Ringing out the old

Let me be the last to say that I hope 2006 was a very good year for all of you and the first to say that I hope 2007 will be even better.

I am leaving this year as a slow dial-up user and will shortly usher in the new year as an always-connected user. Erika and Gretchen went through the order process for me when they were here and ordered ATT Yahoo DSL. The box of stuff necessary to implement the turnover arrived and is sitting by my front door. Whoever loves me the most or gets here first will hook it up.

Adrienne thought I should be brave and open the box, but I am pretty sure that the installation will involve pulling out the CPU to connect something at the back and that is beyond my ability.

I am seeing in the new year by watching a marathon of the 2006 main event of the world series of poker.

Wasn't that a party

Wow, what a gathering. We had 17 for actual dinner (not counting the birthday boy) and then 8 more came over later. I hope Erika will be posting a picture of the snowman cake that Gretchen made. Jackson was very excited. We lit the candles and started to sing. So of course it was time for him to hide behind his mother's knees. He came back out in time to blow out the candles and stayed out long enough to say "Let's do that again." So we did.

Pots and pans were cleaned last night. Dishwasher was run today. Rita just picked up her dishes and silverware that we borrowed and Gretchen's family just picked up all the extra cake, cookies and pop and they are heading back to West Branch. Erika should be on the plane right now and winging her way to California. The house seems very empty.

Steak and Shake

Erika mentioned to me on the phone how nice the lights were at the Toledo Zoo. However to a three year old boy the word zoo does not mean lights it means animals. Luckily there were enough animals visable and available to make him happy.


Gretchen's family will be in town tonight when Erika and Jackson get here and we will all go out to dinner. Megan and Melody are really looking forward to going to Steak and Shake and it occurs to me that we had better call it something else in front of the three year old or else he will be expecting to have steak. Which, of course, they don't serve.

Disregard previous post

Not the happy birthday part. I still want Marcel's birthday to be happy but I'm afraid I added a year to his age. He is bringing up the rear in the odd numbers department.

Even numbers

Happy birthday to Marcel. This year he drags us all back into the even number category. Yesterday we were all odd numbers starting with 67.

Two Down, One to Go

I have already seen two (count them, two) dentists this morning. The first one cleaned my teeth and it was just as horrid as I expected, but I am done with her for another three months. The second one was the guy at the other end of the building that will get the tooth I broke in California fixed. That was just as horrid as I expected. The good part is I just leave them my store-bought teeth and I don't have to sit in the chair while they fix it. The bad part is they needed to take impressions; top, bottom and bite.

Now this was the interesting part. I don't know if I have just never had a bite impression done before or if they changed the way they do it. The girl came at me with what looked like a caulking gun and squeezed some ooze on top of my bottom teeth and told me to bite down. We held that position for a couple of minutes and then she removed a cute little rubbery bite impression.

The tension of sitting in those dentist chairs for so long has my back hurting like I have walked a couple miles. Anyways, I have to go back at 4 pm to pick up my fixed teeth.

Christmas in the air

I went to a marvelous Christmas Dinner Party last night. From the lucious ham, prepared in accordance with an Alton Brown (Food Network) receipe, to the magnificent christmas tree, Martha would have been proud. Stephi, take a bow.

Unfortunately, Jackson showed signs of a slight fever in the afternoon but took a good nap. He was in a funk at the party but Jeff still managed to get smiles and giggles out of him and helped coax him to drink a little juice and eat some yogourt.

When we got home, Erika tood him right to the rocking chair and managed to get his coat off but not hers. He was really hot. We force-fed him some childrens ibuprofin and that made him cry hard enough to throw up all over Erika's coat and clothes. Erika calmed him down and managed to get out of the yucky clothes and throw a load in the washer. About an hour later he was willing to take a bottle and watch a video and go lay down in the bedroom. About an hour after that he was back in the living room and ready to play.

About 11:30 PM Erika gave up on getting him to sleep and decided to head for home. I'm afraid they left in a little of a hurry and I saw a barrel of monkeys still on the floor in Gretchen's room this morning. I hope they are both feeling OK today.

Wind and rain

While having breakfast at Denny's on Thanksgiving morning, Erika was amusing Jackson by blowing at him through a straw. He would raise his face and say "Ooo, wind". Then she did it again and he said "Ooo, wind". The next time he said "Ooo, that one was rain".

Sleepless nights

My recent trip to California has done a number on my jet lagged sleeping clock. I finally took a double dose of diphenhydremene last night and I slept very well. However there were all those other sleepless nights, like the one at the casino. If my body worked better I would have just gone back down to the casino and played till I got sleepy. But getting up and getting dressed (including shoes and socks) and walking to the elevator and then all the way down the hall to the casino; it all seemed like too much trouble.

So I spent the time translating nursery rhymes into French. The A B C song was pretty easy. After singing the alphabet in French I added:
Nous chanton les A B C
Prochaine fois voulez vous chantez.

