Day Four, January 9th, 2010

Quiet day, hubby off to work for half the day, and a long put off project started, tackling my messy craft room. And I do mean messy, it could qualify for an episode of Hoarders. If the police came to my house they would think I was robbed, with my craft room totally ransacked. Try to picture it: A volcanic explosion of yarn, scrapbooking papers swirled and tossed as if they were in Hurricane Andrew, fabric everywhere, buttons and pins and needles and hooks and looms look like they were shot out of a Ringling Brothers Cannon. There is no order to this disorder, and that is mostly the reason I have been putting it off so long. It is downstairs, I can shut the door. If I have to get some yarn, I tie a rope around my waist, anchor the rope around the drain pipe for the washer and dive in. I leave post its with pleas to come look for me if I don't return in one hour. It is bad. Embarrasingly bad. So I was able to clear a small portion of the floor in about two foot increments so that I could put one foot in at a time through the clutter. Then I saw it, the sewing basket filled with pins and needles, open and upside down. I grabbed the handle and they sprayed the room, landing some up, some down. This is not going to be good. I started picking up the pins, I felt like St. Theresa, one by one picking them up. I know I have not been so good, but this much penance I don't need. And then I had an Aunt Alice moment. Bingo! Bingo! It was so easy to find it, Aunt Alice's old red plastic container with the magnetic bingo chips and the MAGNETIC BINGO RETRIEVAL WAND!! Tethered by the rope, balancing in the footholds, I whipped it out and swirled like a maestro! The pins were defenseless, drawn like moths to the light, bees to the honey, metal to a magnet, well you get the picture. I scooped them up, and into the trash they went. And that was the most joyful moment of the day!

Day 3, January 8th, 2010

Today's post is early and a no brainer! Lots of smiles here today! 30 years ago, at this moment I was in the labor room at the now closed Pt.Pleasant Beach Hospital awaiting the birth of my daughter! The trend of the day was natural childbirth, and by that I mean no drugs! I hee hee'd so hard I hyperventilated. I heard the doctor tell my husband, encourage her not to take any drugs! I told the nurse I had to push, and she patted my hand and said now now, the doctor just checked you, you have a long time to go! She took a look and screamed, delivery room now. My husband who said he wasn't going to watch, ran behind us, and we barely made it there. The baby was screaming before she was even delivered!!! The doctor was holding her and kept putting his finger in her mouth so she would stop crying! He finally said, don't you want to know what it is! Those days, we didn't know until the baby arrived, we were so excited, we forgot to ask! It was a girl, my precious adorable daughter, Lauren Nicole! What a wonderful 30 years it has been, and it only gets better! And she has blessed us with two beautiful grandsons! Happy Birthday Lauren, thanks for 30 years of joy!

Day Two, January 7th, 2010

The best part of today came before lunch when my buddy Lisa Fusco opened her desk drawer, shuffled through her snack stash and pulled out a ziplock bag with two of her famous cookies in it, and said "Want one?". There is not a chocolate chip cookie in the entire state or country for that fact that rivals Lisa's. It is her signature, her trademark. Every birthday boy or girl is the recipient of their own private batch, and some people, like Lou, don't even need a reason to get this very sought after prize. And this is not just my opinion, hands down, hers are the best. We try to pry the secret out of her, and she says, well maybe it is the dark brown sugar I use, or maybe it is the butter not margarine, or maybe it is the pan. I think it is that she puts her heart and soul into every morsel knowing how much joy each cookie brings. Eyes brighten, mouths water, you just have to experience it once in your life. Pure cookie joy, crisp bottom, soft inside, gooey chocolate chips, each bite dissolves slowly in your mouth as sacred as a first communion wafer. Pure joy, pure happiness, it doesn't get any better than Lisa's chocolate chip cookies.

Day One, Choosing to be Happy!

January 6th, 2010

Music. Today, I decided to turn on the music on my computer. I have not had it on for months. I always used to play classical music while I was working because the music was calming but not distracting. It was just a lilting sort of background which makes me feel professional and productive. It also brings back memories. When we were kids, my father had a victrola (record player) and lots of records. Many Sundays he would play the records because in those days there was little on TV or much to do. With our parents gone, I still have tons of records stashed in the basement. When my kids were little, I loved to play Beethoven's pastoral symphony and we would pretend we were ice skating in our socks on the wooden floors. Thinking of that today, and listening to my music at work, is making me smile. Day one, choosing to be happy, success.

