Born on the 4th of July

I have two siblings born on Independence Day, my brother, Les, born in 1947, and my half-sister, JoAn Schooley, born in Penn in 1953.



















I drove into Port Townsend yesterday and while I was only gone from the house for seven hours, I was Exhausted with a capital E when I got home.  Lately, it seems like any activity I decide to participate in wipes me out.  I hope it's just because my body is wounded right now.  My shoulder has been bothering me for days and I'll be glad when the surgery is behind me.

Thursday I'll be driving myself to walk on the Bainbridge Ferry so Mary can pick me up downtown and drive me over to Issaquah to consult with my surgeon. I've got my fingers crossed that I don't have to wait weeks. The place where we're going is where her doctor is so she knows exactly how to get there. Depending on what the surgery entails, I assume I'll be admitted at Overlake in Bellevue or the place in Issaquah. I have no idea what to expect.  I figure with having four tears in my ligaments, it's not going to be a walk in the park as far as physical therapy goes afterwards.  Still, I can't continue on without it.

I stopped to visit Mary and Dave Gaboury for a few minutes as they were in town to see relatives for the 4th and work on her family reunion which is coming up July 26th at the fairgrounds. (The Deleo Derby)  I delivered this doll that a friend here in PA had asked me to give Mary (she gave me one too).
Faye Radley, who is now Catherine Critchfield, was a friend of ours in grade school.

I left Mike McConaghy's house (where Mary was at the time) and drove down to pick up my sister to take her to Marrowstone Island for a cookout and picnic at Kris & Bill Rust's house  in Nordland.  I love going here.  They are both so welcoming and I could live very happily at their house.  Really comfortable.  They have a couple dogs, a cat who rules the roost, two goats, and a llama.

 This is Louie and he gets in trouble a lot for chasing the goats. He thinks he's the boss of the pasture.

                              This is Max, Les' grandson, Brend'n's dog.  A real cutie.

Kris & Bill have a fire pit in the middle of their backyard so we cooked hotdogs and sat around outside
taking turns moving our chairs to try and avoid the smoke.  The wind wasn't cooperating and I had to throw everything in the washer when I got home. Like all good picnics, we had a ton of yummy food.
Kris made this terrific looking jello/cake/strawberry masterpiece that was especially noteworthy.

     One of my favorite things in Kris' collection was this Bill Clinton toy that played music.

Other views of the day.....

                                                 Brend'n, Les, and Eric Forcier

                                             Callum Grace, my sister's great grandson

                                               Our hosts, Kris and Bill Rust

                                                                       Max and Les

The drive down was busy with traffic (of course!) and coming home was even worse.  Especially after it started to rain.  I saw lots of State Patrol out and about, several stopping speeders.  Also saw a deer that had been hit but was still sitting up along the road. It made me cry.  Spied one dead raccoon, several stupid drivers, and bypassed one parade in progress in downtown PA. Too bad the rain was spoiling things.  All I wanted to do was get home.

I realized that getting a quiet sleep wasn't about to happen and I listened to fireworks and booms for hours.  Street is littered this morning.

Tomorrow I have a quick doctor appt to discuss my latest medical tests and Tuesday I'm expecting my cousin, Bonnie and her husband and son to stop in.  They'll stay the night in their travel trailer and we'll share genealogy notes as she's into the hobby, as well.

I probably inhaled a tad too much smoke yesterday as I'm coughing a bit today and very congested.  Don't plan on doing much more than watching movies and taking it easy.

Holiday Coming

All day I've been expecting the raindrops but nothing so far.  I hope it stays that way as I've decided to venture out tomorrow and head into PT.  I'm picking up my sister and we're driving over to Marrowstone Island to have a picnic with our brother, Les (it's his birthday) and Bill and Kris Rust, Les' ex-wife and close friend.

I made a coleslaw with shrimp. I know that sounds weird but shrimp is shrimp so hopefully it'll be alright.  Also made a batch of choc. chip cookies and a loaf of banana bread.  I have my reservations about driving tomorrow but if I take it easy, I should be okay.  I've noticed my shoulders are definitely getting harder to deal with and I have to be real careful what I do with my right arm.

Mary Gaboury is supposed to be in town too so I'll stop by her nephew's house to say hello. Don't think I'll stay for the fireworks,though; prefer getting home before dark.

I had sent out an email to local folks to see if anyone had a recliner to sell cheap or donate as my sister needed something to put her feet up.  Edema was getting pretty bad.  Well, thank you Kris and Dave Logue!  They bought one at Melanie Lockhart's yard sale and took it over today.  She's thrilled. Gave the guys a couple of her handmade bags.

