You must be sick of hearing about Chelsea, but she is the start of every day and last night she woke me up at the ungodly hour of 1AM. I figured it was an anomaly so I left the door open. Big mistake. She was back within the hour. So I took her out again and then did shut her out. I was able to go back to sleep and got up at 6AM.

The usual morning routine. We had a truly nice walk. It was warm and a bit breezy. We ran into a couple of the neighbors and they raved over how pretty she looks with her new haircut. Rick also said that he thinks it makes her look younger.

At nine I drove over to the Plymouth Armory to pick up my SHARE. It was raining then. It had pretty much stopped by the time I got there. I picked up Kate's SHARE also as she and Ron are in South Dakota at their daughter, Dawnlee's wedding. I managed to get it all in freezer/refrigerator spots as needed so it will be fresh and safe when Kate gets home.

Home again, I did some food prep. A fruit salad. a lettuce salad, a pie crust. After lunch, I took a nice nap. It helped but I am still very tired.

I went to Mass at 4PM. It is Pentecost Sunday already. The church was all decorated in red to symbolize the Spirit. Fr. Van Beeck spoke about the importance of this feast day. The Spirit was not hyped too much years ago and we even referred to the Holy Spirit as the Holy Ghost. Remember the silly before dinner blessing? Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He who eats the fastest gets the most.

But this is the day that commemorates the Holy Spirit coming to the Apostles and they came out of their hiding places and converted, they say, 5000 to Christianity in that one day. Wow. Now that is SPIRIT.

Anyway, as I was leaving I saw Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Bob also leaving church. They came here because they are going to the cottage that they own at Elkhart Lake and wanted to go to an earlier Mass and get HOME to rest for the weekend. We had a nice visit.

I also ran into my cousin Harold Ziegler and was able to tell him that I saw the article about him in the Plymouth Review. He has been in barbershop for 50 years and won an award this year. There is still a small chorus in Plymouth and he belongs to a bigger one in Milwaukee. They will be singing at the Weill Center on June 14th, I will have to see if I can possibly go.

This evening has been very quiet Dick has already gone to bed. I will stay up til shortly after nine so that I can take the girl out and then hit the bed myself.

Tomorrow I am going to the church at 1PM to wish Fr. Van Beeck a happy 40th year of ordination. Somebody from the church called and asked if I was coming, so I thought I would. Actually, I am not sure if Father knows who I am though we have been introduced several times.

So that is all for tonight. I hope your Sunday is special.

Mary

That goofy dog of ours woke me up at 2:40AM to go outside. I was able to get back to sleep and got a good rest until a bit after 6AM. At that point, I woke up and could hear dog tags rattling in the hall and an occasional meow so figured I had better get up and take care of the "royals."

After feeding the animals and my shower, Chelsea and I went for an absolutely lovely walk. My only complaint is that my right knee is so sore. I am determined to "walk it off" and hope that adding chondroitin and daily Tylenol will help with that.

I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen. I got the cupboards all wiped off with Murphy's soap. I am trying to hit a room a week with that. My spring cleaning is a couple of months off but it is getting there.

I had lunch at the Dairy Queen today. It was good to spend the time with the gals again. The past year has been so spotty. Everyone is doing pretty well and they are fun ladies.

Home again, I took a short nap before getting things ready for Dick's supper and catching up on phone calls and emails.

Nancy picked me up at 5PM so we could go to Rhine for the bust up of the pistol league. Toni Nevicosi was helping John with the bust up dinner so we three ladies and John all ate together and the ladies had a great visit. A bit later Lil and Ken Pipping joined us. It was an nice gathering. Nancy had to be home by 7 so I came home with her knowing that Dick would be very glad to have me home again. And he was. So were critters, though Chelsea seems very tired and is not all that interested after she greeted me. She did not finish her dinner tonight either.

Tomorrow is fairly quiet. I have to pick up SHARE in the morning and go to Mass at 4PM but the rest of the day is mine, mine, mine. I often wonder how anyone would ever find the time to be bored.

There is an interesting scenario occurring in the Town of Plymouth. There is a restaurant called the Wilderness on Highway 57 between Highway E/PP and Eastern Avenue. The owner of the restaurant has applied for an addendum to his license that will allow him to change his establishment to a "Gentleman's Club", a Cabaret which would employ topless waitresses from 4PM to 2AM each day. I am astonished and have written to the Plymouth Review to protest and hope that this is not approved. I am a resident of the City of Plymouth and do not have a vote for the town representatives but I can voice my opinion and did. We don't need that kind of place operating at our gate.

