Fun Monday - Old

Ari is our host this week, and wonders:

What is the oldest possession in your house or flat? Describe it or show us a picture. Where did it come from? Why do you hang on to it?

I have lots of old things. It took some thinking to come up with my oldest thing, and even so, I'm not sure that these things are the oldest.

When I got married to Darling Man, Aunt Harriet came for the wedding and brought with her a box.

Inside were very delicate teacups that belonged to my great-great grandmother. They are beautiful, luminous. It feels special just looking at them. I have no idea how old they actually are.

I've only used them once - for a wedding shower for my brother Andy's future ex-wife. She didn't really appreciate the shower or the china. I think she'd have rather had a soccer-themed bridal shower.

Most of the time, they live in their box in a cabinet. They are so fragile, I'm afraid something will happen to them. As long as I have a somewhat clumsy boy gallumphing around, they will stay safe in their box.

As to why I hang on to it? It's an heirloom. One of those truly valuable-because-it's-ours kind of things. They may have value outside of sentiment, but I don't know what it is - nor do I care.

ZRoom, it ez done... and ways to wait

Project Number One for this month is done... Last week, Darling Man and I put the leaves on the trees, making it spring in there, rather than some scary, haunted forest (which is what it looked like with the bare trees).

So hard to shoot with an open window... I made those curtains this morning. Two twin-sized sheets I bought for 75 cents at a garage sale. Just hemmed them up, cut the ends off the top seam and threaded it onto the rod. Perfect!

Painting the bear rather intimidated me. I put it off and put it off until he was the only thing left to do. Then... I just did it. He actually came out pretty cute.

At Darling Man's urging, I outlined the little owl in the tree. He was afraid it would get lost in the leaves. You can still see him with out searching too hard.

So, except for the rocking chair I'm repairing to put into the room, this project is finished!

My mother is in the hospital. After the drama of Dad's heart and subsequent pacemaker, my mom, who's had a bad headache since July has discovered that she's got a subdural hematoma. There were rounds to doctors, who decided that her blood-thinning medication was causing the bleed. She was then taken off the medication to see if there was an improvement. There was. Her headache dropped from a 10 (on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst) to a three. And then there was a day when there was no headache at all. Oh, the rejoicing!!! Then the headached came back. This morning she lost use of one arm and was slurring her words a bit. Dad rushed her to the hospital when he realized there was a problem and she is hooked up to monitors and stable at the moment. We don't know for sure, but it looks like a small stroke.

I am not good at waiting for word. I am a woman of action! But when there is nothing to be done, I clean. Which is why Z's room got done in such short order. And now I am cleaning the carpeting on the stairs and the upstairs hallway. As if I didn't have enough to do already, our lovely Tottie decided this morning would be the perfect time to barf copiously from one end of the house to the other. Including the stairs and the wall.

As you can see, she's a bit of a furball. No doubt the furry tumbleweeds rolling around in our bedroom is testament to the cause of today's barf-o-rama. Hairball, packed down with lots of food results in very nasty explosion. Thanks, Tottie, for your contribution to my day.

Once I finish that, it's back to the closet to finish painting and then once more to the clutter of the computer room.

I suppose this is a physical meditation - a way to relax and take my mind off the worries that were planted there a couple of weeks ago, and have grown today. Until I am needed and wanted at the hospital, I am off to suck carpets.

Not Dead

Just in the midst of various projects in various stages of completion. Will post soon with pictures, but in the meantime, want to see what I'm up against?

I started by clearing out the closet. It was half empty anyway from pulling the old computer and desk out of there and setting it up in ZBoy's room. It was musty and dark, so I decided to paint it white. Wow. I don't think the walls have been painted since the house was new because those walls just soaked the paint right up. Taking much longer than anticipated.

And of course, everything from the closet had to go somewhere. Like out into the room. That's next on the list.

On the upside, I did finish painting ZBoy's forest room (with a little help from Darling Man). We'll clean it up this weekend and post pictures of the finished product.

Fun Monday - My Day

Fun Monday is being hosted by Grace, who wants to know:

Your Day: please describe to us your typical weekday, from when you wake up until when you go to bed, what do you do to get you up and going, how do you wind down in the evening and what happens in your life in between those times.