Gingerbread house making day

My grandson Damien invited me to his school today to make a gingerbread house with his class. There are 11 kids in the class, and they are just adorable. The teacher set everything up so that each child had all the ingredients to create their own gingerbread house. Damien came up with an awesome building, and crowned it off with a horn of plenty filled with gumdrops and M&M's. I was really astounded at how creative seven year olds are. Damien even made a sled with a gingerbread cookieman riding it. This was such a fun day, and one I will treasure. Thank you Damien for inviting me, it was an awesome day and put me in the Christmas spirit!

Hughey Waldman

My husband and I were down in Historic Gibbsboro yesterday for my grandson's christening. My son-in-laws family flew in from Romania (first plane ride ever!) to join in the happy event. We speak no Romanian, they speak no English. Well, we can say a few words, like car, and how are you, and dead and sugar. They can say a few words too, like very hot, and beautiful and good. My husband was a little nervous about interacting with my son-in-laws father, but as the day went on, I saw them in the yard, walking around, pointing at trees and talking! On the ride home, my husband told me that although they did their best to communicate in the language of gestures, facial expressions and hand waving, he really had no clue as to what the other father was trying to tell him. He said, he kept telling me, "Hughey Waldman" and my husband was trying to search his brain to figure out who this Hughey Waldman guy was since it apparently was an English name that this Romanian guy knew very well. They repeated it slowly to each other, stretched out the syllables, broke it down into sections, each repeating the mantra back and forth to each other. My husband kept asking, is he a famous person and other such clues to arrive at who this Hughey Waldman guy was. My daughter called as we were driving home, and I said, ask Sorin to ask his father what he was trying to tell Dad. He kept saying Hughey Waldman, Hughey Waldman. Sorin came back with the translation, what his father was telling my husband, in his little grasp of English was - You/Me Old Men. We laughed the entire way home.

If you are in Jackson, wave when you drive by~

We've been spending a lot of time in the yard lately, since our air conditioner blew. But that is another story. I happened to see this guy walking around across the street with this metal thing that I can only describe as a divining rod. You know, the Y-shaped stick that people used to hunt for water in the olden days? You would walk with it in front of you and when it slightly tilted downward, you knew there was water under the ground. You could scream, Eureka! and everyone would come running with their shovels and a well would be born, or so they tell me. I guess it is something like a Ouija board for pioneers. Anyway, this guy was walking around with this thing, it was metal and sort of like a rod with two antenna's on it. So you know, I just had to walk across the street and ask him what he was doing. Seems he is from the cable company and he is looking for stray signals. He told me that normally he just sits in his truck and rides around the neighborhood, and then if he gets a signal, he can explore it with his divining rod (my term, not his!) Well, this was really interesting, and I walked back home to tell my husband when the guy crossed into our yard and proclaimed that the problem was coming from our house. He put a doorknocker thing on the door and told us to call the number immediately for a service call and then he got back in his truck to scan the neighborhood. A few days later the water meter reader came, he had to get in our house, seems they are going to be reading the meters remotely, you guessed it, from the truck! So they had to put a gadget on our meter so that they can just drive by and find out how much to bill us! Gee, I remember when we first moved here, we had some drive bys too, but they sure weren't anonymous! They actually got out of the car, and we kind of looked forward to seeing them. We had the egg man, he would come about once a week and deliver eggs if you were on his list, we had the soda man, he lived off of Addison Road before they shortened it to build 195 and he would deliver any flavor of soda you wanted, and then pick up the bottles the next week. We also had the gypsys that lived in the trailer park on the edge of town. They made some awesome patio furniture and picnic tables, and they would drive around with their pickup truck loaded, selling them right from the curb. Of course, we had the paperboy, but they did away with them in favor of adult carriers, that . . . . drive by and throw the paper from the car. Yea, the good old days, friendly faces, familiar faces, a little conversation, a laugh or too. Gonna miss that, so to the water meter reader and the cable troubleshooter, can you do me a favor, can you wave as you drive by!