                                                 Doug Lockhart, Dave Logue, Janie

I noticed traffic this morning was kind of tense.  Pre-holiday hype I suppose.  I had a guy in a pickup tailgating me and when the light changed, he continued to tailgate.  As I prepared to turn into Walgreen's, he cut through a gas station parking lot trying to get there first.  Stupid man!  Somebody else was right behind me and he ended up sitting there waiting for us. And you can believe, I slowed down.  Then when we got to the parking lot, he tried again to get a parking place closer to the door.  I couldn't believe how rude he was but I guess the streets are full of idiots like that.

I noticed the Safeway parking lot was also full of people driving entirely too fast.  One little blue VW just zoomed through and I was lucky I didn't hit her as I was backing out of my space.  I've often noticed traffic is different on Fridays. I guess holidays are the same thing.

Mary sent me some Jake pictures today. Two with rice cakes and one with peas.  He's so cute.

I've been working on my family names list and came up with grand children, g. grandchildren, and great great grandchildren of my grandpa, Lew Gene.  He had 17 grandchildren (my generation) and 46 great grandchildren, and 78 g.g. grandchildren.  A few names appear more than once but I thought it was interesting that three girls were named Jennifer Lynn. (one being my daughter)

Guess I'll retire to the recliner for a while.  Maybe I'll get some good picnic pictures tomorrow.

July already

I've kept myself busy all morning. Nothing all that productive but I'm having an enjoyable time and that's all that matters.  I slept in the recliner all night although I gave it a two-hour try in my bed from 10 to 12.  I wake up rested and that's all I ask.

I had a muffin and cup of coffee for breakfast and then went outside to fill up the bird baths with clean water.  Seems to be the only birds taking advantage of this are the crows but when I see them actually climbing in to take a bath, I figure I've done a good deed.  Have decided (for the time being anyhow) to not refill the bird feeders.  Seed was getting too expensive to feed the already fat pigeons.  For a while there I was having gold finch, robins,wrens, and quail.  They all disappeared once the pigeons claimed the backyard as their territory.  I still have hummingbird nectar in the front but I've noticed those bird haven't been around for about a week or more.  Not sure why. Perhaps they've found feeders that aren't being stalked by neighbor cats.

Tomorrow I head down to the hospital to get an ankle/leg brachial test.  Or something like that.  Apparently I'll be exercising in between readings.  Next Monday I see a physician's assistant to discuss my recent blood work.  Still waiting to hear from the surgeon's office in Bellevue about scheduling an appt to get my shoulder worked on.  Medical visits seems to be the center of my social life this year.  I hope next year is different.

I decided to bake a cake this morning.  That's probably why my mood is elevated. Ha!  I've got the tv on and plan to watch (or at least listen) to the soccer match getting so much press.  I went shopping online earlier today.  Been wanting a jean jacket.

I started to fill out an ancestor chart on wikipedia genealogy but discovered my various files of information were "all over the place" and it slowed me down to a crawl trying to find what I wanted. Plan to make a list of all relatives with pictures and dates that I can refer to with the little side things I'm working on.

One thing led to another and I ended up getting out all my photo albums so I can start scanning in the
various old photos of family members here and there. Here's a video to make you laugh.

Last day of June

Looks like another nice day. I went down to have blood drawn around 9 and then came home to have breakfast. Nothing much on my agenda otherwise so I suppose I'll occupy myself with genealogy searching.  Did make a connection on WikiTree yesterday with a relative working on the brother of my great grandfather so I'm going back to that site today.  It's amazing what you can find online if you sit and search long enough.  Google, for example, is a lot more than just a simple search engine. I had to read their tips to find that out.  You can access old newspapers and genealogy data, as well.
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I suspect that being online is affecting my shoulder to a degree as I've had a lot more pain and general aches this week.  Even though I've done everything I can think of to make my typing area comfortable.  Last night I discovered after two hours of tossing and moaning that sleeping in bed was not going to happen.  I transferred to the recliner and thankfully, slept through the night.  Damn nuisance but all the more reason to get this surgery done and over with.

Been trying to pay a couple bills online this morning but the bank website is acting up so I'll wait until this afternoon.  Fixed a pan of spaghetti last night so at least I don't have to cook for the next two nights. I'm finding ole Marie Callender is becoming a frequent dinner guest lately.  Especially when you can buy them at Walmart for $2.

I finished watching Band of Brothers last night.  Man, was it ever good!  I cried when they disovered the death camps.  Really good acting and directing in that series. I'd encourage you to search it out.