Next I did Bah Bah Black Sheep but the French word for Sheep eluded me so I worked around it. I really needed it to be two sylables for it to work properly and yesterday I looked it up (keep in mind that my French/English dictionary is smaller than my IPod) and it is Mouton. Works well:

Mouton noir, avez vous de leine
Oui, monsieur, j'ai trois sac plein
Une pour moi
Une pour vous
Une pour les enfents qui reste chez nous
Mouton noir, avez voud de leine
Oui, monsieur, j'ai trois sac plein.

Absentee

I voted my absentee ballot before I left for California in October. Now I have been back for a few days and inundated with negative campaign ads on TV and found out all the bad things that have been done by the people I voted for. In their defense, their opponents are not any better.

No wonder people don't bother voting.

Letter from Aunt Julia

I got a call from Elise today telling me about a letter she received from Aunt Julia. Julia had written it in English and I think Elise had more trouble understanding it than if she had just written in French.

But the sad news was that Marie Clair passed away on 9/25. The way Julia put it was that Marie Clair started her journey to heaven on September 25th. She has finished her purgetory here on earth.

Marie Clair was the youngest of Grandpa Beauregard's sisters and suffered an anurism many years ago and has been living semi-vegitatively ever since.

Monique had a minor cerebral hemorage and is doing fairly well. She was at the hospital in Ste Hyasinthe (sp) but now she is at home with Mirielle who looks after her.

Julia herself and Aunt Alfreda are doing fine. They live in the same housing complex and are great company for each other.

I want to slap his face

Yes I do. The guy that put a bomb in his shoe. They should make him stand at the end of a security check-in line so that everybody going through that has to remove their shoes can slap his face.

That part of security check in can usually reduce me to tears. On a good day I can take off and put on my own shoes and socks but I need to sit on a bed or a couch to do it. Not standing up and not sitting in a straight chair and certainly not in a wheelchair.

I would never have thought 10 years ago that so much agility would be needed for such a basic operation

Hard to Blog

I found out that it is just as hard to blog when your life is full and exciting as when it is dull and boring.

So many things I thought I would blog about on my trip but before I got to the blogging point those things were old and new things were happening.

Anyways I'm home now. It is very quiet here. There is no little girl pointing her finger and saying "Doh". I miss her. I miss the big people too. Dog, not so much.

E E G

That's the most recognizable part of Caitlyn's singing her ABCs. She also does a recognizable 1 2 3. Its hard to believe that this child is not yet 11 mos. old.

Great Dinner

What a nice dinner we had yesterday. Everything went so well its hard to believe the kind of chaos that was going on the day before.

The ham was "monica-worthy" it was so good. The table setting and food presentation was "martha stewart-worthy" it all looked so beautiful. I was so proud of my daughters, my grandchildred and oh yeah, that little girl that kept us all entertained even at the dinner table as she slept in her chair at the table. Grandpa Taj took charge of keeping her face off the table and trying to keep her comfortable

The day before, Kathy was coming down with a cold and felt miserable. Adrienne worked as a volunteer at the consession stand for the PTA at the high school football game and came staggering in at about midnight shivering from cold and fatigue. Baby had a snuffely condition - cold? alergies? but enough to make her two favorite calming influences (bottle and binky) almost useless because she needed her mouth to breath.

Everyone rallied on Sunday and we had a marvelous dinner. John and Nancy were there and they haven't changed a bit. Nancy is just like Pat. Both of them still look like they are in their 50s. Not fair.

Call Me Ishmael

People say Mom and they are not talking to or about me. They say Grandma and they are not talking to or about me. I'm waiting for my new identity to emerge.

In the Caitlyn hierarchy I have moved up a couple of notches. That feels good. It's always nice to light up someone's face.

Caitlyn had a short and restless night, which means Ris and Adrienne had a short and restless night. Adrienne is taking time out from her cooking preparations to let Cait nap on her shoulder.

Being Here

Well I got here. Getting a wheelchair at the LA end turned out to be a pain. I think this is the first time I have de-planed into a gate that was crowded to the gills with people waiting to take off. There was no empty seat to sit down and wait for the wheelchair. I appealed to an attendant and he said the first row was for handicapped. I pointed out to him that the first row was full so he went to a lady who looked able bodied at the far end of the second row and asked her go give up her seat while I waited for a wheelchair. He came back and asked me if I could walk as far as that seat. I said yes, but not fast enough to beat the man who had just sat in it. He had to go ask the man to get up and I got the seat.

The first wheelchair that got there he comandeered for me when she was going to pick up someone else. So she came over and got me and tried to put me back on the plane. When she tried to enter the jetway, I said this cannot be the way to baggage.

As soon as we got close to baggage there was my Adrienne. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Now I felt at home.

Melody was at the house to greet me when we got here. The Adam got home shortly after that. Adrienne fixed a dinner for us and Kathy got home while we were eating. Melody's baby-daddy was late for dinner and he was unceremoniously given cold food and warm soda (pop) (or as they say in the south - ko-kola).

