Wanna See My New Phone?

I got a new phone!!!!

Yes, that is a good reason for a blog post.

I know I've been sadly remiss in my posts lately.  The truth is, I start lots of posts, but then I get busy or distracted or just plain bored with what I'm saying and I walk away.  Maybe some day when I go back to them, those posts will be more interesting and then you can read them.

But right now, the most interesting thing I have to say is that I got a new phone.

Just Another "A Year Has Passed" Post

I'm glad 2010 is over. I'm sure lots of people will be writing posts like this one. Starting a new year makes us all feel retrospective. But I'm just really glad 2010 is over. I was pretty happy to see the backside of 2009, too. I thought 2010 had to be a better year. In some ways, it was and, yet, it wasn't either.

Actually, as I think back over this entire decade, from 2001 to 2010, things haven't been good overall. It seems like one or the other of us was out of work or ill. We had our own business going into 2001 which did very well initially and yet somehow managed to tank a couple of years later, costing us thousands of dollars that we had to struggle to pay back. We had just finished paying that off in 2007, when I became ill and ended up losing my job. Then I had lots of health issues so that  I didn't work for most of 2008.  I went back to work in 2009, but then my husband was laid off and he still isn't back to work full-time.


Last year was also a year of loss.  Two of my cousins, Judy and Marianne, both passed away in 2010, along with my baby girl, Bambi. So the year will always invoke thoughts of sadness.


So, yes, the past decade wasn't my friend but I have high hopes for the new decade to come. And that's the point. Even after all we went through in the past year, the year before that, the year before that, and beyond, even so, I still have hope. Everything worked out and even at the worst of times, we made it through.

We're still here, still together and we have everything we need; food to eat, a beautiful home, a wonderful family, great friends. I'm sure there are more challenges to come in 2011. But I'm ready.

Things I Learned by Joining NaNoWriMo

This year, for the first time, I decided to join NaNoWriMo. I had no real idea what to expect, but since I love to write and I always have lots to say, it didn't seem that scary. I wasn't really sure what my novel would be about, but I decided not to take the term too literally. Maybe it wouldn't really be a novel, maybe it would just be me rambling. But at least I would be writing.

I started out well, as I'd been told would happen. People do well for the first few days and then they fall off.  Maybe they can't keep up the pace or just run out of things to say.  I wasn't sure if I could keep up the pace, but I didn't think of myself as a quitter, per se. I figured I could at least hold out a month. Plus, I knew I had lots and lots to say.

I did have my doubts about November, though, cause so many things happen in November. It's not a good month to avoid distractions. Honestly, I'm not sure there is a good month, but November is really bad, since Thanksgiving is my big holiday and it takes me a whole week to prepare, what with cleaning and shopping and cooking.  And this year I had just started my job in the middle of October so I knew I wouldn't be able to take days off. I'd need to work every day and do all that other stuff at night. 

Yep, I was a little worried. I should have been more worried.

I did pretty well for the first week, keeping to my daily goal most of the time. I even did well into the second week.  I made up for time lost on the weekend when I didn't have time to write.  But then it all started to get away from me. One day after the next day I just didn't have the time or the energy or the inspiration to write anything. At all. I lost track of the story I was writing and I would just end up going in a completely different direction.  Overall, I think I ended up with about five completely unrelated stories and around 12,000 words.

So although I didn't make the 50,000 word goal and I didn't actually win, I don't feel like a loser either.  For one thing, NaNo taught me a few things:

1. No matter how any words I think I have inside me, there aren't enough to write 1667 every day in a related fashion. Maybe not even every other day.
2. All my time on Twitter may have caused me to think in short spurts.  I would have preferred long lovely run on sentences.
3. I need a better plan. Maybe if I had gone into it with an actual idea for a novel and not just all these jumbled up thoughts in my head I would have accomplished more.
4. Organization is a good thing. I am a fairly organized person, but I may have allowed myself a little bit too much latitude in terms of my writing schedule. 
5. I've always thought of myself as very goal oriented and yet I didn't come close to making the goal. I'm OK with that.
6. I'm not very competitive, but I think I already knew that. Which is probably why I'm OK with not making the goal.
7. You need a lot of energy to write a novel.  I may be more of a short story person.
8. Although I did go into NaNo without an actual plan, I did manage to keep coming up with new ideas to move things along. Of course, they don't all fit together yet, but some day they might.
9. I don't perform well without sleep, even if I have had lots of coffee.
10. I will participate in NaNo again, cause overall the experience was fun and enlightening.

