I FEEL SO.....

guilty about not posting lately; but, I just haven't felt like it. And, since I've been staying pretty close to home for the past 7 weeks, I just haven't seen or heard anything much to comment on or to get me all riled up. We've made several trips to Indianapolis since the surgery. Probably a few more than normal. I went into surgery with a problem on my right side and came out with a problem on my left side. We've all been debating about what caused the problem. It's hard to say and right now we're trying medication to see if that helps. If it doesn't, the surgeon is going to go back in and take out the two left screws. It will be an outpatient procedure, thank goodness. But, nevertheless, it's been extremely frustrating; not to mention painful. I went from limping on my right side to limping on my left side. I'm still using a walker to get down the steps outside and a cane to walk around with. *sigh* I didn't want to get on here and whine but sometimes that's just the only thing I can do. (And, yes, my kitchen looks somewhat like the picture and I've been spending a LOT of time in my flannel jammies. But I can't sit on the floor with my legs crossed like that.)

Angie (Boyd) Gibson gave birth to her twin girls on Thursday the 5th due to toxemia and some other medical issues. The girls are very small, one is 1 pound 14 ounces and the other is just over 2 pounds. They are at St Mary's in Evansville. Please pray for Angie, her husband, and these two precious girls. Also pray for their family. Thanks for your prayers.

WHEN I CAN.....

sit up in this chair for more than 3 minutes at a time, I will catch everyone up on what's been going on. For now, suffice it to say that we had a great Christmas and have enjoyed tremendously having all the grandgirls here and seeing them interact.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

ONLY.....

1 MORE DAY.....!!!

ONLY.....

2 MORE DAYS.....!!!

ONLY.....

3 MORE DAYS.....!!!

THE SUGGESTION BOX.....

is back. Knock yourself out.

ONLY.....

4 MORE DAYS.....!!!

ONLY.....

5 MORE DAYS 'TIL I GET MY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!!!!!

BECAUSE OF THIS BUM BACK OF MINE.....

I've done 90% of my Christmas shopping online this year. It's been awesome. Just sit here in my jammies and window shop (surf) as long as I want and save all that wear and tear on my poor old body. Plus, the selections are so numerous. Any store you can think of and LOTS you didn't even know existed are online. You're not limited to whatever is at the mall. You can have it sent wherever you want. Makes hiding stuff so much easier. I'm just amazed every time I sit down to look for something. I'll most likely do it like this forever now. It's just too cool!!

I'M TIRED.....

of looking at that turkey. So, until I can come up with something witty to say about Christmas, here are some traditional icons of the holiday season.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Y'ALL ARE NOT GONNA BELIEVE THIS.....

but, I swear on my cat's stubby tail that it's true. Now, Tylie loves grapes. And I try to keep some here for her most of the time. She likes to help me pick them off of the stems before I wash them. We do this on the couch while we watch "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" for the 38th time. After they get picked and washed, we eat them. She's three.....sometimes she drops one. I always try to pick it up. Apparently I don't always MANAGE to get it picked up. I was looking under the couch cushions for a pen that had slipped down between them. Guess what.....you can make raisins without the sun!!

I BOUGHT SOME OF THOSE.....

"Instantly slims you" blue jeans. Yeah, right. The only thing these jeans do is push all that flab up.

MUFFIN TOP???

I WISH!!!!

I look more like Jabba the Hut in these stupid pants. (Except not quite so green.)

I need some jeans that "instantly slim me" all the way up to my armpits. *sigh* Or, how about some "why don't you just stay home in your flannel jammies" jeans. That'd work!

I SHOULD HAVE.....

put this post on back in September. I thought about it then. And then forgot about it. I first need to explain who the players are here. The bigger little girl is Tylie, one of our grandgirls, and she's three. The smaller little girl is Katie, a granddaughter of Tony's brother, and she's one and a half. That makes these two little girls third cousins. (at least in Martin County) Tylie had just gotten a new puppy that day.

Katie was a little apprehensive about getting too close. As you can see, Tylie was trying to coax her a little closer.....

and a little closer.....

and finally Tylie reached over to get her hand and put it on the puppy.