Guess that is all the news.

Have a nice weekend.

Love

Mary

Chelsea's appetite was not too good today. I had to coax her into eating breakfast. She got me up at 3:30AM. Then when I got up at 6, she was not hungry but was very anxious to get out to go to the bathroom. So. I accommodated her.

Dick and I had a great breakfast. Scrambled eggs with chives and cheese, sausage and toast. Then I vacuumed the upstairs rooms and did some other cleaning. Dick and Chelsea had a nice nap.

Bobbie got here at about noon. We were winemakers today. After a lunch of pork burritos and a new cherry tomato salad that turned out REALLY good, she and I went down to the "winery". Bobbie brought chopped up frozen rhubarb which we got into the straining bag and covered with sugar to cure for three days before moving on to the next step.

Roxie became very insistent at the foot of the stairs, so we just let her come and join us. Of course, she still was a real pain wanting us to pet her or to, at least, lift her up on to the benches, which we were not about to do, not with the new fermenting musts that we had started.

We also started the last kit that Dick and I had purchased, White Zinfandel. Bobbie is taking over the family "wine business" slowly. She will make a couple of batches here - as many as she wants as far as we are concerned - and figure out where to put the equipment and supplies at her house. This is fun. She and Bill will be back on Sunday, probably, for the next step and then to mix up another batch.

We had pizza for dinner tonight and now are all settled for the evening. I am going to close this off quite quickly so I can do some reading before I go to bed. I am in the middle of two books. The past several months I just have not been reading at all. Too distracted, I guess. So I am trying to schedule reading time every day.

Emily Dickinson said. " I never spoke to God nor visited in Heaven...yet certain am I of the spot."

Have a lovely healing sleep.

Mary

I hope you have already seen the pictures of our girl, Chelsea. Isn't that the cutest little girl that you have ever seen? She was a very good girl for Gina. I left her there at 8:30 and did a little shopping for about an hour. I got back just when she was about finished. Chelsea was glad to see me and Gina said that she was a pretty good girl. She likes out Chelsea and is very patient with her. She is amazed that Chelsea is 15 years old.

Chelsea and I stopped at Mother's on the way home. I had some things to take to Mother and I know that she likes to see Chelsea. After her bath and haircut,Chelsea looks so good too. We had a short visit and then I came home.

We got home between 10:30 and 11:00 And I left immediately for grocery shopping as Dick was sleeping and Chelsea needed to rest. I got home shortly before noon and heated up some Swiss Steak and mashed potatoes for our dinner.

At 2PM I had to be at Rocky Knoll for the Amputee Support Group meeting. We were supposed to have a speaker from the DMV but she canceled at the last minute so we just had a talk session. We had a new amputee, a young man who had just recently had an arm amputated. He will be all right but pleas pray for him as he is being fed a lot of meds that seem kind of unnecessary and perhaps redundant. I am glad that he is coming. As I said, Pray for him.

The rest of the day has been just catching up.

It rained most of the day and since I was driving around, the car got very clean.

Now it is evening and getting close to bed time. I am looking at a very content kittie ( Roxie) turned upside down on my desk and being sweet.

So. I will close tonight with a saying from a book that I bought called Chasing Normal by Dinah Chadoir Federer. She spoke to our Amputee Support Group last month and write this book to help the "Newly Disabled and for Those Who Love Them."

If you want to read it I will share, or let you know where to find it.

Here are two quotes from the book.

"Those who want to sing will find a song." Anonymous

"I believe that we, the disabled, need to stop chasing normal, celebrate who we are and who we are becoming and help each other as we go." Dinah Chadoir Federer.

Love

Mary

 

 

Here is our Girl. Chelsea with her summer do. Don't you just love the special flair to her tail this year?

Mary

It was a rather funny day. Not too busy, thank heaven. I got up shortly after 6. It was raining, not hard but wet enough that we took a very short walk this morning. I was able to work on getting the trash ready during the day, as because of the holiday, they are picking up tomorrow. Lots of people got scared and put theirs out today, but I hung in there and waited.

Dick got his coagulation checked this morning. It had improved some but not nearly enough so we have to go back next week to see how the NEW adjustment works.