NaNo is over for this year, and although I didn't make the goal, I did achieve something.  I didn't write as much as I planned to and I didn't write every day, but I did write. I have thousands of words now that I didn't have in October. So far they don't make up anything great, but I believe there may be something in there that could turn into something else. And it might even be worth reading.

My Cousin and My Friend

There were 19 of us.  Johnny, Mary Lou, Judy, Jimmy, Chuck, Angie, Linda, Mikki, Michael, Salvatore, Karen, Joey, Michael, Mark, Marci, Marianne, Maryann, Debbie and Toni. There have been 19 cousins since 1964, but as we end 2010, there are only 17 of us left.  Earlier this year we lost my cousin Judy, and just this week, we lost my cousin Marianne.  Age-wise, Marianne was my closest cousin, even closer in age than my sisters. We were born seven years and two days apart.

We were close in other ways, as well.  For several years, starting in the late 80's through the mid-90's Marianne was the director of an ensemble that I sang in. Not just me, but my mother, my sister, my husband, her sister, and several of our very closest friends. I'm not sure, maybe we were all close because of Ensemble. It was just one of those experiences that stays with you.

Marianne was amazing. She taught me so many things. She could do anything. She was like MacGyver when it came to sewing. You could ask her to make your wedding dress and she could create a perfect fairy princess gown out of paperclips and lace. In an hour. She taught me to sew, not like her, but still passably. She showed me how to cut out patterns and put all the pieces together.  She took me to buy what I needed for my own sewing box. It's pink with a flowery pattern. She gave me a set of straight pins and bought a red heart magnetic pin cushion and little pink snips for me.

When I told her I was getting married, she jumped right in and created all the decorations for the church, all the flowers, the corsages, the boutonnieres, even two topiary trees for the altar. I still have one of them at the turn of my staircase and it still looks beautiful.

Marianne taught me about music, too. When she needed a song transposed from one key to another for the Ensemble, she'd give it to me.  I know nothing about music.  I can carry a tune, but that's about it. I can't read music and I don't know one key from another.  But Marianne forced me to learn.  She taught me algebra, something I never managed to understand while in school, just by showing me how to transpose the keys in a song.  And she taught me to remember the notes in the five main lines of the treble clef by using the acronym Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. It was years later before I found out that the real acronym is not about food.

We shared so many special times and we laughed. A lot.

Marianne had become ill with cancer about 5 years ago. She was a fighter and every time the cancer struck her, she hit back. It traveled around her body, attacking here and then there, but she never gave in. She was hopeful through all the treatment, through chemo and radiation, through all the pain. When one cancer center told her it was over, she found another that would keep on treating her.

Over the summer they told her that the cancer was in her bones and there was a tumor in her brain. Then they started the radiation.  We drove to Philadelphia to see her and I thought for sure that she would not be coming home. But she did.  A few weeks later, several of the Ensemble members met at her house to talk and sing and laugh, and it was amazing.  From the woman I had seen, laying in the hospital bed, doped up and barely able to speak, this was Marianne as we knew her, laughing, talking, directing.

She did have more radiation and we went to see her again, just about two weeks before she died. We all laughed a lot. It was a wonderful time. She was telling us all about a production she planned on directing in the summer. She was bed bound, but still cheerful, still hopeful, still busy. Marianne wasn't afraid to die, but she didn't think about it because she still had more she planned to do.

At her funeral today, so many people spoke and had wonderful things to say, stories to tell, songs to sing, laughter to share. One thing that her husband said really stuck with me. It epitomized what everyone else had been saying.  Marianne was a person who lived her life fully engaged. 

I love you, Marianne, and I'm going to miss you.

Rabies Anyone?

So, you remember that we were visited by a  bat, right?  I'm not sure I even finished that story. We did eventually catch it.  Early on a Wednesday morning, coincidentally, the very day we needed to get up early and go back to ECMC for our last rabies shots, my hubby woke up to the bat circling his head. Clearly, the bat liked him.

