Month: April 2015

War of the Roses

war of the roses

I remember when I first saw War of the Roses, I thought it was a black comedy that was a little bizarre.

I wasn’t married then.

It is being rerun on cable tonight, back to back as a matter of fact.Jim usually catches part of it with me, and we laugh about the part where Michael Douglas says that he has more square footage in regard to splitting up the house.

Now, from a married persons’ perspective, I find this movie sad.I can see what happens. When you first meet someone one picture is sunny.Then , if you are combining egos, one partner tends to bulldoze the other one.It isn’t always an even run during the marriage.

I am thankful that my marriage is pretty good and I can still watch this movie and not worry about it hitting close to home for me.Still, it’s sad to think that someone actually lives with this kind of fear.

Thank God I am not one of them.

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Planting time

I started seeds indoors this year and Jim started veggie seeds indoor too.

I start mine in egg containers,with dirt in the cups and seeds.Then I moistened the dirt and put the whole container in a clear plastic bag,the type you get when you buy produce.You breathe into it, and your breath provides the gas to turn the sealed up bag into a green house for the plants.Jim used a commercial seed starting kit, which comes with a clear plastic top to it.The veggies he has in there are ready to go in the ground. Mine are close to that point.I might make an attempt to put them in tomorrow. I planted white marigolds, coneflower, coleus and snapdragon.

Once they are in and established, I’ll keep you posted along the way to let you see what makes it through the summer.

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Beauty all around

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This morning, while I was walking the girls, we walked down to the bay.It was a glorious day for it here, although the wind was blowing a bit.

While we were out, I stopped and looked out at the bay.We were at an area where there is a bench by the walkway so we sat down and took it the scene.Rather, I did,as the girls laid low and we happy laying in the grass.I took several deep breaths and knew. I knew the direction that I took when I retired was good.My life, for now, is somewhat peaceful and moving away from the city was the way to go. I always loved water, and as I looked out at the bay, I truly felt my soul at ease.

I knew I was home.

Cutest Pup-once more with feeling….

It’s not May 1st, yet, and Zush and I are begging for you to take a second and throwing her a vote: simply click on the link and then click on vote! It’s that simple! Thanks!

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I KNOW THIS IS A REPEAT, BUT PLEASE KEEP VOTING FOR THE ZUSH…we both thank you!

Zush Ciliberti is entered in the cutest pup contest but I need you guys to go and vote for her.

You all know her picture by now, plus she is the only pup wearing glasses…lol.

This benefits the Rogue shelter and costs you nothing…vote for my best gal and please, PLEASE share with all your friends and have them throw a vote for the Zusher.Vote early and often( just because I am out of Philadelphia doesn’t mean some things change..lol) until May 1.

Thank you from Zusher and Mar..click on upload contest pictures when on their page and the photos will come up…Smooches!

Here is the link, and please remember to vote daily until May 1, 2015.

https://foto-app.appspot.com/get100/128640000647630/K_6631463380320256/

This is the picture you are looking for….

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The Hope Continues…

…with the day.

As you slowly come back up from a GI bug, you learn to take things with baby steps.

I have had a few days of ginger ale and fortunately am on natural apple juice, i.e., no added sugar or preservatives, and sun peppermint tea. A banana is now part of my morning, although it’s an issue that I have to tweak, because I am having some cramping in my legs.I find it highly ironic that the news now has stories on avian flu, as we have more rotisserie chicken than we know what to do with. We introduced it as basic protein back in our diet.

The biggest whoop is getting back in synch with my fitbit zip, after going through withdrawal for the past six days.The trick is going through with everything on a daily basis,so my general health can rock.

Here’s hoping!

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A hopeful week

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It was the week that was.

We are working our way out of the sick bay, and I actually got the girls out for a little while today and enjoyed the weather.I took them out and enjoyed the flowers and trees coming into bloom.

The flip side of that is that the pollen is knocking me for a loop, and that really hasn’t happened for a while.I am used to the fact that you have to pay a price for nature’s beauty, but I can’t help but wonder if the harshness of the winter has something to do with this onslaught of pollen.More than likely, I am just pulling out of the GI bug with a pollen chaser.

