Category Archives: Whimsies

I Will Raise You Up

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Following my couple of days of being under the weather with a nasty cold, I was prepared to write an absolutely hilarious post about the difficulties faced when you’re sniffly and feverish. You know, numerous dirty tissues piling up on the table near your bed, losing your voice, never knowing which nasal cavity will plug up next. I was prepared to include lots of complaining and reasons for you all to feel very sorry for me.

And then I learned yesterday that my good friend, who has been diagnosed with cancer and has spent the past few months feeling nauseous, losing her hair, and battling never-ending fatigue, has been told that her tumor is inoperable.

Suddenly my  cold complaints weren’t funny any more. A few sniffles, a temperature only slightly above normal, a bit of hacking. Not worth a single complaint.

Not when my friend is looking at her own  illness with such amazing courage and grace. From the moment she learned her diagnosis, she has not complained. At least not to me. In fact, she recently told me, “You know what I’ve learned about myself? I’m pretty darn strong.”

My sister Jen says while no one understands why bad things happen to people, she is convinced that God never turns his back. When things get difficult, he lifts us up, she says. That’s how she describes it. He lifts us up.

She should know better than most. About 15 years ago, Jen’s daughter Maggie – 25 years old or so at the time — was hit by a drunk driver as she walked across the street. She was airlifted to a trauma hospital where her outlook was ominous. “That’s something no parent should have to deal with,” she told me. “No parent faced with something that terrifying can handle it alone.”

jensen17Jen told me that as soon as she got the phone call that no mother ever wants to get, she did something that no one would have predicted. Rather than falling  to pieces and becoming paralyzed with fear – something anyone who knows her would have predicted and understood completely – she instead became uncharacteristically calm, and began immediately making well-thought-out decisions and providing support to her family, and most importantly, to Maggie.

“God was with me during that horrible time,” she says. “He lifted me up.” Maggie recovered and now is married and is the mother of Austin and Lilly, featured regularly on Nana’s Whimsies.

And God is lifting up my friend. And her husband. And all of us who love her. She may not always think so, but God will not turn his back on her.

Coach Kubiak’s Not the Only One Who’s Sick

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images1Nana’s Whimsies is cancelled today, and possibly tomorrow, due to Nana being sick with a cold or flu. Nothing life-threatening, I assure you, though it’s been a long time since a cold has knocked me on my bee-hind like this one has.

I suspect it’s just a cold, but I have been negligent about getting my annual flu shot, so there’s a possibility that negligence is catching up with me. You may or may not know that the Denver Broncos Coach Gary Kubiak was taken to the hospital following Sunday’s game with flu symptoms. I feel his pain.

I will be back, raring to go, very soon. I hope tomorrow.

Airborn on the Cheap

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Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Extremely Cheap Airlines Flight 1234, nonstop to Denver. We apologize that your flight was delayed by three hours, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Not to worry. Your crew killed the time in the Goose Tavern just across from your gate, so we are all raring to go. Well, maybe a bit tired, but nothing a little cocaine won’t take care of. The captain’s in the bathroom even as we speak.

Anyhoo, I have some really good news for you folks this afternoon. We have managed to fit a few more rows of seats into your airplane by providing absolutely NO leg room between rows. Well, to be fair, that’s probably better news for us than to you. Be that as it may, here we go people: Criss Cross, applesauce. You can do it! Cross those legs!

The above announcement wasn’t actually made on our flight home from Chicago Saturday afternoon, but only because the powers-that-be of the discount airlines haven’t yet thought of the so-called Criss Cross Applesauce Solution. By the way, if you are a baby boomer without grandkids, I will inform you that Criss Cross Applesauce is what we used to call sitting Indian style. Changing what that style of sitting is called is political correctness based on the presumption that Indians probably never sat that way.

As it is, the amount of legroom between seats on both Frontier Airlines (which we flew TO Chicago) and Spirit Airlines (which we flew HOME to Denver) is laughable. My legs are about as short as they can possibly be without having my own reality television show and I was unable to cross them. And trying to pick up something you drop on the floor of the plane? That’s not going to happen. Poor Bill, and poor anyone else with normal-sized legs.