I posted a bunch of PT pictures on Pinterest yesterday.  Think I'll add more too as that was kind of fun.

Here's one I got from Mary while she was at Great Wolf Lodge.  I love this one of Jenni and Jake.

Well, not much else again today. I'll post pictures of the kids once I get some.

Just loafing

I'm having kind of a nice day. Mainly because I'm just doing stuff I wanna' do --and most of it is while sitting on my butt.  I sorta got my files cleaned up yesterday.  Threw out a ton of junk and then remembered I have another couple of notebooks that need to be sorted, as well.  All in good time.

One of the things I found was old questionnaires I sent out in 1981 and 1986 for our class reunions. Rather than toss them, I kept out a couple dozen to mail on so people could have a good laugh (and some fun mail)  Although I suppose that's all on how you look at it.  Mine did cause a chuckle or two.
My pets included Dee Dee Dinah, our Welsh corgi, two to six cats, and three birds. My hobbies were writing letters, analyzing handwriting, playing bingo, knitting, playing piano, and reading.  My kids were 16, 14, 9, and 8.  My most memorable experience was losing weight and gaining it all back again.

Got a picture from Mary's phone a few minutes ago taken in her car.  They're on their way to Great Wolf Lodge (not Wild Waves like I said yesterday). Jake is sleeping in this picture but he's going to have a super fun weekend when he wakes up.

He's got a teething cracker in his hand (saving it for later I guess) and Mary says he's taking less formula as he prefers food instead.

Got a good joke in my email yesterday from Linda Farina in TN.....

The Christian Way

A guy was getting ready to tee off on the first hole when a second golfer approached and asked if he could join him. The first said that he usually played alone, but agreed to the twosome.

They were even after the first few holes. The second guy said, "We're about evenly matched, how about playing for five bucks a hole?" The first guy said that he wasn't much for betting, but agreed to the terms.

The second guy won the remaining sixteen holes with ease.

As they were walking off number eighteen, the second guy was busy counting his $80.00. He confessed that he was the pro at a neighboring course and liked to pick on suckers. The first fellow revealed that he was the Parish Priest.

The pro was flustered and apologetic, offering to return the money. The Priest said,

"You won fair and square and I was foolish to bet with you. You keep your winnings."

The pro said, "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

The Priest said, "Well, you could come to Mass on Sunday and make a donation......

And, if you want to bring your mother and father along, I'll marry them."

I posted a couple of mill pictures on Facebook today.  Heard they're going to tear down the mill cafeteria.  A lot of memories in that old building. It the small structure shown here between the bag plant and the office.

Pulled out all my notes on Charlie Blankenship again so  I think I'll make another stab at trying to find him.  Probably going to have to subscribe to ancestry.com again but for now, I'll use the free places. I may have to head across town to the Morman Library too. I know they've probably got stuff I could use.

And that's it for today.  When you don't leave the house, the blogs can be pretty ho=hum.

Last Friday of June

Have got my Pandora music channel playing on TV.  I chose the Chuck Berry station this morning so I'm getting all kinds of tunes from his era.  Rock this Town by the Stray Cats and Midnight Shift by Buddy Holly. Don't recall hearing that one before and it's pretty good.  What I tune in is usually based on what activity I'm involved in or the mood I'm in.  If I'm doing quiet study, it's gotta be Percy Faith, Roger Williams or Frank Sinatra type of songs.  Feeling peppy usually means old time rock and roll and I've got several others to choose from -- Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Paul Anka, Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, CCR, Neil Diamond, Bruno Mars, Bob Dylan.....  I pretty much have Pandora on all day long.

Watched Amazon Prime for a while last night. Another episode of Band of Brothers, then Justified, and finished with OZ.   Some of those crime shows  are a tad too much to take at times.  Breaking Bad, Dexter, House of Cards, and Scandal continue to head my favorites list.

Forced myself out of the house yesterday and went for a 15-minute walk. Big whoopie do, I know. Gonna have to see if I can't pick up the pace a bit.  I also rode my exercise bike for about 20 minutes while watching soccer.  Course now my knees are sore so I guess the only remedy is to get on the damn thing again and show these joints who's in charge.  Ha!

The coast guard couple who own the house next door and were transferred to Alaska and now rent it out to another coast guard couple, stopped in to say hi yesterday while they were in the neighborhood. I think they're on their way to their new assignment in CA. Anyhow, we're Facebook friends so I've been following the progression growth of her two kids.  Never fails to amaze how quickly they grow.  She noticed my jar of beach glass by the door and told me there was a beach in Alaska that they frequented often as it was full of glass...big pieces too.  Just everywhere for the picking.  Would love to see it.