I am hoping that this week goes better than this past week.The shot I took of the dogwood blossoms made me feel optimistic.Here’s hoping you have a good week too!

The joys of a GI diet

So today is day number 4 of my bug from hell.

The diet has been Utz pretzels,wonton soup,ginger ale,and,later sprite. Yesterday, I added banana,wheat thins,and apple sauce to the mix.Yum.**not**..lol.

It is bizarre for me to even not want to think about food, but that has been the way of late.My kind neighbor actually made us a pot of turkey noodle soup, as we have unfortunately been reached the sharing the bug with your spouse phase.

The bright side, if there is one,is I haven’t seen this weight in a while.

This is not the way to do it, though, and I sure don’t recommend it.

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And with a pause in the action…

…the score is my GI tract, 3 days, and me, 0.

Went to the doctor today who confirmed that I indeed picked a bug up.I am getting awfully tired of wonton soup.so we stopped at the store today and picked up jello and pretzels and apple juice-you know, the stuff virus diets are made of.

**Sigh**

The flip side of this is that I was advised by the doctor not to start work tomorrow,as to get other folks sick,as I agreed,was kind of dumb.It is weird,having been hired but not actually starting yet.For a day I was really convinced that this is my body yelling out against leaving retirement.

All I know is I can’t wait to get better.

It’s all mental…

…you know, that link between mind and body?

Coincidence or not, I got hit with a really lousy GI bug late Tuesday night.My Wednesday was lost to Gatorade and ginger ale.I managed to get a little bit of wonton soup in me and my gut is still holding out for normal as of Thursday afternoon.

This Saturday, I am falling off the retirement bandwagon and starting a part-time position in a local supermarket. Do I want to? No, not really. Pretty sad that someone of my age, along with people older than me, need something to add to a cushion to questionable health care costs coming down the way.Don’t get me wrong. It is a part-time position, and I know I am fortunate to be offered it.What is really hard is being out again. After thirty years of dealing with daily bull, I find myself back at square one. It is not a prospect that makes my heart happy. It also is stealing precious time away from my girls, but I can always try to make that up to them the best that I can.

Hopefully, my body will mend itself and my mind will get a little straighter and things will get going.I don’t have to pretend I like it, but hey, it’s what has to be done.

Meanwhile back at Mayberry

I had the girls out this morning and got his picture.

You really couldn’t see it in this picture, but they put a speed limit sign up and to boot, it is a solar operated one.You can’t see in the picture, that above where the solar panel is, there are huge oak trees waiting to bloom out.

Was I the only one to see what’s wrong in this picture? Stay tuned, as it might seem there is some scuttlebutt about the placement.

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Stormy weather

It must be spring.

Noses are itchy, eyes are watering, and all of a sudden, someone yells,”TORNADO”.

It is a beautiful time of the year. I get to weed out the garden, put some caladium bulbs in and work on the other seeds. I actually have feet that are sandal worthy.I am fortunate in that I have weeded out a ton of older spring clothes and thus, my wardrobe choices are limited for now, but that’s ok.

I have the sandals out and the last Thursday, had the girls out at the bay and came back with a wet sock and a wet sneaker.The key here is being bay friendly for everyone, both Momma and girls.

We are looking forward to the peace and quiet on Mondays through Thursdays, as the shoobies come down and it gets a little more noisy.That’s ok, though.

We live here!

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Cutest Pup-once more with feeling….

I KNOW THIS IS A REPEAT, BUT PLEASE KEEP VOTING FOR THE ZUSH…we both thank you!

Zush Ciliberti is entered in the cutest pup contest but I need you guys to go and vote for her.

You all know her picture by now, plus she is the only pup wearing glasses…lol.

This benefits the Rogue shelter and costs you nothing…vote for my best gal and please, PLEASE share with all your friends and have them throw a vote for the Zusher.Vote early and often( just because I am out of Philadelphia doesn’t mean some things change..lol) until May 1.

Thank you from Zusher and Mar..click on upload contest pictures when on their page and the photos will come up…Smooches!