Still, Bill and I flew from Denver to Chicago and home again for just over $200 for both of us. At the end of the day, provided I’m not flying more than a couple of hours, I’ll put up with gnawing on my knees for a cheap fare. It is worth it in the end.

imgresEach time I fly, something happens that makes me think back to the golden days of travel. The days when you wore a dress instead of ripped sweat pants and a dirty t-shirt. Days when travelers were given a little meal served on a tiny plate featuring a chicken breast, soggy broccoli, and a roll that had been baked when dinosaurs walked the earth. Remember the little lukewarm salad? How could the salad be lukewarm, yet the meal be cold? But I digress. This time, the thing that made me stop and go “can this be true?” happened on our Frontier flight to Chicago. It was mid-morning and I did something I occasionally do. I purchased Bill and I each a Bloody Mary on the plane. I won’t linger on the part in which I had to fumble for my wallet in the minute space between my legs that straddled my carry-on bag. Persistence won out, and I finally handed the flight attendant my credit card, thinking all the while, “Well, at least I don’t have to leave a tip.” Oops. Too soon. Because yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, there was a line to leave a tip for the flight attendant. Apparently the days of flight attendants’ disdain at being called waiters- and waitresses-in- the- sky are over. I only left 15 percent given the fact that all the flight attendant had to do was hand me a little bottle of vodka and a can of Bloody Mary Mix. He didn’t even hand me a dish of Chex Mix.

One day before I die, I want to travel first class. I’ve never had that luxury, and it’s definitely on my bucket list. But I don’t want to waste my one-and-only first class ticket on flying someplace close. No, I will wait until I am flying to Hawaii or Miami, or maybe even Europe. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law recently flew to and from Australia first class. They had beds, my friends, beds in which they could stretch out and actually sleep. The last time Bill and I flew to France, I was sitting next to a Frenchman who needed a bath, and Bill was sitting next to an American tourist who spent the entire flight barfing into her little bag.

First class, and that’s a promise.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Saturday Smile: I Love a Piano

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Bill and I are visiting his mother at her retirement home in Orland Park, a suburb south of Chicago. It is pretty quiet at Smith Crossing, and particularly quiet in the assisted living unit where she lives. So the other day we decided to go out for a walk to just get out of the apartment. We got Wilma in her wheel chair and began wheeling around the very large facility. We were walking down a hallway in the independent living section where Wilma formerly resided, and Wilma pointed out that her friend lived in a particular unit. As though on cue, the door opened, and Wilma’s friend Dottie came out. She was surprised and delighted to see her old buddy, and invited us all in.

To my great surprise, just inside her doorway was a gorgeous black grand piano. It was shiny and spectacularly beautiful. “Will you play for us?” Wilma asked her friend.

Dottie proceeded to perform for us the most wonderful little concert. Moon River. Ebb Tide. Autumn Leaves. On and on.  She played beautifully.

“Did you perform professionally?” I asked her, and was quite surprised to hear her laugh. “Oh, my no Honey,” she said. “I can’t read a single note.”

She showed me her list of music. The list probably included 200 songs. Each song had a letter before the name. A. B. C. D. E. F. G. The first note of the song. From then on, she played entirely by ear. And it was beautiful. And she is 94.

 

image

By the way, the folks at Smith Crossing asked her to play piano at the Friday afternoon cocktail party. You can’t make this stuff up. She didn’t have a tip jar.

Have a great weekend.

Meals and Memories Redux

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This blog originally ran on November 12, 2013. I like this particular post because it includes fond memories of my mother, who I miss every day.

A few weeks ago, when Bill and I were still in Arizona, my brother David and I were sitting outside late in the afternoon. Talk turned towards our childhood, as it often does whenever any combination of the siblings gathers.

I think we all agree that we had a wonderful childhood. None of us ever doubted that our parents loved us. Times were different, however. There wasn’t a lot of “I love you’s” tossed around though we knew they did. A term you hear thrown around these days is “helicopter parent.” You know, the parent who hovers around their child making sure no harm ever comes to little Junior or Juniorette. I think it’s safe to say that neither my mother nor my father would ever have been accused of being a helicopter parent.

Here’s an example: My mother was a very sound sleeper. Because of this, it really took a lot of guts for any of us to wake her up in the middle of the night. We knew it would involve a lot of shaking of her shoulders. Eventually, she would leap up in bed with a loud, “What is it?” Gulp. It had better be good because by this time Dad was awake.

For me, it was either “I’m going to throw up,” or “I can’t sleep.” If I was going to throw up, she was liable to ask me why I was telling her this in her bedroom instead of leaning over the toilet in the bathroom. And the “I can’t sleep”, well, that just got on her very last nerve.