I think Katie did end up patting the puppy but I didn't get a real good picture of that. It was cute to watch and listen to them.

(Remember.....you can always click on a picture to make it bigger and then click on your back button to come back to the blog. That goes for the buggy pictures, tooooooo.)

EW, EW, EWWWWW.....

Ok, this is just nasty but I don't want to be the ONLY one grossed out by it. When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, I sat out on the front porch for a little while. We've got a glider out there and it's pretty nice sometimes. We've had us some excellence in the weather department this week and I was enjoying a little bit of it. I happened to look over and there was this ewwy big bug on the arm of the glider. Well, I panicked a bit and kinda swatted it off and when it hit the concrete it turned into two bugs. Huh??? That's what I said, two bugs. So I watched and, while the larger bug started back toward the glider, the smaller bug like to have broke it's legs scurryin' to get back on top of the larger bug. Now, folks, I dunno what was goin' on there. As far as I could tell, it was just a small bug hitchin' a ride on a big bug. Swear to God. I kept watching and there was no hanky panky. But, get this.....the big bug headed up the side of the glider again. It was very determined. It made it all the way back up to the side of the arm and it fell off all by itself that time. Also, the smaller bug fell off again. And, again, the smaller bug hightailed it onto the bigger bug's back. And the bigger bug trudged all the way back up to the arm of the glider again. And I decided to take pictures. This time it just kinda hung on the side of the arm. And was hanging there still when I came in the house. (P.S. If anyone knows what kinda bug/bugs this/these is/are, lemme know.)

THIS IS MY.....

belated Halloween post. We're lucky. We live along the highway and, more importantly, DON'T HAVE ANY SIDEWALKS IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE!! Which means that there aren't gangs of too-big kids that we don't know ringing our doorbell on Halloween asking for the few treats that I buy. Since we've lived here, we've only ever had family kids and a very few close friends come trick-or-treating. This year, only one came, our niece, little Liz. When she came in, I said, "Oooooohhhh, you're a beautiful princess!" (She had make-up on and everything!!) She gave me a withering look and said, "I'm a queen....." I immediately began bowing and scraping and asked if I would be allowed to take her picture. As you can see, she sat for her formal portrait and smiled at the correct moment.

I present to you

Queen Mary Elizabeth

And, if she is the Queen, then this must be the Queen and the Queen Mother.

THIS IS.....

OK, THE EXPERIMENT.....

has run its rather abbreviated course. I thought it would last longer than this; but, Butch is more particular than I had first thought. Now, I've watched Butch over the years and he'll lie down on almost anything that isn't moving. (That's another post.) There are times when I'm folding towels and he'll lie down on one before I can get the next one folded and stacked. Or there will be one on the bed and he'll lie down on it even if it's practically hanging off the edge. So.....I decided to see what his height limit was. Number one was easy.

He hopped up on this first towel almost before I could get my hands off of it.

Number two towel was nearly as easy. He just didn't go to the trouble of actually getting fully up on top of both of them.

But, as you can see, he looks pretty darned comfortable.

Then came number three towel.

Again, he made a valiant attempt to situate himself as far on top as he was willing to exert the energy for.

So, I decided to throw another towel on the pile. That's where Butch drew the line. Three seems to be his limit. He didn't even get close enough to sniff them to see if they were warm.

HOWEVER,

Tony was more than willing to lie on the four-towel tower!

I'M CONDUCTING.....

an experiment. I'll share the results with you in a few days. (It involves Butch, the cat, and the results will be documented with photos.)

SOMEONE SUGGESTED.....