My husband, now on a mission to get this bat, started clearing every last bit of everything out of the room. Curtains, furniture, bedding, etc. He finally cornered the poor, tiny little thing hanging on the inside of the bed skirt. His brother had brought him a fire extinguisher thingy that sprays cold air. The bat was knocked off the skirt and ended up on the floor where my husband and I caught it in a box.

The County came and took him and, sadly, he was not rabid. So it was all for nothing, which makes me really unhappy.

But now, we have a new, possibly-rabid friend who keeps coming to visit.  Here's a little sample of what has been happening in our yard:

Yes, we are now the most favorite visiting place for a skunk who is uprooting our front yard to find all the juciest grubs.  My husband takes his lawn very seriously and has spent much time and money on it this summer, since this is an area where we have had trouble growing grass.  There was a pine tree in that spot - planted by my father in the 70's, I might add - that my husband insisted on cutting down because of the grass. Personally, I don't care about grass.

I said that the skunk is doing us a favor by getting rid of all the grubs now and anyway pretty soon it will be winter, so there will be no grubs, no grass and no skunk. He was not amused.  

Now, he's talking about getting a pellet gun and shooting the skunk. I've pointed out that we don't know if he's a good shot, since he has never, in my recollection, ever shot a gun. And even if I wasn't against killing woodland creatures, which I am, in my opinion, skunks are not animals that one should unnecessarily annoy, as they can make things very unpleasant. Really. I'd rather he trapped it or something, but I'm not sure tangling with a skunk in any way is a good idea. Unlike bats, skunks can and will defend themselves in a way that won't be fun. 

 At this point, I'm thinking we should just let the animals take over.

Glee Is Making Me Gloomy

I'm a little sad right now. I think Glee may have failed the Buffy test. We're three eps into the season and so far I've had to force myself to watch each ep more than once.

The first ep, which I was so excited about, fell flat for me. Mostly cause I didn't know any of the songs. Not one. Unless you count that little snippet of Every Rose Has It's Thorn. I'm not a Britney fan, so the second ep was the same way. I don't even get being a Britney fan. From my perspective, Britney is a fat, gross, slut with addiction issues. I continue to be completely unimpressed with her.

So then we come up to this past week and Grilled Cheesus. Now they're just trying too hard. It's like a child who's been really spoiled by too much attention and thinks they can get away with  more than they can.  I just didn't even get the point of that entire ep, unless it was just to make me hate what a whiny little jerk that Kurt has become even more than I did from the week before.

This is going to be hard for me, cause I loved Glee season 1. I have all the music and everything. Look, I never said I had excellent taste or anything. But how can you truly hate on musical numbers with choreographed dancing delivered to your living room every week? You just can't.

But I think I'm starting now. Three more eps is all I'm giving you Glee. Get back to the happy days of music I like, kill off all the whining and let's have more Sue Sylvester. Or this is where we part ways.

Sigh.

Breakfast anyone....

I'm still trying to eat better, when at all possible, but it gets harder as the weather gets colder. In wet, cold, yucky weather, I crave comfort food, all of which, while comforting, tends to be on the less healthy and more fattening side as well.

So I was very proud of my new breakfast cereal invention this week. I've been having lots of yogurt, plain, with berries, which was great for the Summer, but wasn't cutting it as we head into Fall.  So this week I made up a weeks supply of a yummy, healthy, fruity, nutty, grainy hot cereal that's been just perfect.

It was really easy.  Here's what I did:

I toasted 1/2 cup each of millet and quinoa, added a tablespoon of butter, a touch of sea salt and some stevia. (Don't ask for exact amounts, cause I don't cook that way.) Then I added almond milk (about 3 to 1 to the grains),  brought it to a boil, reduced to a simmer and cooked for a while (1/2 hour maybe).  Added more almond milk (1 1/2 cups), brought it to a boil again, then 1/2 cup of oatmeal , cinnamon, vanilla, peeled and chopped apple, chopped dried apricots and cherries, toasted slivered almonds and chopped pecans. I simmered for about another 10-15 mins and voila!

It was warm and creamy, but had a crunchy texture, too. It even looks good.

I'm excited thinking about what other fun foods I can make up this winter that will still be comforting, but can take the place of less healthy alternatives.