Her answer to that particular complaint, without exception, was (say it with me Siblings), “Nobody ever died from a lack of sleep. Go back to bed.” I have no recollection of her ever getting out of her bed to tuck me back into my bed.

By the way, as an adult, I can certainly see, clear as day, just how silly it is to awaken someone to tell them that you can’t sleep. But for some reason it made perfect sense to me as a 7-year-old.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a good idea for anyone to bring harm or even angst to any of her children. Do so, and out came the Mother Lion. I clearly remember when a neighbor boy who was a year or so older than me and a bully before people became concerned about bullies chased me down, held me to the ground, and kissed me on the lips. I was probably 7 or 8 years old. I broke free and ran to my mother in tears. I vividly remember that she went to her closet, got the broom, and chased him all the way back to his house. She may not have caught him, but I’m sure he felt the bristles on the back of his neck.

But back to David and my conversation that day. We were talking about Mom’s good cooking. He told me his favorite meal and I told him mine. It got me to thinking about her cooking, so this week I asked all my siblings what meal they would have Mom make if she could come back to cook one dinner for them.

My sister Beckie’s response: Mom’s fried chicken. My mom, by the way, always claimed that she couldn’t cook a lick when she got married. All of her cooking skills were learned from her mother-in-law. I’m sure that’s true as my mom was the youngest of 13 kids, and her mom died before my mom was married, and sick for much longer than that. Not in a position to teach my mom to cook. So Mom’s fried chicken is actually my grandmother’s fried chicken, and now my fried chicken. Don’t confuse this chicken with southern-style because it isn’t crunchy. Instead, it is tender and flavorful.

My Family’s Fried Chicken

Ingredients
1 frying chicken, cut into 10 pieces (my mother always cut each breast into two pieces}
1-2 c. flour, well-seasoned with salt and pepper
Butter and vegetable oil, half and half, deep enough to fill a pan to a depth of about a quarter of an inch

Process
Preheat the butter and oil in the fry pan until it’s hot enough to sizzle if you flick a drop of water into the pan. Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour, shaking off the excess. Lay the pieces skin-side-down into the hot oil. Cook until it’s nicely brown, 5-6 minutes. Turn over and do the same on the other side. It doesn’t have to be cooked all the way through. Only fry a few pieces at a time or your shortening will cool down too much and your chicken pieces won’t brown nicely.

As you remove the chicken pieces from the pan, place them into a roasting pan. (Conversely, you can place them temporarily on a plate and return all of the pieces to the pan to finish. Make sure your pan is oven-proof and has a lid if you choose this option.) Cover the roasting pan with aluminum foil and place into a preheated 350 degree oven for an hour or so until the chicken is cooked through and falls off the bone.

Nana’s Notes: Personally, I believe a cast iron skillet is imperative to make good fried chicken. Having said this, I must say I don’t believe my mother used a cast iron skillet. Still, you would have to pry my lovely well-seasoned iron skillet out of my hand to make me fry chicken in a regular skillet. I used to fry the chicken, place the pieces on a plate until finished, pour out most of the grease, return the chicken to that pan, cover and finish cooking it in the oven. Now, however, I fry the chicken and put the pieces into a toss-away aluminum roasting pan, cover it with tin foil and finish it in the oven. There is no getting around it. Frying chicken is messy business. Also, I add a bit of cayenne pepper to my seasoned flour. Don’t tell my mother.

Another Day in the Life

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This post ran on September 25, 2014. I enjoyed writing about this particular day because it reminds me of what my life is like with any of my nine grandkids. 

searchJen came down to Denver last Saturday so that we could belatedly celebrate her birthday. Saturday was an unusually busy day for me. At the end of the day, she told me, “You need to write a blog about a day in the life of Nana’s Whimsies.

I do?

For the most part, my life is the predictable life of a retired woman with a husband and children and grandchildren. If my life was hooked to a heart rate monitor, there would be a series of blips – all the same size.

It’s true, however, that Saturday would have caused the nurses and doctors to come running with the paddles.

Saturday was bound to be a busy day. Kaiya and Mylee were spending the day with me and Jen was coming mid-morning to spend the day and night so we could celebrate her birthday. I planned to prepare a yummy dinner and bake a special birthday cake. You know how you have these dreams of having a life like you see on Barefoot Contessa? Minus the big Hamptons house and the multitude of gay friends to bring spectacular bouquets of flowers and expensive wines.