The rest of the day was a home day. I did some cleaning and washing.

This evening I went out on the street to meet the Ad Hoc Tallgrass Committee with the developer and the paver so the paver could tell us what he is going to do and how this will help with the drainage problems which is the second part of the Ad Hoc Committee's concerns. It was very useful. We will probably have Tallgrass paved by the middle of June.

That was the day. Pretty uneventful. I can't say that that upsets me at all.

Tomorrow will be busy. Chelsea gets her summer do and I have an Amputee Support Group meeting to attend. Plus shopping.


A poem for our Chelsea

My furry friend ages
Much faster than I do
Yet she romps in joy.


Later

Mary

I got to stay home for the whole day. It was wonderful.

Chelsea DID wake me up at about 3:30, but this morning I was able to get back to sleep and did not wake up again until 6:30AM so I got a very good sleep. I am going to bed on time tonight too and hopefully that will catch me up.

Chelsea has had a rather difficult evening, she has been coughing a lot. All I can do is reassure her.

We did have a nice day. Dick was hungry for corned beef hash and eggs (Bobbie mentioned them the other day when she was over.) So we had that for our breakfast. Then I fried out. I cooked those Meisfeld brats with apple and saurkraut. Boy are they good. We also had potato salad and beans. And I made a Jello Poke Cake for dessert. I used a yellow cake mix and raspberry jello for the cake.

I love the blog. I mentioned that Mother was going downstairs to water plants during the winter and wanted a home for them and Bobbie emailed that she would be glad to take them. They will spend this last summer on Mom's porch and then go home to Bobbie. There are several, some of them badly in need of separating, but Bobbie will know what to do with them. I am so grateful and Mom was happy that someone wants them.

Mom and I were remembering how Dad got some of the remaining living cactus. He brought some back from California when we, the Johnstons, took him out to the desert. I remember that he had his suitcase stuffed with rocks and cactus. I could not lift it. Then he tried and looked at me in total surprise and said."What did you put in there?"

He also swiped some of them from public buildings. If he saw an interesting cactus in a lobby, he would sneak over and break off a piece and put it in his pocket. It is a wonder he did not have thorns in his butt but I think his guardian angel protected him.

Have a lovely rest of the week.

Mary

I got to bed so late last night. Then Chelsea got me up at 4:30AM, despite my taking her out just before I crawled in. The trouble is that I was unable to get back to sleep so finally at 6AM, I just got up and have been up ever since.

I spent the morning kind of just getting things organized and feeding all the creatures that live in our world.

I went to the 10:45AM Mass. It was a nice mass, commemorating the Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven. I still wonder how those poor Apostles must have felt when He told them to wait in Jerusalem for Word from his Father and then disappearing up into the sky. Had a bit of a visit with my friend Janet Bieschke and found out that her husband Richard also was born on May 21st.

We had chili for lunch as I wanted to get over to Mother's with the tomato plants from Jeff and Kathy. It was a busy afternoon. Leif and Nora were there as we had decided to plant the tomatoes together. They ended up doing so much more. Got Mom's trash all sorted and ready for the curb, fertilized the lawn and planted all of her geraniums in the front for color. I hope they didn't get too worn out, I had to leave a bit before four o'clock because I ahd to pick up a prescription for Dick and they close at 5 on Sundays. Besides I was tired.

Shortly after I arrived, Dolores and Ken came and then cousin Chris and her husband Ron Kasmarazak came too so I will bet you that Mother is also exhausted. This has been a very busy week for her and she does wear out. I found out that she went down into the basement to water plants yesterday. She is not supposed to do that - it is flat out dangerous and I am so very worried about her.

Dick and I had pork chops, broccoli and mashed potatoes for supper. Now we are watching the National Memorial Day Concert. It is always so special and touches my heart in so many way. We must remember to be there for all of our servicemen and women who are coming home from war in so many degrees of hurt and need and even those who seem not injured by their experience for an experience it has been and their sacrifice must be appreciated. They fought to keep us free and we must do whatever is needed to care for them and keep them safe once they are home again. We cannot forget them. They are ours, our children. We cannot neglect our children.

God Bless Them and those who care for them.

Tomorrow we get to stay home ALL day. I am so happy and so tired. I must remember to put the flag out tomorrow.

Love
Mary