Jumping in the way-back machine

Oh my gosh, was Fay ever this small? Was Amanda 5 weeks old?? Was I? How time flies.

Anyway, today the three of us were at Costco, and there was a man cooing and googling over a baby in a carrier in his basket - about THIS size, and the baby was so small and tiny and immobile and I was looking at Fay, and remember her at this size. When she'd stay put, go to sleep at the drop of a hat, smile all the time...when it was cute when she had a little gas!

Now she's independent, intelligent, strong-willed, and God help me she's only 2 1/2!!!!! I remember when she struggled so hard to say Mommy - and today she put her hand on her hip and told me "YOU WISH!!!", of course she doesn't know what YOU WISH means, but she knows how to say it! Some day she's going to be a teenager, and then an adult, then an MIT professor, or something wonderfully smart and wealth-and-power making, and she's going to look back on the days in the pictures her mother and I will have of her - like this one - to remind her of when she was small and helpless and drooling.

Fay, my darling grandchild. My heart lights at the sight of you, but also I'm saddend just a tiny bit to see you growing up and changing so fast! When you were 5 weeks old and held my finger I felt such a wonder to know my blood is in your veins and a part of my parents and grandparents and all the way back to the Hornbeks in Colorado and the Cammomiles in Utah and the Howards and Fosters in Kansas are in YOU. Yes, you come from cattle rustlers, and moonshine runners, drunks, wife beaters, dead-beat fathers, nurses, and just plain old citizens whose ancestors stole into this country on a boat. And this information is only on your mother's side of the family, wait'll you hear about your dad's lineage, you'll be wanting to wear a pillow case on your head every day!

Something for you to think about when you're a cool teenager with a butterfly tatoo and a nose-piercing (God forbid both, please)...remember when you were 2 1/2 and your got your first rocking horse? It was black and white cloth over padding and a black tail and soft fur that you loved to rub and you were very happy to sit on your "pony" saddle and push the ear buttons that caused the pony to neigh and toss it's head and wag its tail and make clomping sounds when it supposedly is walking. You tried to convince me that you needed to put your shoes on the pony, and likely would have if the feet hadn't been attached to the rocking bars. Now this isn't the old fashioned rocking horse of my generation that was just wood top-to-bottom, except for the mop-main and tail. Nor was it the one of your mom & dad's generation that had the springs attached to it and you could get those whipping across the floor if you got a good bounce going. No, baby-Fay, THIS particular pony was to be yours simply because you and another little girl were riding the floor models and I was struck with the realization that it won't be very long until you are asking me and papa to help you buy your first car -- or will it be a space ship or a land-speeder, and I wanted to be able to remind you of the day I bought you your first horse!!!

I am so inspired to stay healthy so I can always be a part of your life. It's so important to me to live a long time and embarrass you just as often as I can during your life, my first-born grandchild. Smooches baby.

The most wonderful day in my life-so far

Here's my darlin' Fay at her 2nd birthday party in almost her favorite place, Nana's arms.

She doesn't look a WHOLE lot different from this picture, this was just taken in June, so you get the drift - blue eyes, blond hair... reminds me of ME when I was 2.

Anyway, I took Fay for a stroller ride last week and was so amazed by the difference in her ability to speak and reason, and was just FLOORED by some of the things she can say now~!! Wasn't she just a little slobbering lump of smiles and poo about a week ago? Now she's talking in sentences, reasoning things out, I'm totalled and amazed by it.

Ok - first we strolled up the block from her house, past the house where the dog lives that comes to greet us when we walk by, no dog on the porch, so Fay reasoned that "Doggy was sleeping". Next the house where the two cats live that we greet when we walk by, the black one is friendly, the yellow one isn't. This particular day we talked to the yellow cat, Fay was saying "Come here kitty" but kitty was busy sunning herself and wasn't coming to us, so finally the black kitty did and she was really happy to get to pet him/her. Finally we made it up the hill to the park - she told me "WEEE!!", which is her word for park. I pushed her on the swing, helped her up the ladder for a trip down the slide...many times on both. One trip across the playground from the swing to the slide, and she said "I love you Nana." That did it - I was melted totally. I'm so in complete love with this little person its amazing to me. I was in particular need of some unconditional love that day, and nobody loves anybody like a child does. We had to sit down and eat a pretend cake too, is that something wonderful and amazing at her age? Ok - it was dirt, and I pretended to eat it, but she was satisfied that I (being SOOO old) understood that it was cake and I should eat it!!

We talked while she was swinging and I was pushing. She noticed the sky and said she wants to fly up there. When I pushed up my sweater sleeves, she wanted to push up her coat sleeves. She noticed that her coat has a Barbie on it and mine doesn't. She pointed out that we were both wearing shoes.