Sometime in the middle of Friday night, I had a sit-up-suddenly-in-bed moment when I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to make the fancy, delicious, but complicated Braised Beef Shortribs in a Marsala Cream Sauce. Ina Garten would have been able to because she has staff. I had no staff coming that day, only a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old who I knew would want to help me cook – a practice I love, but I simply couldn’t imagine them working on a Marsala cream sauce.

So in the middle of the night, I came up with Plan B, a simple meal that could be prepared in its entirety after the girls went home.

To this end, I was at Whole Foods bright and early to purchase mussels and rib-eye steaks. A simple but delicious substitute for my elaborate Plan A.

It was at Whole Foods that my phone rang. Eleven-year-old Addie was looking for a way to get out of going to her brother’s flag football game. “Can I come over and hang out with you, Nana?”

Sure. Why not? The more, the merrier.

But my day was about to get a bit more complicated. When I went to pick up the two little girls, they opened the door, and the first words out of Kaiya’s mouth, quite literally, were, “Mom says you will help us make ice cream today. I want to make strawberry and Mylee wants to make chocolate.”

Now, I could, of course, say ice cream was a no-go due to scheduling conflicts, but honestly? After all, I’m the nana.

So we went to the grocery store to get strawberries, a chocolate bar, whole milk, and cream. They insisted on pushing the cart, and I, sadly, allowed it to happen. Sorry to the person with the little tiny dink in their side door. It was really, really little. Barely noticeable.

Addie was there when we got home and Jen arrived shortly after. Lunch was looming, and I hadn’t a thing to eat. Again, see above. No staff.

What do you want for lunch, I asked the girls. The predictable answer: Panda Express. I don’t know why I ask because they will always choose “Panda.”

So Mylee and I picked up five orders of Orange Chicken and we five girls sat at my kitchen table and ate our food as Addie told us the ins and outs of being a new middle schooler.

“You should all come to the carnival we’re having at school this afternoon,” Addie said. “I’m the face painter and I could paint Kaiya and Mylee’s faces.”

Kaiya and Mylee looked at me, and we were sooooo going to the Carnival. Jen – bless her heart — just went with the flow.

But before we went to any carnival, we were going to make the ice cream. I wasn’t going to have dinked that person’s car for nothing.

Enjoying ice cream clean-up.

Enjoying ice cream clean-up.

By time we got to the carnival, it was almost 3:30. The face painting line was long. And slow. And disorganized because, you see, it wasn’t run by the Disney Corporation. It was run by 11-year-old girls who didn’t know how to do crowd control. But Kaiya could not be dissuaded from getting her face painted. Addie was the painter, you see.

Finally, after standing in line for 45 minutes or more, Addie spotted us and came out and pulled us ahead of everyone else in line. In front of mothers who had been waiting with their darlings for longer than we. I made a half-hearted attempt to defer to others, but by this time our son was sending me texts saying “have you kidnapped our daughters and taken them to another country?”

In the meantime, Jen was walking around with Mylee, who had no interest whatsoever in getting her face painted. She chose the Cake Walk, but unfortunately never quite grasped the concept and emerged cakeless, but happily unpainted. Kaiya chose the Indian princess design….

Addie paintingkaiya indian princess

We finally got home around 5 (after finally handing the girls off to their parents), and I had yet to make Jen’s birthday cake. She had chosen – randomly, I thought – a peach upside down cake. It involved making a caramel sauce, slicing fresh peaches, and grinding up pecans, but I did it quite happily because I love my sister and the cake looked delicious.

peach upside down cake

I had time for a glass of wine on our patio before beginning preparations for my easily-prepared dinner. Mussels, I have learned, are simple, simple, simple to make – especially once they are cleaned. So dinner took less than a half-hour to prepare. Plus, we are grown-ups, and we could eat sometime past 6 o’clock. We in fact didn’t sit down to eat until 7:30 or so. Grown-ups, remember?

We enjoyed our dinner, and the dessert was divine. Being grown-ups (see above), I put a little Grand Marnier into the whipped cream.

When I finally crawled into bed somewhere around 10, I told my husband it was the most tired I’ve ever been. Hyperbole, but good for dramatic effect.

This is the longest post I’ve ever written, and I probably lost you all somewhere between Panda Express and the Cake Walk. Still, it gives you a sense of what my life can be like on the days when I’m not sitting on my behind reading or watching Masterpiece Mysteries. I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, except for the dink in the door.