Here is the link, and please remember to vote daily until May 1, 2015.

https://foto-app.appspot.com/get100/128640000647630/K_6631463380320256/

This is the picture you are looking for….

IMG_5387

Road Trip continued…

Going up to the big city tomorrow to help celebrate my cousin’s 50th wedding anniversary.

What’s even more bizarre is I remember when I was a kid and she came home from the Peace Corps. and was at my grandmother’s house and told her she got married.They say you remember things from your childhood as you get older and things from yesterday you forget.

Scary, and yes, thank God, I’m old enough to be scared by that thought.

Cutest Pup Picture

Zush Ciliberti is entered in the cutest pup contest but I need you guys to go and vote for her.

You all know her picture by now, plus she is the only pup wearing glasses…lol.

This benefits the Rogue shelter and costs you nothing…vote for my best gal and please, PLEASE share with all your friends and have them throw a vote for the Zusher.Vote early and often( just because I am out of Philadelphia doesn’t mean some things change..lol) until May 1.

Thank you from Zusher and Mar..click on upload contest pictures when on their page and the photos will come up…Smooches!

Here is the link, and please remember to vote daily until May 1, 2015.

https://foto-app.appspot.com/get100/128640000647630/K_6631463380320256/

This is the picture you are looking for….

IMG_5387

Kevin Costner Movies

Any Kevin Costner movie that is sports oriented,be it For Love of the Game, Draft Day,Bull Durham…I have been watching a few and noticed one thing, er,rather,a few.

Are the plots kind of similar?Player or team in trouble and Costner comes in to save the day.Costner having the worst day of his life? Incredible how he turns it around to pitch a no hitter.The musical scores sound awfully similar.Same crescendos of music at integral plot twists, and there actually was a moment today when I wondered if someone in Costner’s family wrote one score and gets residuals every time it gets used.He gets at odds at some point of the plot with his romantic lead, and incredibly, everything is peaches and creme by the end of the movie.

Maybe he was making up for his cutting room floor scene at the beginning of The Big Chill, where all you saw was Costner’s wrist sewn up in a dapper suit for his funeral…I can’t pretend to know, and really, I’m just noticing stuff. I love Kevin Costner.Really. I do.But maybe someday he’ll throw me for a loop and put something different in the plot to see if I am paying attention.

I’ll be waiting, Kevin.

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Fishin’ Boat Lovin’

One of my best buds, Juls, has a very talented son, who records as Ty March.

Ty used to be part of the Capture the Crown band, and left them to go off on his own. He is blessed with a wonderful voice.He has tried his hand at writing more in a country and western slant, and one of my favorite songs that I was lucky enough to here him perform in person was Fishin’ Boat Lovin.Ty played it for me and Jim back in February and from the first time we heard it, we thought it had hit written all over it.

https://itun.es/us/l4fV6

He has been putting in his time and you can hear his heart and soul in his lyrics. He’s like something you can become addicted to and want to hear more and more of.Trust me, you will hear from him a lot in the future, and it will only be good!

To think I knew him when….***chuckling**

https://www.facebook.com/tymarchcountry?fref=ts

Breakfast of Champions

I always ate breakfast, as my figure through the years would advertise.

Then,I retired.

I would get up in the morning and get washed and dressed and get the girls their medicine.Then they are leashed up and away we go.Jim’s nephew would say the secret of losing weight is to have a little something as soon as you get up to within a half hour so you get your metabolism gets going.Good thought, but when you have had a radiation implant in your past, well, eating then leaving the house is not necessarily a wise idea.

Well, this morning we are up early.The girls are up and got medicine and walked. I am not eating the cereal advertised in the post,as the old schoolers in us would recognize Wheaties in a heartbeat.I am having a bowl of Special K protein and hoping for a good day.

It is the most important meal of the day:I do agree with that.Here’s hoping you had a good one.

New kids on the block

While out walking the girls today, we came across two young girls who were 9 years old.

The one girl, Isabelle, the girls and I had met before during the winters’ snow.Her friend Lily was with her.They both loved Zush, who went over to them and sat on their feet and the other girl’s leg.Kasia,as usual, was skittish and kept her distance.They had recognized us as we walked over and we stopped on the way back to talk.They talked to me about so many different things that my head was spinning.