When at all possible, I aim for a slow ramp up in my day. During the week, it usually goes like this:

6:30-7am Wake up, start coffee (if hubby is home) or have a cup left by hubby

7am-7:30 Wake boy, feed boy, read newspaper

7:30-8am Shower, get dressed. If I'm really slow that morning, I'll take the kid to school, then come back home for this part.

8:10am Take boy to school. I will then drive on to work. I usually give my mom a call during the drive to see how things are.

9am Arrive at work, get second cup of coffee, check mailbox, rewind whatever it is I taped the night before (Desperate Housewives, V, Grey's Anatomy).

9:30 Get down to business: Checking record schedules from the night before, checking email, PBS intraweb page, schedule any refeeds needed.

10:30 Upstairs again for walkabout the offices. Visit Jennifer, Kelly, Erica - get the lay of the land that day. If there's any voiceover word to be done, this is usually around the time I do it.

11am LUNCH!!! Usually eaten at my desk while watching previous night's TV and doing some work-related task.

11:45 Back to work. Lots of different things get done on any given day. There are daily program logs and record schedules, programs to find, programs to dub and send ot other people, sometimes editing, sometimes timings, entering program schedules for two different stations, finding and modifying promotional material (or occasionally creating my own). There are meetings rarely, and reports often - there is plenty to keep me busy!

2pm If this is a day I have to pick up the boy from school, this is when I leave. If it's one of those days, you can bump everything up to where I get to work at 6:30am, but usually my husband goes to pick him up and I stay at work.

5:30-7pm Depending on how the day has gone, what monkeywrenches have been thrown into the works, how many hours I need to put in to make it to 40, I leave work. I'm very lucky to have fairly flexible hours. I have worked as late as 11pm. Since i'm self directed (except for those monkey wrenches), I can pretty much determine how much and what gets done every day.

5:30-8pm Get home. I'm lucky that my husband does most of the cooking. He's so much better at it than I am and he actually enjoys it, which I don't, if I have to do it everyday. Lovely meal, some family visiting. We might play a video game together or go for a walk with the dogs. Once in a great while, we'll watch TV together, but that is pretty rare. We don't actually watch much TV.

8pm Kick the boy off the computer and send him to bed. He can shower, brush teeth or read until 9pm when lights go out. I spend a little computer time, then I go to bed too. Usually around 9-10pm. Darling Man is usually in bed by 8:30, but he gets up really early for work.

Early bed, early-ish rise. I believe in sleeping as much as you can - I get between 8 and 10 hours a night. But I am also the night watchman. I wake up at every noise, let dogs out when needed (and back in), comfort boy with nightmares or coughs, go downstairs and reset the weather alarm when it goes off (last night about 11pm, unexpectedly), make sure the gerbil doesn't get eaten...

It's a very busy day almost every day. And then there are weekends...

Boyhood Education

In a previously rare event, today I had my mom and dad and son all in the car with me. We were driving Dad home from the hospital. Dad was up front with me, Mom in the backseat with ZBoy.

Mid-sentence, I reached around behind me and tapped Z's leg - "GREEN PUNCH-BUGGY!"

"Aw, man...." he responded.

Dad looked at me quizzically and I had to explain: Usually, ZBoy sits up front with me. The kids these days apparently have a car game called "Punch-Buggy" which entails spotting Volkswagon Bugs (new or old), punching your sibling and simultaneously yelling "(color of bug) Punch-Buggy!" triumphantly.

At which point, I reached around again - "RED PUNCH-BUGGY!" Mom giggled. Dad chuckled. ZBoy groused, "It's like she's got radar. I used to win all the time, but then she started seeing them everywhere!..."

And I tapped his leg again, "CREAM PUNCH-BUGGY!"

Z mis-understood, and when that same car pulled up next to us at the light, he tapped my shoulder and said, "WHITE PUNCH-BUGGY!"

"Ooooo... are we playing by European rules?" asked Dad. "Because if we are, I think Z just earned a noogie."

"What? Why?" asked ZBoy.