Random Acts of Senseless Kindness Redux

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This blog post ran on January 11, 2016, shortly after the original surgery took place. As of this date, Mary is still doing well, although a high hormone level that existed before the trasplant, and that the doctors hoped the transplant would correct, still exists, so they’re looking further into that. All prayers have been — and will continue to be — greatly appreciated!

It appears I’m somewhat obsessed with the notion of gift-giving these days. Take my recent blog post about Epiphany when it seemed all I could think about was that gold, frankincense and myrrh were odd gifts. Then there was the blog post in which I talked about the horrors of shopping at the mall right before Christmas and the glories of internet shopping. I offered my readers pictures of my grandkids opening their gifts. About the only thing I haven’t done is show you a copy of my credit card bill.

Oh, or donate a kidney.

Because, friends, while I have been focusing on material gifts, I recently met someone who truly knows the meaning of giving a gift of love.

Her name is Jo Lynn, and she’s mostly like you and me. She is a busy wife and mother with a full-time job. She has a life filled with housework and bosses and grocery shopping and school events. In addition to these normal activities, she also is an amateur athlete who does CrossFit and runs ultramarathons. Okay, maybe that’s not like you and me. But you get my point.

But one day Jo Lynn was looking at Facebook and came across a surprising post from one of her Facebook (and real-life) friends. Could you save my life? I need a kidney, the post said, or my kidneys will soon fail completely.

Jo Lynn was aware that her friend Mary was in kidney failure and had been for some time. Mary’s father and grandmother had died of kidney failure. Mary herself was at a point where she spent every single solitary night hooked to a dialysis machine that was keeping her alive. Imagine that. She hadn’t had a dream for three years because the dialysis machine prevented her from any REM sleep.

Mary was reluctant to take the step of reaching out to her Facebook community, but her husband insisted on it. Family members were unable to donate because their blood types were wrong. Mary’s blood type was O, and the list for kidney donors with that particular blood type was in the neighborhood of six years long. Mary was unsure if she had that much time. Facebook was one way of reaching a large number of people, her husband told her.

What grabbed Jo Lynn’s attention was that Mary had type O blood. That meant that Mary could only receive a kidney from someone with type O blood. Guess who has type O blood? Yep. Jo Lynn.

Right then and there, Jo Lynn began to form a plan. After talking to her husband (who not only didn’t think she was insane, but actually was sad that his own blood type prevented him consideration), she began taking the steps necessary to donate one of her kidneys to her friend.

And let me tell you, there were very, very, very many steps. You can only imagine. Test after test after test after test. Physical tests. Counseling with a social worker. Blood draws. CT scans. Jo Lynn didn’t even tell her friend that she was undergoing these tests for some time because she didn’t want to get her hopes up only to have them shot down because of some medical anomaly that would prevent her from being able to donate her kidney.

The tests went on for literally months. Jo Lynn saw the Facebook posting in March of 2015. The surgery took place on December 23, (coincidentally 61 years to the day of the first successful kidney transplant in Boston), at a hospital in Scottsdale, AZ. It just happened to be the hospital in which Jo Lynn was born.

Did you ever hesitate, I asked her. Was there ever a time when you thought maybe you had bitten off more than you could (or wished to) chew? Did you have second thoughts?

Not once, Jo Lynn told me. None of the family members could donate. She had the right blood type. “How could I sit back and do nothing?” she said.

How, indeed.

Jo Lynn and Kris

Kris and Jo Lynn. The person on the left DIDN’T donate a kidney.

Because I simply can’t leave well enough alone, I asked her if she was spiritual. She admitted to not being a church-goer. But she would also not reject the notion that God played – and continues to play – a part in this whole affair. After all, about the time that Mary learned she had bum kidneys, Jo Lynn – far, far away in Colorado – decided to begin eating a healthy diet and exercising. Almost like she was preparing her body for what was to come.

The next four to six months are critical in Mary’s life. If her body is going to reject Jo Lynn’s kidney, the next few months will tell. She will be on anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life. That is a small price to pay for getting her life back. She has even begun to have dreams again. Probably both awake and asleep.

As for Jo Lynn, her life will have to change very little, surprisingly enough. We can live perfectly well with one healthy kidney. The doctor’s only order? No contact sports.

Rats. So Jo Lynn will have to give up her dreams of being the first woman NFL player or a professional boxer.