My first impression of Jon, what with his gracious acceptance of the fare offered and willingness to eat it, is that he may be a keeper.

Now for the hierarchy of Caitlyn. She prefers the dog to me. Although she did warm up to me enough at one point to be fascinated by a pattern on the sole of my shoe and come over and shake my foot for a while. Every once in a while she will toddle over to the dog and hug her and lay her cheek on the dog's back.

She prefers Melody to the dog. She prefers Adam to Melody. She prefers Adrienne to Adam and she prefers Marisa to Adrienne. But when Kathy is in the house everybody else turns to chopped liver. Who would choose chopped liver when there is ice cream on the menu. Certainly not a Van Houten.

I figured out that the legend of Adam and his devoted Aunt Kathy is what God reads to all the little baby souls as their bedtime story. Those babies are just lining up in heaven waiting to be sent into this family.

Kathy's not too shabby as a daughter either. She presented me with a gift when she got home last night. First of all it was in a cheese-it box and I thought they were cheese-its and put it aside. When she asked wasn't I going to open it I said not while I was eating dinner. She said it wasn't cheese-its for krise sake. It is soooo cute. It looked like one of those kleenex covers for a really wiered shaped box of kleenex. It wasn't. What it is is a cover for my brick (of the stubbed toe)

I can't wait to get home and put it on my brick. I will have to move the brick to the living-room side of the door so I will be able to look at it. It is decorated with the same little houses as the coasters she made me.

I have gotten shorter since the last time I was here. When I stand in front of Adam I am looking directly at whatever is printed on his tee shirt. He has to sit down if I want to make eye contact. I know y'all think its Adam that's getting taller but my shrinkage was also demonstrated when trying to achieve Adrienne's bed. She's sharing it with me as she has in the past and it seems like last time I was here I could just crawl in. This time I am looking around for something I can use as a stool.

When I shared a bedroom with Monica the background TV of choice was Fox News, here the background TV of choice is ESPN.

Adrienne is fixing us a ham dinner at Mary's house on Sunday and John and Nancy have agreed to join us. I'm really lookin forward to that and the rest of my stay here.

How Ready am I

My boarding pass is in my purse, my suitcase is in Rita's trunk and I am, in fact, typing this post from the front seat of Rita's car. She will come out about 7:00 AM to drive to the airport.

One of the statements in the above paragraph is a lie. Let's call it poetic license to demonstrate how ready I am.

Faith restored

I am in danger of having my faith is mankind restored. Well maybe not all of mankind but parts of commerce.

A few weeks ago my airline reservations for this trip to California got all messed up when Spirit airlines cancelled their flights on which I was scheduled to fly. The alternatives they gave me (overnight flights) were completely unacceptable and when I called them they were less than cooperative. As the clerk was enumerating my options I heard somewhere sort of behind a caugh the word refund. "That's what I want", I said "I want my money back". She agreed and less than a week later the refund appeared on my credit card. I was sooo impressed.

Now I get this message from aol about reduced fees and I can sign up for service that I understand to be comparable to what I have now (for which I have been paying about $240.00 annually since I first got it) for $9.95 per month. New rate to start at the end of the current billing period. I clicked the requisit square. My annual billing would have been beginning in February. Today I got a credit from aol which I assume covers the time from now until February. I am soo impressed.

Fretworthy

The person that cut my hair last week cut it way too short on the top and I have cowlicks sticking up all over the place - Fretworthy?

I found a bug in the carpet piece I keep just inside the door. It was the type of bug Megan called a roly poly. We found one like it in July when she was here. This is about the 5th one I've seen in the house since I moved in - Fretworthy?

Last Monday (9/11) I made a pot of soup called 15 Bean Soup. I had made this before and always omitted the garlic because I didn't have any. This time, I had allocated my overflow to Kelly and decided to follow the recipe. I bought some minced garlic. The package said that 1/2 teaspoon was equal to one clove of garlic. The recipe called for 2 cloves. I used one teaspoon. The house still smells like garlic - Fretworthy?

I sent in a reply postcard to TV Guide saying they could send me 8 free issues of their magazine. I had cancelled my subscription when they changed their format. After the free issues I am under no obligation to buy any more. All I have to do is write "cancel" on the invoice. The invoice may get here while I'm in California and go astray - Fretworthy?

I have only one bottle of ketchup. - Fretworthy?

The VCR in my kitchen is making funny noises as it records - Fretworthy?

My health plan is changing our prescription provider as of December 1st. When I get back from California in November, I will have to make a Doctor's appointment to renew my prescriptions before 12/1 - Fretworthy?

Holliday Park is throwing a thank you dinner for committee members on 10/7. They require that we send in a $10.00 deposit which is returned to us when we show up at the dinner. I don't want to go. Rita really enjoys those dinners and I usually go to please her. The deposit is due tomorrow. I'm not going to send it in. - Fretworthy?