After a while I told her we needed to get home for chicken dinner and that Mommy's home, to which she informed me that "No, Mommy's working at Mommy's Pizza". Turned out she was right, Mommy wasn't home when we got home, in fact it was about 1/2 hour later than that, but amazed I was indeed. After Mommy got home, she and Fay had a rousing game of blow belly and laugh really really hard about it. Fay grabbed mommy's cheeks too hard and got hollered at for being mean, and I told Fay to be nice, don't hurt mommy and give her kisses on her cheek to make it better, which she did, and she understood too. Wow she's smart. Watch out world, here comes FAY!!!

I understand what Irma Bombeck meant (I think she said it), that if she'd had known how much fun grandchildren were, she'd have had them first!!! Me TOO!!!

The magic afghan

My big brother called last night. The fund-raiser for him and his bitch wife and family netted $4,000. He was so thrilled and happy he had to call and tell me about it. The group that headed the fund-raiser just couldn't get past the afghan being made by our deceased brother, and therefore they gave it to my brother, told him they didn't have the heart to raffle it off.
So - the magic afghan is on his king-sized bed, his cat is sniffing and rolling all over it, and he don't care if the cat snags it or not. So - now, guess it's my mistake to have kept that thing bagged up for so many years, wanting it to keep nice and all that.
Ricky was very important to me, and the disease that took him raged through him like a wildfire, he was in pain all the time and fighting everything that came in contact with him and his non-functioning immune system. Rick was always artistic, he painted and drew and wrote poetry and danced and sang and he was a lot of fun to smoke bong hits with because he'd always made faces and make me laugh. After he went back to Arizona our relationship changed, which happens when one is ill and the other is so far away and unable to understand what's really going on. After all, he always sounded exactly like the same person to me on the phone, and after he died and Brian showed me pictures of the living skeleton that was our brother, I was completely shocked by it. I knew he had AIDS, and I knew from pictures of other people and movies just what the disease did, but WOW what a shock to see it happen to Rick.
Anyway, I was talking about the afghan...Rick was a whiz of a crochetter, he could follow any pattern and never lost patience. The neatest one he did was an Indian Pony-type blanket, white, turquoise, red... Sure you know the style I mean, anyway, the intricacy of the pattern was made worse for him because the yarn was supposed to be cut and drawn in every time the color changed, he decided against that, he just kept all the colors running along and it turned out to be the neatest piece I ever saw. It's hanging on big brothers living room wall from the cane that Rick used during his last days.
When Brian called last night to say that he got the check and the afghan, my first thought was that I should have given him the afghan to begin with, of course it wouldn't have worked out this way as it should have. Brian and I talked for almost an hour and he's happy to have the afghan, he never thought to ask me for it, he said, because he had a lot of stuff from Rick anyway, and thought I wanted to keep that afghan. Yes, I wanted it, I told him, but I didn't want the stupid cats to snag it or hair it up, so I always thought some day I'd have a spare bedroom and the afghan could go on the bed in that spare room and be off limits to the cats... sure.. someday, maybe. Well, enough for now, take care all

whining and coughing

Doing not much besides being sick and getting into trouble this week. Got Fay's cold (of course) so have been coughing and sneezing and feeling like a beat up mule in a windy stall under a wet blanket. Chris figured that considering Fay's size that her cold wouldn't affect me much since I'm 10X her size, and by doing the math one could assume that the cold germs would be 10X smaller getting to me, and by dividing the square root of the quotient of the sub-continental divide... yadda yadda blah. By the time he gets out the paper and compass, I'm heading for the computer...

I found an excellent recipe for lentil soup, made it and have been enjoying it for the past couple days. I thought some of the ingredients were odd - vinegar and spinach? Ok, well, hell, I'll try it once and if it's terrible, it'll go on the compost pile. WELL SURPRISE!! The vinegar gave the soup a really good almost spicy taste and the fresh spinach really livened up the color too. Started with E.V.O.O. and onions, garlic, and celery - cooked those a bit, then added in garlic, pureed tomato's and 2 cups of lentil beans (soaked those about an hour first), then 1 quart of vegetable stock and 1 quart of water, brought to a boil then simmered till the beans were cooked - took about an hour, then add in 1/4 c vinegar (I used balsamic) and a cup of sliced up fresh spinach and wait a few minutes till the spinach wilted, served up and WOW!!! Chris wasn't too impressed, and hasn't been interested in eating the rest, but that's fine - more for me!! It's really high in protein and only a couple hundred calories a bowl. Had it for both meals last couple days because not much is better then soup when a person has a cold.