And I’m going to have to reassess my ideas of giving gifts. I likely will never have the opportunity of donating a kidney, and am not sure I would even have the chops to do it if the opportunity presented itself. But Jo Lynn’s experience makes me very aware of what it means to love one another.

Nana’s Notes: The blog title comes from a song with the same title written by Gary Baker, Frank Myers, and Jerry Allan Williams; performed by South Sixty Five. Jo Lynn is a friend of my sister Jen, who I thank for arranging this meeting. It was a wonderful experience.

Looking Back

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I began my blogging journey on August 14, 2013. I placed the word journey in italics to emphasize the fact that prior to blogging, I never used the word journey in any way that didn’t include actual travel. In fact, when I hear people say (or read that someone’s written) that they are on a (fill-in-the-blank) journey, I throw up a little bit in my mouth. And yet, here I am, referring to my blogging journey. Something apparently takes over one’s mind when one is responsible for a blog. I’m sorry.

Anyway, I posted my first Nana’s Whimsies blog on August 14, 2013 – over three years ago. Imagine that. For three years I have come up with something to say each day, except for Sundays. It has evolved over the years, as things do. My regular Saturday Smile, for example, didn’t show up until February 1, 2014. Since then, each Saturday I tell my readers about something that amused me or made me happy that past week.

As I look back, I realize that early on, my blogs often included recipes. That’s because initially I considered doing a cooking blog. I ditched that idea when I realized how many cajillion cooking blogs there already are, and when I remembered that I’m not really all that good a cook.

My Friday book reviews began almost immediately. That means I have reviewed somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 books. From Nana’s Whimsies’ very beginning, my brother (one of my most faithful readers) has nagged me about my book reviews. “I already don’t get to read your blog on Sundays, and now I don’t get to read it on Fridays either,” says he. He has consistently urged me to substitute pizza reviews on Friday for my book reviews. I don’t intend to do that, however. It is true that my lowest readership is consistently on Fridays, but I get the most likes from strangers on that day as well. Besides, despite the low numbers, I have faithful book review readers. I know this to be true because a number of people have told me they read a book based on my review. Besides, my blog is designed to be, well, whimsical, and one of my whimsies is reading.

My sister Jen, who originally encouraged me to write a blog and is my informal (and unpaid) blog manager, consistently warns me that she’s afraid I am going to eventually run out of ideas. I wonder if that is true. There are only so many stories I can tell about my grandmother. Most of my readers don’t find my grandkids as adorable as do I. How many anti-pumpkin-spice posts can I get away with? But the reality is that if you pay attention (and that’s the key), life is pretty darn interesting. A blogger whom I follow, Melanie Shankle — who writes a very funny blog called The Big Mama Blog – gave this advice to those of us who want to write a blog: “My best advice is to write more, read more, listen more. Observe the world around you and figure out what it is you want to say and what you really care about. For me, that’s trying to find the funny or the absurd or the offbeat, but it’s different for every single one of us.”

And so that’s what I try to do.

Originally I had hoped that through advertising, I would be able to make a little bit of money by writing this blog. That has not proven to be true. My readership simply isn’t high enough to warrant any advertising. At first I was disappointed by this reality. But my readership has consistently increased, bit by bit, and I seem to be reaching the people I want to reach. I have connected up with friends and cousins I haven’t seen or heard from for years. I have made new friends who comment consistently. And, quite frankly, I am so annoyed when I have to deal with ads on other blogs that I am kind of happy my readers don’t have to deal with it.

As of this day, I have shared 950 blog posts with you all. In the years since I began, I have gotten over 46,000 views. I currently have 104 people who have signed up to get my blog each day – mostly other bloggers with topics ranging from movie and book reviews to recipes. My viewers come from all over the world, literally. I have consistent hits from Brazil, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom. I, of course, have no way of knowing if those hits are from the same individuals each day, but in my world, they are. I envision, for example, a reader sitting in her Cotswold cottage in central England eagerly awaiting the bink! that tells her I have posted my daily blog! When a friend was living for a time in Qatar, it pleased me that I got consistent hits from that Middle East country. Likewise, as of late, I have noticed consistent hits from Australia which I attribute to my brother-in-law who has been visiting there for the past few weeks.