"Because your mom already called that one."

"She said "green punch-buggy!""

"No... she said cream, as in off-white. If you call the same punch-buggy, you get a noogie. If you do it again, you get a wedgie," Dad explained patiently.

"An atomic wedgie?" asked Z.

"Oh no!" I said, "You do NOT want one of those! That's where they pull the back of your underwear over your head!"

As ZBoy's head swirled with all this new information, Mom asked, "Does anyone ever do Indian burns anymore?"

"Indian burns? What are THOSE?"

I told him I would show him sometime. He said that was okay, he didn't need to know that badly.

Dad laughed. "Your mama can be a mean one, boy. Just ask your Uncle John... She finally quit beating him up when she was about 11. When he tried to retaliate, she told him that you can't hit a lady..."

I couldn't turn around and look, but I imagine ZBoy's eyes were big as saucers. He's only known his Uncle John as a big, strong guy - and me as a short, soft mommy.

The things you can learn during a car ride...

Wordless Wednesday - Heart Mended

Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'...

Heart Broken

I have a son and a granddaughter. I also have in-laws who are in their 80s and parents in their 70s. Up until recently, I've been lucky... nothing really big or traumatic has happened with any of those people.

But today... Today, my mom called me to say that Dad was in the emergency room. He'd been feeling a bit out of breath and not well that morning, and finally decided to go to the doctor to get checked out. They put him on an EKG and took his pulse. And sent him immediately to the hospital.

They took him in right away. His pulse was 30 beats per minute and his blood pressure was rising. At one point, his pulse dropped to 23 beats per minute and he was surrounded by medical personnel amazed that he was even conscious.

The decision was made to put in a pacemaker, as the bottom half of his heart just wasn't working.

I left work and went out to collect Mom. I fed the chickens, made sure all the doors were locked. We drove to the hospital and found Dad, still waiting his turn on the table. An emergency had come up and he'd been bumped back (being relatively stable at this point).

He was scared. Really, really scared. It was, in fact, a rather dire situation. Thank goodness he went to the doctor when he did. I'm glad I got Mom there so that he could see her before he went into surgery. I think it made a huge difference.

They wheeled him out and down the hall, leaving us in a suddenly vast, empty room. Mom sat in a recliner and put her aching feet up. We watched "Cheers". Dad's friend Blan showed up and we talked for the long half-hour that was left until Dad was wheeled back to us.

He was awake and chatty. His color had pinked up considerably from the rather gray shade he'd been when he left. After a bit more poking, prodding and squeezing, the nurses brought him dinner. Two small pork chops, greens, yams and chocolate pudding for dessert. He ate it all.

Tomorrow morning, he'll have an ultrasound done on his heart and a chemical stress test. And if everything looks okay, he gets to go home. Isn't that amazing?

I knew the day would come when a parent got seriously ill. I'm good in a crisis. I can take care of everyone else and make sure stuff gets done. I don't cry or collapse. But when it's all over and I get to be alone, the tears come. They wash away the residual stress and fear.

I knew this day would come. I just didn't think it would be so soon.

Fun Monday - Getting to Know You (and Me)

Mariposa is hosting Fun Monday this week, and wants answers!!!!

(1) Share something which you wish your readers would know about you. It could be something you feel you might need to clarify/ share, etc.

I think SayreSmiles is a pretty open book... Pretty much anything worth knowing about me can be found here. I come from a big family. I've been married twice - the first time much too young and the second for good. I waited until I was 37 to have a child, who is the light of my life and my reason for living. That said, he does not run my life; he's just the reason I want to stick around as long as possible. At 47, I have an older body and an older mindset, but a younger spirit. I'm still trying to decide what I want to do when I grow up. And somehow, my mind does not accept the limitations of time.

(2) Ask three questions to your readers, and I mean all readers, whether participants of Fun Monday or not. The questions should be generic so that all your readers can answer them and that it will help you get to know your readers more.

Question #1: What would you say was the BEST part of your teenaged years?

Question #2: What do you hope for in the next decade?

Question #3: Would you retire if you could - and what would you do with your time?

Go visit Mariposa to find other questions and answers!