as Hubby does that it was way over the top in inappropriateness.

There go some more acquaintances. I say that because they never did quite make it to friends, neighbors yes, friends no.

Tensions are high in this household, and aren’t looking good to change anywhere in the near future. And so reuniting a way to cope in our own little world is what we have to do.

On that decisive conclusion I will bid you all a good night and to all count those blessings and we will too!

The boardwalk is complete!

Yes, in spite of visitors, doctor appointments, grocery shopping, tour guiding, entertaining etc., etc. the BOARDWALK is fini! I gave it a test drive today and it works well even with me in my mobility scooter could not crack or destroy the cedar fencing that was a gift from our neighbor before he left his home to turn it over to the bank.

The young fellow who unfortunately lost his home but gave us the fence before the bank took it over was thanking Hubby for helping him get his captain’s license and all the freebies Hubby did for him when he was learning to navigate the local waters. The most important one is docking the large fishing schooner that he had gotten the job to remove from the harbor, at about sixty-five feet long the ship was and Hubby took over the wheel for him to set in its permanent location on the islands. It became his business and career.

I had also given him my workbook for a while on Grant Writing, a CEU course I had, had as a volunteer, and so in his generosity he had given me an enormous conch shell as a gift too.
I do hope that he is doing well since he moved out of the county. For a while we would hear from him fairly regularly, but not lately, no news is good news, right?
He was a nice young man, younger than our sons, and that fence of his has gone a long way in its reuse around here! Besides the privacy fence on the empty lot side, the boardwalk of recent, it was responsible for Hubby making the wood valances in our sunroom, but I painted them! We even have my sign that I made that says relax, which oddly enough we try not to do! I suppose I do relax more than Hubby. But honestly I would prefer to be busy so I do comb the paper, magazines and listen well to the news to find out what is going on, plus watching those how-to shows to get additional ideas.

We found out that our elderly neighbor will be given a memorial tomorrow, ten days after he died, at the local Eagle’s building where he was a member. In lieu of flowers his family has requested a donation to them, which I mailed out today, not a lot but what we could afford since we are not wealthy, wish it could be more.

Hubby and I discussed going but decided not to, since we rarely do go to funerals, and it’s mostly people we don’t know going to this one, and too much food, and never knowing if it’s a happy go lucky remembering the good times in the dearly departed’s life or a boo hoo in the beer sort of thing.

Sadly, these things are more for the left behind family not as much to remember the family member who has just passed that has unfortunately been my experience. Don’t get me wrong the survivors do need bucking up at this time, but if the person who passed was older or even younger and suffering severely don’t they believe that the almighty had a hand in taking the pain away from that loved one’s misery?
Does that sound cold?
I just know that if I become the shell of myself, literally like this very wonderful gentleman did with failing kidneys, congestive heart failure several times in the last year and stroke to boot, even in my early eighties I would be ready to say goodbye!
Enough is enough, don’t you all think? How much can a body take?
What a difficult topic, death and illness, and this is a person who had insurance and had been hospitalized, not much they could do anymore I imagine and so to him I wish him a peaceful transition into whatever he believes in after life, enjoy the trip friend and neighbor you will sorely be missed…farewell!

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