I tend to get somewhere between 60 and 100 hits a day – sometimes more. The most hits I ever got in one day was on January 11, 2016, when I posted a blog about a woman who donated her kidney to an acquaintance. That particular blog post received 371 hits. I’m thinking of asking her to donate another kidney so that I can again experience the exhilaration of hundreds of hits.

For the next few days, I am going to repost some of my favorite blogs, beginning with the aforementioned post about the generous organ donator. On Friday, I’m going to post my regular book review just to annoy my brother.

For those of you who are faithful readers, I am tickled to share my life with you.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Saturday Smile: At the Car Wash

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You might not ever get rich
But let me tell ya it’s better than diggin’ a ditch
There ain’t no tellin’ who you might meet
A movie star or maybe even an Indian chief

(Workin’)
At the car wash
Workin’ at the car wash, yeah
Come on and sing it with me
(Car wash)
Sing it with the feelin’ y’all
(Car wash, yeah) – NORMAN JESSE WHITFIELD

My nephew-in-law posted a picture of his two kids the other day. His caption said, “Little nervous in the car wash.”

That was clearly an understatement, as the too-adorable-for-words photo shows 6-year-old Austin gripping the hand of his sister, 2-year-old Lilly. The ensuing Facebook comments mostly congratulate Austin for being such a sweet big brother, but I don’t know. My take on the photo is that he is pretty darn nervous himself and mighty glad to have a hand to hold.

No matter what, the photo made me laugh then, and I laugh every time I see it.

austin-lilly-at-car-wash

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

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Orange Crush
I’ve seen the commercials, but frankly haven’t paid a bit of attention to them. I’m talking about the Bud Light commercials in which they proudly say they are putting your beer into cans dedicated to your favorite football team. So the other day, I was busily looking at the menu at our favorite Greek restaurant (why, I don’t know, since I always get the same thing) and wasn’t paying attention when Bill ordered his beverage of choice – a Bud Light. So when the server brought over his drink, I was visibly startled to see what I thought was a can of Fanta Orange soda. I think I actually sucked in my breath. It’s not that Bill doesn’t drink soda, but when he does, it’s always a Diet Coke. On rare occasions when he’s feeling his oats, he might have a Diet A&W Root Beer. But never, never ever, a Fanta Orange. So it was with great relief that I realized that he wasn’t in fact drinking an orange beverage, but the beverage can was simply honoring the Denver Broncos. Whew….

bill-orange-beer-can

Twinkly Eyes
The other day my daughter-in-law Lauren posted school photos of Joseph. She took a picture of his last three photos, including the most recent. Seeing his happy face made my face happy. I showed Bill, and he immediately said, “Oh my heavens, he is getting so big.” This, from the man who saw Joseph and his family a mere few weeks ago. Still, the most recent photo (farthest to the right) does make him look alarmingly grown up. He looks devastatingly handsome in this year’s photo, but I have to admit that I am partial to the middle photo. I love the twinkle in his eye. And the twinkle? That’s Joseph, my friends…..

joseph-school-photo-through-the-years

Can You See Me Now?
I may have mentioned that Bill has spent nearly the entire summer working on his pretty red sports car. While I – shockingly – complain a bit about his devotion to the car, I am happy to see it coming to life as it has been a paper weight in our garage for the past 10 years or so. Much of the work has involved Bill lying underneath the car doing heaven only knows what. Recently, I picked 2-year-old Cole up to bring him home to spend the day. It was a rare morning when Bill was inside the house doing some legal work. We got out of the car, and I said to him, “Cole, let’s find Papa.” He smiled, and crouched down and looked under the car!

Television Time
It’s my favorite time of the year (and I don’t mean Pumpkin Spice time!). The new season of television programs has begun. Bill and I have selected a few new ones that we are going to give the ol’ college try, and a couple of them are winners, at least in my eyes. I absolutely LOVE This is Us. It is the story of three grown siblings (triplets) – a man who is an actor, his sister who is obsessed about her weight (she is very obese), and their brother, an African American man who was born the same day as the other two, but left at a fire station, and who their parents adopted. I have only seen two programs thus far, but the twists and turns keep right on coming. Bill and I also like Designated Survivor with Keifer Sutherland, the story of the head of HUD who becomes president after a terrorist attack kills the president, all of Congress, and the other cabinet members, because he was the cabinet member selected as the designated survivor.  I also love The Good Place, which (though I’ve only seen one thus far) made me laugh out loud. And our guilty secret is Lethal Weapon. We’ll see. They may all disappoint us eventually.