This coming weekend is the big dopers barter fair up north of here. Amanda's guy is shirking his duties as a father and boyfriend so he can go get stoned and be stupid for a couple days. I'm so unhappy with the guy because he just won't get on the stick and be a father! He's so busy playing with his friends and being an immature idiot, I'd like to wack him over the head with a 2x4 about a dozen times. Amanda is responsible for getting all the babysitters lined up - me and other grandma - and daycare so HE can go bonging and 'shrooming with his buddies. His mother of course thinks he's straight and clean as a whistle... yaaaa right. Personally, I don't care a lot about the marijuana, what concerns me so much is that his hanger on buddies are more important than Fay and he runs off to play with his friends way more than I think he should. He's missing so much important stuff with her, and not even so concerned as to give up his night out with his friends to stay home and hold his sick daughter. Even less concerned with his poor sick-mother-in-law that dragged her sick ass over to his house to watch his sick daughter so he could go out(ok, side benefit, I went to watch her so Amanda could work). Oh - I know, I could have stayed home and called him and said TOO BAD BUDDY, you're on your own. I didn't because I knew he'd have a whiney-ass fit at Amanda and end up taking Fay to the daycare center. Will he grow up before I kick his ass? Stay tuned for further updates.

Meahwile, I'm washing the sofa pillows and blankets and going to string the cats with nylon socks with lavender-oil soaked cotton balls tied in. Everyone has fleas or mites or something and I'm sick of them bringing them in the house!! Bugs hate the lavender, and with the nylon socks the cats are safe from getting hung on a fence post. The nylon is stretchy enough that they can get out of it if necessary, and light enough that the won't really notice them at all. (not my idea, got it off the internet). Combine this with putting lavender oil in front of the doors and putting some in the vacuum water and hopefully we'll be debugged soon. Have to bug-bomb the place in the spring I guess. Unless we have a severe winter and all the larvea are killed in the freeze! For that I hope we have a hard cold winter. MORE SOUP for me!!!

Sorry to whine, I'm coughing and feeling like crud, holding my head and wishing I'd stop saying stupid things like I haven't been sick in MONTHS!!!! cough cough sniffle. Didn't have any houses to clean yesterday, and only 2 today, if I get there at all. Depends on if I can find some more Alka-seltzer cold medicine around her.

Still Livin and breathing!!

Hey friends, I know...it's been days and days. I've been spending a LOT of time with my baby granddaughter light-of-my-life Fay. She's had a snotty-nose cold and just wants her Nanny to hold her, so how can I say no? Yesterday we went for a long walk -- ok, I pushed the stroller, and Fay snoozed up front -- but I took all the uphill streets I could find in their neighborhood and got a good workout while she got fresh air and a ride outside. God knows the vitamin D is good for her and me even if it's a bit on the cloudy side out there.

Otherwise, my big brother Brian is recovering from back surgery, his company is throwing a benefit raffle for him and his bitch wife and the family. So - I sent an afghan that I've had put away since our middle brother Rick passed away in 1994. The afghan is big enough for a double bed cover, and just beautiful - intricate granny square design in dark red with a beautiful cream color as the outter part of the squares. Anyway, I sent it off to the lady that's holding the benefit and she's been bugging me about if I really want to give up something my late brother made? Does Brian know about it?? DO I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING???? Well, hell of course I do - at least that's my hard-headed German story!!! I want that afghan to be used, and loved, and put out on a bed or sofa to be admired, as Rick would have wanted it. I never put it out because I don't want my cats hairing it up - or worse, getting their claws snagged in the yarn and ruining it!!! The last e-mail from the lady said that they're thinking of auctioning off the afghan because it's so beautiful and wonderful and everyone wants it. I think that's a great idea, because it'll bring in more income for Brian, which is the POINT of all this. Rick would be happy to have his afghan go for a good cause, he made many that he just gave away for raffles and auctions. He loved to crochet and he was so so talented.

We've been doing some diet changes, and I'm pretty happy with the changes. I'm eating protein for breakfast and then carbs and vegetables for dinner. Trying to find protein sources is different, because I don't eat beef or pork. Been eating a lot of beans though, and lots of rice. I invested in a rice cooker, and I LOVE IT! The heavy breakfast is helping me stay revved up all day, and I'm not hungry usually till its about time for dinner. As I work all day and have access to everyones cookie jars, it's to my benefit to be full and not NEED to stuff something in my mouth because I'm hungry. I'm losing weight, lost 8 pounds in 11 weeks, and feeling pretty good. Doing aerobics and walking, deep breating and all that too. I'm still not done with the caffeine, not certain I ever will be, but maybe... I use organic coffee beans that I grind fresh and make latte's with soy milk. I love the combination and it's only a couple hundred calories - so much better than those Starbucks mochafrappaccinodecafhalfcafflitewithfoams..that are 800+ calories...ewwwwwwwwww. Trying to find new recipes for beans, and non pork and beef sources of protein...amazing what you can find on the web. Typed in vegitarian protein, gosh I got 2,000 web sites to choose from! I hear my dad laughing at me.... he's old joke was that a person would give up smoking, drinking, sex and pork, go for a long walk - step off a curb and get run over by a health-food truck... yep, Pop... probably.

Hoping Gattina and Grammie and Claudia are doing well, I stop by every day or two and read your blogs, don't always comment, but you're in my thoughts always! Can't stay too far away from my blue-eyed grandbaby, feeling those little arms around my neck and her sweet breathing is just about enough to bust my heart wide open!!!