Getting A Cast

That's Dr. Moulton putting on the first layers of my cast. The grandkids said I should get a purple one, except for Paige, who said I should get a glow in the dark one. Hmmm....tough choice, but I went with purple.

Fun With Blogs

Okay, here we go again, another "Did I or Didn't I?" The winner this year gets something special made by me.

1. While living in California, I once walked to a Dutch restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. At that time I took cream and sugar in my coffee. They gave me a fork instead of a spoon and I was so mad and disappointed because I couldn't spoon the sugar out of the container!

2. I went dump-picking as a child, when my Dad would take our monthly load to the dump. I found and ate mints that had a candy coating (wrapped.)

3. I once used a floor tile I found to stick down the front of my tailored shorts to make my tummy appear flatter.

4. My English teacher in 7th grade was really mean. So I wrote a bunch of insults on a paper napkin and when the students filed out of the room, I made sure I was last and stuck it in a file drawer so it hung out. Then I lingered outside the door after she went back in. I heard her crying when she read it.

5. Urged on by a friend, I once ate an already chewed piece of gum that we found frozen to the bottom of a teeter totter. My friend said she would give me two dollars, but she never did!

6. I hid under my sister's bed so I could hear her gossip with her friend. After a while I had to pee, but they were still awake, so I had to pee on myself and the stuff that was under the bed, including a school library book. A few days later when my Mom made us clean our rooms, it was obvious what happened and my sister got blamed for it and got yelled at.

7. I once skipped school in a school bus that was parked in back of a repair shop. My feet got cold so I took those rolled gauze bandages out of the first aid kit, and used it to wrap my feet in and took a nap.

8. My cousin and I were asked to babysit for a neighbor who had a 5-month old baby. It was so pale and ugly, we put mascara on it's eyes.

9. I made this blog post because I lost my good camera and haven't had the desire to take any new pictures with my new camera because the last ones didn't turn out very well. So I lost my photographer's confidence and don't have any cool pics to put on here.

10. I like the smell of rank weeds and muck.

A Few More Wedding Photos

Getting used to a new camera resulted in some of the pictures not turning out. These are some of the better ones, in no particular order...my apologies to the ones who aren't shown due to the extreme darkness and/or blurriness in some of the photos. Editing helped, but not all the pictures could be fixed. I'm also still having trouble getting the pictures to load evenly, so scroll down, there are gaps.

We had an absolutely wonderful time, the wedding went off without a hitch, and the excitement and joy were obvious in every smile and hug! Congratulations to Mike and Margie, who are a great couple, fun to be around and always so good to us. They worked hard to make this day special, not just for themselves, but for all of us, and it couldn't have been better!

Facebook Tragedy

Got a great laugh out of this cartoon, as I recently joined Facebook to keep track of the grandkids, and found so many friends and friends of friends. I wonder if I am the only one who feels a little overwhelmed!?

Before I was able to discover all the features and how to use them, I found pillow and food throwing fights going on, got a pop-up that tried to fleece me by telling me someone had a crush on me and someone else thought I was an idiot, and got some bewildering requests....when all I really wanted to do was say "Hi" to a few people and keep in touch! I am still a blogger at heart, but one thing I do like about FB is that it's very current (new messages everyday) and you can keep in touch with more people, not just the ones who are patronizing the blog.

So I do apologize to anyone when I am unresponsive to FB requests, I am mostly a commenter as I don't know how to do much of anything else and have no great desire to learn.

20 Things to do With Chopsticks When You're Bored

When Brooke and Paige come over, they always entertain themselves as if life were a game and they are the tokens. Here, they have their toys spread on my bed. What is the game? The strewing of the toys may look random, but trust me, each one has it's place and purpose, and they play the roles assigned to them by the girls. If you ask them, it might be a school for animals but the teacher is getting married to a Barbie, or the elf keeps trying to run away and the animals are going to cook for a picnic....whatever the game is, they laugh and play together all afternoon.

Recently, they spent the night. We met Bryan and Pam at a Chinese restaurant for dinner that evening. After watching a prickly sea urchin and a clownfish in the fish tank, and reading the astrological signs on the menus, they asked the waitress for chopsticks while we waited for our food. Thus began the game.