• that I "expound on my employment" at RCA. Now.....a couple of things. First, no one I know who knows that I worked at RCA would have any inkling of what the word "expound" means. Second, someone I know who knows that I worked at RCA knows what "expound" means. This is sooooooooo confusing to me. And, quite honestly, I would have thought that anyone old enough to remember my union days at RCA would be dead by now. My employment at RCA was many moons ago. (What's the formula for figuring "moons?" Ok, let's see. RCA employment = summer 1971. Now = fall 2008. That's about 37 years' worth of moons and there are roughly 12 moons in every year except when there's a "blue moon" [and that's a whole different post] so let's say 444 moons. That sounds about right to me. 444 moons is a hell of a long time.) Before I was a nana.....before I had kids.....before I was married, even. I did have Tony, but nothing was official at that point in time.
• The reason I worked at RCA that summer was because I was a college student. And, as such, I was ALMOST a part of the real world and didn't get to laze around all summer. I don't remember a whole lot about the job, really. I worked on an assembly line making television sets. The factory was in Bloomington and it was unionized. We could only make so many tvs on our line in a day. No more, no less. Everything was timed and there were buzzers so you'd know when to shove the part you were working on down to the next person so they could do their little part in putting the bigger part together. I don't know how I managed it but I was the first person on the line. A man would bring me loads of two different parts. I have no idea what they were for. They went inside tvs was all I knew. I had to take a metal part about the size of a cigar box without a lid that had square holes and round holes all over it and a green circuit board attached and screw a little plastic part onto it, pull a couple of wires coming out of the little plastic part through one of the holes and then solder (HA.....I had "weld" there before.....that would have been a real sight to behold) the wires onto the circuit board. And when the buzzer buzzed, I shoved it down to the next lady. Oh, and I had to flip a little counter so they'd know how many I had done.
• Now, hard to imagine, I know, but I used to be faster than I am now. I could get one of those parts done before the buzzer buzzed. So much faster that I could get two or three or four ahead. The gals down the line could see them and yell for me to send them down. So I did. BIG NO NO. (damned union.....I could have made a fortune that summer if I'd been getting paid for piece work) So I had to go back to doing one per buzzer. And twiddling my thumbs in between.....for a while. I got so I'd only get maybe one or two ahead. That seemed to work out alright.
• I remember that I was wounded in the line of duty a few times and still have one faint scar. I'd reach for one of the metal cigar boxes and run the back of my finger along the edge (not on purpose, silly). Those edges were as sharp as razors and once in a while I'd manage to take a hunk of flesh out of a finger. Like I said, I still have a scar. And the soldering iron was HOT. I guess they have to be to work properly. *shrug* Every once in a while I'd get it against my wrist. I had a few blisters but no permanent damage there. (I said I was fast, not coordinated.) And I remember the time I was sick and tossed my cookies into the big cardboard box we used for trash before the line lady could get someone to take my place. I remember that I ate dozens of Little Debbie orange something-or-others in my lunches that summer. And I remember that I had to get up BEFORE the buttcrack of dawn.....when the only people who were awake were women in labor on their way to the hospital and farmers.
• And I remember one other thing. The most important thing. I remember that that summer was a turning point in my life. The job I was doing didn't require much thought. Once I learned it, I could almost do it in my sleep. And I did a lot of thinking about other things that summer. Like I said, I was in college because I thought I wanted to be a teacher. I also loved Tony and knew that I wanted to be married to him. And I had all summer to think about those two things. By the end of the summer and all that thought, my life was changed forever. I had decided that I didn't want to be a teacher, didn't want to spend another three years in college. I wanted to get married. So I went back to college thinking that I would get a two-year secretarial degree. I'd be doing all the things that I liked to do.....just not teaching them. But it was not to be. I had taken all the wrong subjects the first year for a two-year degree. There was no point in my staying another whole year. I quit at semester. Tony and I got engaged in December of 1971 and we got married in July of 1972.
• I used to say that that was my one regret in life. That I didn't finish college. But, if I had finished college, I would not have the life that I have. Oh, I'm sure I would have married Tony. It just would have been at a different time. And then, everything else would have been different. And I love my life.....the life that includes 36+ years with Tony instead of whatever the number would have been.....the life that includes my two awesomely special and unique children instead of whatever children I would have had at different times.....the life that includes the exquisitely unique granddaughters they've given me.
• Thinking about it now, I can honestly say I don't regret it one bit. And I never really thought it before, but that was one of the best summers of my life.

AT THIS POINT IN TIME.....