I, thanks to my nephews, knew Minecraft,and the other computer games the girls were telling me about.They talked about haunted dolls and burying dolls by the swamp,Nine year old girls? More like 30 year olds, I felt,after talking to them.I think I was still playing school and Barbies when I was nine.

It was a pleasant experience talking to the girls, if not an education.If anyone was the old soul in the conversation, it was the two of them.It made me miss my childhood for a fleeting moment.

Lament for an Earring

I lost an earring today and I am ticked off.

I am convinced that earrings are the devil, as far as I am concerned. I mean, seriously,how many earrings can a woman lose in a lifetime? I had backs on the earrings and yet I lost one.How many times does this happen. I happen to have short hair.OK, so I am feeling a little sassy and wanted to wear a little longer earring.It doesn’t matter. Long hair, hot hair, winter coat collar or no coat,I lose an earring.

Is there some male run company the makes millions whenever women lose and earring? I have two holes in each ear.You still have nothing to do with the earring left behind the one that is lost.I lost earrings when my ears weren’t pierced.Pierced and lost, yup.When I first moved down here when I retired, I went across the street and would talk to my buddy Rita.She asked me why I didn’t have earrings in. Yet a week ago she was sad because she lost one of her pearl earrings given to her by her late husband.

Maybe the secret is to wear ugly earrings or earrings that you don’t like so if you lose them you aren’t ticked off.

Walk called due to Inclement Weather

I was due to take the girls out tonight for their last walk of the night.

We went a total of two blocks and then the thunder and lightning kicked in.

Ewwww….

They pulled me back home as soon as they could and now both were hiding under my legs when I was in the bathroom and are now panting to beat the band.

It’s going to be a long spring and summer…just saying.

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Shopping

One of the good, I guess, benefits of working a fit bit zip is that your sneakers get a lot of mileage on them.I have been wearing them and it is getting to the point where I feel like I can actually feel the road underneath my soles.

I am going out with my friend to go shopping for sneakers today and in preparation, I have been looking on-line for prices on sneakers, er, running shoes, er, walking shoes.Talk about culture shock! When we were in the city, I would go to the local Kohl’s’ and discovered that my shoe size is low enough to actually fit into a youth sneaker.Beside the obvious price issue, the youth sneakers also usually gets a little wider width, which is what I am looking for.

I’ll let you know what I end up with and how much they cost.I am going out with a budget, and hopefully, I won’t come home empty-handed!

Ow..

…posting a wee bit early because I am heading off to urgent care in a little bit.

Sometime yesterday afternoon, I did something to my right hand. I don’t know if it is something that happened all of a sudden, or as my buddy Kate asked, “was it due to trauma?”, or what.I have an issue with a few of my fingers and tendons so I really have to get this taken care of.

When I was between my first and second cancer, I had been tested for carpal tunnel, and was told that I scored off the chart.That was taken care of by no surgery but by chiropractic visits and b-1 bomber vitamins, which was a type of complex vitamins. My theory at the time was my right hand is my money hand. I am right-handed, so it would have to be something really pressing to get me to go that route.Hopefully, the trip today will calm this hand down, and if I have to be off the Mac Book Pro and/or Iphone for a bit to quiet the hand down, so be it.

**Fingers crossed**

Here we go again

I have a buddy here at Undisclosed.

Oh yeah…shocker. I have a buddy.

Well, I do have a few, but this one is a fellow cancer survivor, for now. She is once again dealing with the ugly beast beating at her door.

Her cancer is back, but this time with a vengeance.

Her breast cancer has spread to her spine.There aren’t too many folks around here who understand what folks who have cancer feel, which is what drew the both of us together.Now that it is back, while I am here full-time, she has to start daily radiation and chemo. I told her that since I am not working, if she’s around, and wants company, to text me and I’d go over and keep her company.

I have learned not to promise someone with cancer that there is tomorrow, because there may not be. I can help them with their journey as folks have helped me. Fortunately I have, for now, made it through.But even for us who have “made it through”, no one gets a guarantee.