They practiced picking up things like the straw wrappers and the pepper shaker. The chopsticks were stuck under the nose, and in the hair like devil's horns. "And you act like a devil," Paige explained. They twiddled and fiddled with the chopsticks, and used them like drumsticks. They poked each other and tapped each other. They put them through buttonholes and later, used them like flagpoles for their fortune cookie slips and stuck them in the leftover boxes so they stuck out fortress-like. I can't even remember all the uses they found for the chopsticks, but I could hear them laughing and commenting on them all the way home in the car.

We adults, we just visited. Why does being grown-up mean you lose your fascination for everyday objects, and the creative uses to which they can be put? I always enjoy spending time with the twins, and listening to their chatter as they build their fantasy worlds around stuffed animals, dolls, or chopsticks. I love to see them having fun, and I hope when they grow up they will never lose their sense of fun.

No More Monitor Bag

What is a monitor bag, you say? Well, it's a white cotton bag you wear around your neck when you go to cardiac rehab. It has your name on it, and when you get to your cardiac rehab class, you put your numbered heart monitor in the bag, place 3 sticky electrodes under your shirt (2 on upper chest, one on ribs) and connect the heart monitor's 3 leads to your electrodes. If all goes well, a large screen tv will then display a readout of your heart rate as you exercise, and you can then slough off or increase your efforts as needed.

Today I graduated. I still go to cardiac rehab, but I'm off the monitor, baby! No more white bag around my neck! No more having to get there extra early to fumble with wires and sticky pads! No more turning to the wall and hunching to connect my leads so that the men in the class can't see my tubby tummy when I pull up my shirt! No more sticky shlepping when I take off the electrodes, which have the gummiest gum known to mankind on them!

When you are a recovering heart surgery patient, progress is measured in these small steps. What it means is that after so many weeks of exercising with a heart monitor, the exercise gurus have determined that the defibrillation paddles and oxygen tanks (which they keep on hand in clear view of you as your heart pounds during exercise, inevitably increasing the fear factor) are probably not in my future as of this time.

They still take my blood pressure, but now they put paddles on my chest twice a session to check my heart rate. One more small step for me in a journey of a thousand small steps.

For those of you who have yet to "enjoy" being the center of attention during a heart event, let me just say that it is like being born again. When you first come out of the operating theater, you are like a baby. You aren't even breathing on your own. A tube in your bladder is an adult substitute for a diaper. You can't even get out of bed without help, and someone has to give you your first post-op washing up. So as day follows day, many of them quite dismal, you measure your progress in tiny steps. Opening my own juice container was a small step. Being able to button something made me feel almost grown up again. Going off Lasix and potassium supplements was step that made me feel like I really was getting better. I even remember the first time I was able to creak my aching arm across my body, reach up under the opposite arm, and put on my own deodorant! And so on, and so on.

So as you can imagine, taking off that white bitch of a bag felt mighty darn good! I am just about back to normal. Other than finishing cardiac rehab, getting off Coumadin next week, and getting a stress test in March, I am officially over the surgery. And I do feel good! A lot better, anyway. Just thought I'd mention it.

Stopping by Woods by Robert Frost

We live in Michigan, and right now it is cold and very snowy. Ray's Beatle tune ("Little darlin,' it's been a long,cold, lonely winter...") reminded me of the joy of nature, thus inspiring me to take this video out by the sand dunes today. As you read the poem, one of the loveliest ever written, imagine the sound of the wind in the trees.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

Who Hates Penguins?

For Emily's birthday she wanted 31 of these penguins for her class, so I had to make 2 cake mixes. I had several cupcakes leftover, and luckily I remembered a certain Dad who hates penguins and has a birthday coming up. So....

Cat Dork

Trivial Pursuits But Hey.....

There are so many important events taking place in the world. But after major surgery, your own personal world shrinks down to what feels good and what doesn't. Thus this blog entry.

We went to a restaurant which I won't mention, but those of you who know where I live know it is just down the main drag from McDonald's and has a teepee in front of it. It was raining icy rain and due to the blood thinners I'm on, I was chilled to the bone. Plus my appetite isn't so keen. So when we ordered our food, I decided shrimp would go down easy, although it was a bit of an extravagance, I can only eat like a half dinner at a time so I figured it would be worth it.