Weather can't seem to make up its mind today.  I woke up around 5 hearing the rain pouring down. Later when I made a trip to the post office, it was heating up fast.  Now the gray clouds are rolling in again.  Doesn't matter. I'm just thankful we don't get the extreme weather of several other spots in the US.

Jenni, Wayne, and the kids and Mary,Andy, Catie and Jake are all going to Wild Waves this weekend.  At least I think Catie is going. Anyhow, Sammy is going to spend a couple days at gramma's house.  I don't have anything planned for the 4th of July.  Unless you call laying low a plan.  I think being on the computer a lot yesterday aggravated my shoulder 'cause it's a little more sore than usual. I'm going to send my Sequim surgeon an email and tell him I want to see the orthopedic surgeon in Bellevue.  It's closer to Mary's house than Swedish is.  I'm completely lost when it comes to figuring out where the various towns  are in relation to one another over there.  All I know is that I went to Overlake in 1973 when Jenni was born 'cause it was close to Kirkland.

Noticed the bush in front of my window out front it getting kinda tall.  I'm going to have to look it up and see what kind of bush/tree it is.  It has pretty blue flowers on it and the bees and birds all like it. There's two more near the mailbox and I see a tall one in the alley at a neighbor's place.

Elvis is on now. 'Ain't that lovin' you baby' from 1958.  Don't recall hearing that one before either. Well, guess I'll hope on the genealogy bandwagon and see if I can dig up some dirt on the relatives.

Time to get back into blogging.....

Took me a while to figure out my blog settings and passwords so I could access again.  I was so confused when I was first starting to blog that I signed up using various email addresses and now I have a heck of a time trying to maneuver around.  Gupster Granny keeps coming up when I want Side of the Road and blah blah blah....as you can see, I still have next to nothing to write about.

Today's been kind of a messing around type day for me.  Can't quite get motivated to really buckle down to one project so I'm flitting around.  Had files and photos on my hard drive to sort and genealogy notes to update and I think I'm gonna go back to my email address book and delete some of those that
were automatically put in my book without my say-so.

I did manage to put in about 20 minutes on my exercise bike and I went for a short walk down the alley and back.  I've been super lazy about exercising -- like almost my entire life.  No reason to change the pattern now.  Although I spend enough time feeling guilty about it.

I've moved my computer to the kitchen and made a little mini office in here, turning the other office into a sewing room.  I wanted a table I could sit at to type and still put my feet up. It's not ideal what I have set up right now but I'm continuing to try various bins, boxes, footstools, chairs, etc. until I get a good combination.  Some days I spend a lot of time at my laptop and I'm finding I need to put my feet up or the ankles swell.  Not sure what brought that on but it happened when I went to the alumni social hour a couple weeks back and I was in terrible pain and had to leave.  Still pisses me off to think about it!

The shoulder problem I started having after my fall last July has finally been diagnosed as several bad tears in my ligaments.  Going to require a Seattle surgeon as the Sequim guy feels it's more complicated than he feels comfortable with.  I've known something was wrong but I certainly didn't  think it would amount to any more than a simple little arthroscopic surgery in the local hospital.  Guess nothing is simple when you fall down and you're not a spring chicken anymore.

I'll stay with Mary and Andy. She wants me to go to her physical therapist afterwards, as well, and I will but I'll probably transfer back to PA to finish up.  Hate the thought of physical therapy. Hate the thought of another surgery.  Still... I can't live my life with this much pain, not to mention the loss of strength and flexibility I've lost.

Here's the latest picture of Jacob. He's six months old already; eating from a spoon, going to swim lessons, and loving his new "walker car" that I bought him.

Always interesting to see how much things have changed since I was having babies.  I used cloth diapers, had a diaper service at one point, and used Gerber baby food in jars.  Equipment like strollers, walkers, cribs, toys, chairs -- all different.  Mary blends all his food and freezes it in ice cube trays. Then they pop out what they want for a feeding and nuke it in the microwave.  Even the baby bottles and how-to books are changed.  Which is how it should be. All I had was a paperback by Dr. Spock. Mothers today would probably roll in the aisles to read that book now.

Been a while since I blogged on my Leader blog so guess I'll try to think of some subject.  Coming up empty but I'm sure there's some topic I can chew on.

Am reading '61 Hours' by Lee Child. Think he's my favorite author right now.  Am watching 'Band of Brothers' on my Amazon Prime and it's really good.  Tried watching soccer but it was just not my cup of tea. Prefer watching golf.

And that's about it for now.