I have ideas for three future posts. I just need to get some pictures to go with them. Old pictures. Pictures that I have to look for. Don't expect the posts today. Maybe tomorrow. Or not.

Dear readers. Am I to assume by your lack of suggestions that you don't really want me to post any more? C'mon folks, give me some ideas. I ain't a professional writer ya know. This stuff isn't just all in there waiting for me to find it. I have to actually try to THINK of stuff to write that might be mildly amusing or informative for you. LOL

YOU MIGHT NOTICE.....

the new "What should I write about?" block over to the right. To make a suggestion, click on "What should I write about?" Then/Or, you can vote on what you'd like to see me write about. We're going to try this out for a while and see what happens. This should be interesting.

OCTOBER IS.....

Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If you're a female and 40+ years old, get a yearly mammogram starting now. If you're a male and know a female, remind her to get a yearly mammogram.

ONE PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.....

..........

I HAVE AN ADDICTION.....

and the majority of you are not aware of it. I hang my head in shame as I admit publicly, for the first time, ever, ANYwhere, that I am a compulsive "hotel/motel room amenities hoarder." I even go so far as to retrieve the soap that's only been used TWICE in the shower, for goodness sake, and wrap it up in the plastic wrap I tore off of the plastic glasses. These little bars of soap are just the right size for the soap dish in the bathroom at home. And I convince myself that the granddaughters will be unreasonably ecstatic when I present them with a tiny bottle of hand lotion. And since I'm the only one at home who drinks coffee, I have a tiny 4-cup coffee pot.....just the right size to use those coffee thingies they put in most of the rooms. And the plastic cups?? They might come in handy in the kitchen and they're fun to play with in the tub. Tub toys for cheap. And the pens and pads of paper. Now who DOESN'T need all the pens and scrap paper they can get their hands on? How could anyone walk away from all that??? And, besides.....I PAID for all that stuff, didn't I? It's all included in the price of the room, isn't it? It's MY STUFF!!!

For a while, I had a handle on it. Once, when I was cleaning out the cabinet in the bathroom and found the gallon plastic zipper bag full of midget soap bars, I realized I had a problem. When I opened the linen closet door and was nearly knocked senseless with a shower of tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner and lotion and mouthwash and shower gel, I realized I had a problem. When I found myself washing the plastic glasses in the kitchen, I realized I had a problem. And I quit. Oh, not cold turkey. I would take the occasional bottle of lotion to drop in my purse. But I was getting better.

Then we went on the cross-county trip of a lifetime. And we stopped at several hotel/motels. We had to. We didn't make plans to sleep in the car. And it was on this trip that I noticed it. The soap bars were bigger. And you didn't just get a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of lotion. You got a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of lotion AND you got a bottle of conditioner and a bottle of mouthwash and you even (sometimes) got a bottle of shower gel along WITH the bars of soap. (BONUS!!!) And, once in a blue moon, you might hit the mother lode! As I did when we stopped in Reno and stayed at the Silver Legacy. In the picture below, you will notice that there is a bottle of body lotion, a bottle of shampoo, a bottle of conditioner, an (empty) bottle of BUBBLE BATH and TWO bottles of mouthwash. ALONG WITH.....a shower cap, a sewing kit and two GINORMOUS bars of soap. Oh, and NOT in the picture??? Two pairs of (cheap) slip-on houseshoes and the mandatory pens and notepads. (Believe it or not, we paid less for the room in Reno than we did for most of the other rooms we stayed in on that trip.)

What it boils down to is the fact that I fell off the wagon. So, if you find yourself in need of a bottle of lotion for your purse or a sewing kit for your desk drawer or a plastic cup for your kid to play with in the bathtub, I'm willing to share. I am totally aware of the fact that I'll never use all this stuff. But I still can't bear the thought of just leaving it in that room for the maid to take home. I am SOOOOOOOOOO lucky that they don't give away those tiny bottles of booze on the airplanes.

BE SURE AND.....

check out the 1150 Riders' website. Jeremy has posted some pictures from the Memorial Weekend. (Oh, and if you click on the little picture, it becomes BIG! Aren't computers just plumb magical?)