All I can do is to pray for her and be a friend. It’s a scary time, and no one should go it alone.

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Nothing left to give.

The antithesis of a holiday weekend is the day after.

The day after ham, sweet potatoes, carrots, string beans, deviled eggs, cole slaw, and so on and so on…Even though I managed to crack 10,000 steps today and I just feel like a Mack truck ran over me. I made 15,618 steps and why legs are fine.My head is feeling the weekend. I proudly can announce I had no alcohol,due to medication I am taking,and yet, I am afraid I am going to collapse in the Jim column of ” its gotta be the pollen”.My head is exploding.

We have this week to kick back a little before we gear up for upcoming events. In two weekends, we go up to the big city and celebrate the 50th anniversary of my cousin and her husband.Two weeks after we have company coming down here.

The season is gearing up..no excuses..gotta get ready.

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Jersey Boys

It’s no secret I was born in the last two weeks of 1959.

So tonight,we were watching HBO and the “Jersey Boys” came on.

I was watching, and it really was hitting me that I wasn’t getting it.I mean I grew up in a house that played Simon and Garfunkel and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, well, I would hear them occasionally on a transistor radio. I stopped and remembered all the people who I knew who just went bananas over the “Jersey Boys” musical.

**Shaking my head**

I know this movie was directed by Clint Eastwood, and for being a 60’s child, I see more of “The Sopranos” in this film than I do anything else.Don’t get me wrong.I sing or hum along with Frankie Valli music when it’s played, but this movie is hard for me to watch.

Maybe I need to get back to my transistor radio….

Dinner

We had dinner at our friends’ house tonight.We were going to go out for dinner but stayed in and had just as good a time.

My buddy Juls belongs to a gourmet club, but that’s in another area, in another state.We just hang with our buds, have some good food and great conversation.It is always neat to hang out with friends, and to kick back and have some good times.

I never understood when my brother and sister-in-law out in the midwest said about being with close friends who become your family when you are physically away from your family.Now in this new life chapter titled retirement, I have come to appreciate what the spoke of for many years.

It’s good to have friends…we are blessed to have them.

Long Days’ Journey into Rain

It was a gorgeous day here today.

There was a slight breeze and I took the girls out for our 4 walks. We were enjoying the spring sunshine and breeze, but a funny thing happened during our third walk.

We were walking with my neighbor and her baby and while we were walking by the bay, a friend of mine was passing by.We met up with her in a few blocks, and she walked us back.She wanted the walk, she said, and we enjoyed her company.We all walked and talked and the walk back went by quickly.I felt bad though: my friend had a long walk back to her house.

I dropped the girls back at the house and I walked her back to her house.It felt good. Again, we were walking and talking, so it went by quickly.We said good-bye and I turned around and ugh! I had to walk back alone.Fortunately it was a pretty day, so it was nice.The weather is supposed to turn rainy tonight, so it made me want to savor the day.

I have to really thank Jackie Aschenfelter and the flip fitness class I took last year. Before I took this class, there is no way I could have done this walk. It was an awesome class and I miss my friends from it. Fortunately, I had the fit bit zip to follow it, and the magic number you see on the picture below shows a magic number I never reached before.

Thanks, Jackie!

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Storage Wars

I have not really followed Storage Wars on A&E for a few years, since the guy named Barry left and they tried to give him his own show.

For some odd reason, like background noise while I am trying to start my flower seeds in egg cartons,I put the show on.It really hasn’t changed too much.Basically, anyone who has stopped paying on a storage unit in California, well, this couple contracted by A&E travel to auction the units off. Jarrod and Brandy and Darryl and Brandon are still there, and some newer folks who I really can’t follow. One girl, Mary, was all excited about a mirror that would have been on top of a dresser, when I watched her empty the unit, there were more pricier things that she had no clue what they were.A man named Ivy just paid $550 for someone’s unit and the first three things he pulled out of the storage unit? Empty baxes…it’s a game that I just can’t see why people would play it.

I’m thinking maybe it’s time to listen to music instead…more relaxing and not watching people spending money on junk.