Well, the cole slaw came and it was like mayonnaise-saturated mush. Any plant fiber was long gone from the dish, so I kinda shoved it aside and hoped the entree would be better. The shrimp came, and I noticed it was dark brown and the first bite was like way too crunchy. Overdone, tasteless, and overpriced. I tried peeling off the crust but it was still tasteless and not moist at all. So, I told the waitress. They hammered away at me, insisting over and over they would bring me a replacement shrimp dinner. By that time, I just wanted to leave. You know, I wasn't really enjoying myself that much anyway. The fries were not bad, and I filled up on a handful or so.

But I let them try to make it right. So about 15 minutes later, the dish comes back out. And to my absolute astonishment, the shrimp looked EXACTLY the same...and it tasted the same and CRUNCHED the same, too! I looked at Fritz and he looked at me, and we were like "DUH!"

As I said, almost anything that happened that day was much more newsworthy than a bad meal. I just wanted to say, "What the HE>>!? Is this some kind of joke? Am I on Punk'd or Candid Camera, or Boiling Points?" Anyway, I know we have all had these unfortunate experiences. Feel free to tell me yours.

Christmas Eve Family Fun

This was Jamie's idea...we always make the kids sing us a carol before we let them open their presents...but they always say they don't know the words. So Jamie downloaded the lyrics to a carol and printed out copies for them...ha ha! It was "The 12 Days of Christmas"!!!! Brilliant. Oh, the kids did a pretty good job. They went flat and dragged some due to their reluctance, but we goaded them on, and pretty soon they started sounding pretty darn good.

Okay, I did drop Mike on his head when he was a baby. The deal was, I wanted to rock him in a little rocking chair we had, but I wanted the chair to be over by the stove. So I tried to carry Mike while dragging the rocking chair along. I was about 5 or 6 and small for my age. About halfway across the room, I knew I was going to have to drop either Mike or the rocking chair. I distinctively remember pondering which one to drop. Well, I don't remember what series of mental computations resulted in my deciding to drop Mike. But I did.

He cried, of course, and I got in trouble. As you can see from his kindergarten picture, there was permanent damage. Notice the definite jacking of the jaw to the left, and the prominent flap of the ears. Also the shadowy dent in the upper forehead, and the look of a dazed animal in the eyes. Above his head, there is a yellowy-brown stain looking cloud thing that followed him around for years, undoubtedly a result of the depression and persecution complex that is still evident to this day. Also, the buttoned up shirt and suspenders attest to his paranoia about his clothes falling off. He never let me forget it. So here is my official apology: Sorry, Mike! Really! I don't know what I was thinking. Now get over it, okay?

Christmas Memories

When this picture was taken, the Squire kids were about ages 3 t0 maybe 11 or 12. We lived in a 3 bedroom cottage converted to a year-round house in Blue Lake Township, which was about a mile from a little village called Lakewood Club. My Grandma's sister Myrtle Devering must have worked year-round to make us these nightgowns, which she sewed for us just about every Christmas. They were made of a rich, soft flannel. Each child's gown had a special print, for instance: kittens, cowboys and Indians, horses, etc. They were complete with collars, facings, buttons and or snaps, with ruffled sleeves and bottoms for the girls. We were so thrilled to have these soft, warm nightgowns. But she didn't stop there! She made us two apiece! And usually there was a huge bag of popcorn balls to go along with the other goodies she made. As an adult, I can only imagine the time and effort she spent making 2 nightgowns apiece for us just about every year. It must have taken such a long time, and infinite patience to get each one so perfectly made. But it remains one of my favorite Christmas memories. Even though Aunt Myrtle passed away when I was barely grown, I remember her as being loving and extremely fruitful, always cooking, planting, reaping, sewing, making life better for all of those lucky enough to know her. I just wanted to take this opportunity to remember her with love and gratitude.

Yikes! What Happened to the Little Girls!?

As you can see by these Halloween pictures, those little princesses and witches have turned into something older and more sophisticated!

Lazy Mamacita Finally Updates Blog

Val's birthday party was really fun! We made our own party hats and Val won for creativity. Fritz was a great sport and wore his all night. Scott made his own spectacles and made a spectacle out of himself! It was great hearing everyone sing, especially Val's last song, "Proud Mary." The place was rockin'! We had chocolate cake with peanut butter flavored chocolate frosting and some rainbow chip cupcakes. Val got some very nice presents and some hilarious cards. Having the younger generation there was nice, too. One of the best things to happen is that Val booked Red Eye an October 17 gig there! There was only one injury, Barb bit Jamie (again) leaving vampire tooth marks on her. But all in all it was a great time and so good to see everyone.