Reminiscing

I don't know why, but today I woke up in a reflective mood. I've been thinking about Grammie and Pa all day. There are tons of memories in their house and some days I wake up thinking about what I miss. So I figured I'd let you in on my thoughts.

I miss:
~Playing Pinochle- Grammie and I would compete against Pa and AJ. We usually gathered on Friday afternoons, but sometimes we would play other days as well. Pa could never understand how AJ would win so much. If Grammie and I were lucky we might beat them once in awhile. Us girls considered this time social hour which bothered Pa immensely.

~Watching Grammie "do a jig"- Sometimes when I walked in Grammie would burst into a jig and tell me how she had danced that morning while brushing her teeth. She would then proclaim that she wouldn't listen to that tape anymore while teeth brushing as she was afraid to scrub her teeth completely away!

~Hearing about "free baseball"- Whenever their Atlanta Braves had to play more than 9 innings due to a tie, Grammie considered that "free baseball."

~Ham- Now I know this one seems wierd, but stay with me. Pa loves ham. It seemed like every other trip to Albertsons resulted in a ham in the fridge. Grammie would say to me, "Guess what we're having for dinner?" Then she would add that I needed to take some for lunch the next day. If we were really lucky, Grammie served it Friday night to everyone else when they came and then we didn't have as much left over.

~Oreos- The cookie jar was always full of Oreos and whatever other cookie Pa brought home. (Oh wait a minute, it had Oreos in it until I found out I'm allergic to them and now the candy jar holds candy bars that I can have. Thanks to AJ.)

Carmen and I have talked about it and we both have dreams of Grammie being better. We dream that she's standing in the kitchen doing whatever it was and when we walked in she warmly welcomed us. When we wake up, we both realize it was just a dream and that makes it worse.

I do have to say that I am glad I have had the last 21 months with Grammie and AJ. There are days when Grammie is hysterical and I know that the "old Grammie" is still there, but other days I just love on a woman who loved me for so long and so well. The last 4 weeks, she has been quite lucid and it's funny to be with her because you don't know what she'll say. For example, I went over Friday after having been sick for the week. Grammie looked at me and said, "You'll never know how much I love you! You look pale!" What could I say? I reminded her that I had been sick and that I was going to go home and take a nap. Then she said, "Your eyes look hollow!" Well, at least she was observant, but from her observation I might have been worse off then I really was.

My Innocent Trip to Jo-Ann Fabric Store

I had decided to make three quilts before this coming May. Three of the wonderful teachers I worked with at Franklin are retiring and I thought it would be fun to do something special for them, since they played such a huge role in my life for 6 yrs. I had asked Julia what colors I should use and she agreed to come with me on the amazing adventure. I found a pattern that is quite easy and decided to use one pattern for all three quilts to simplify things. I know that sounds unusual, but I'm in a time crunch. :-) When we got to Jo-Ann's I showed Julia the pattern and told her that I was going to cut the pattern in half to make lap quilts. It proved to be a challenge to pick out colors for three quilts at one time. We started with the quilt that we knew which colors to use. We just had to find the right combinations. When we were happy with our selection we put those bolts on the bottom of the cart and moved to the next quilt. That proved to be slightly harder. We had found three fun fabrics, but had a rough time finding the fourth. Finally, we found it and moved on to the hardest of all. The third quilt is for someone who suffers from MS and things tend to move on her, so we knew we couldn't have any type of a pattern in the fabric. On top of that where the other two people are getting 5 colors, she is only getting 2 so that it won't make her dizzy. I pray that we chose correctly. After having made our selections we then moved up to take a number. We were number 14 and they were on 96. That means we got to stand and talk. When our number was called we stepped up and had all our fabric cut. Julia had to go, so I went and paid for it and then drove home. As I drove into my parking lot, it hit me. We had just bought double the amount of fabric that it called for in the pattern. Not only that, I was suppose to cut it in half, not double the pattern!!!!!!! I now have enough fabric for 12 lap quilts instead of 3. I should not be allowed in Jo-Ann's for a very long time or any other quilt store for the matter!!

My First Run

I went running today after work and it was an adventure. I thought I put socks into my bag, but when I went to change there weren't any socks. It was quite humorous to be dressed in running pants, t-shirt, sweatshirt, and my work socks. By the way, the work socks were my knee high argyle socks that just happen to be quite fashionable with work clothes, but not running clothes. :-)

I Found...

...running shoes. I bought them last Thursday and tomorrow (Tues.) I'm going to go run.
...donuts I can eat. The company that makes the bread I buy makes all sorts of goodies and when I went last Thursday I looked at the donuts and was ecstatic. The only ones I can have are the chocolate covered ones, but I didn't care.
...cornstarch in my deodorant. Yes you read that correctly. Please don't ask me why I was even reading the label of my deodorant, but I did. Dr. Peine assured me today that it won't hurt me because I don't have a topical allergy. I am so glad that I don't have to find a different kind, or better yet SMELL!! :-)

Random Comments at Work

So, I never know what kinds of comments I'll hear while at work. I'll give you a sampling of some of them tonight. Yesterday, I was standing in a 7th grade English class helping the students edit some paragraphs. I happened to be standing next to one of my students that is particularly trying, but very smart. One of my hairs was bothering me, so I pulled it out and said, "There goes my one gray hair." The student looked up and said, "There are lots of gray hairs on your head. That wasn't the only one." I was laughing so hard I had to go tell the teacher. He just laughed and laughed. Then a few minutes later I pulled out another hair while I was standing in front of the teacher. He said, "There goes another gray hair. You should really think about coloring your hair." I had to run to the mirror to check and see how much gray hair I really had!
When I found out about my corn allergy it was suggested I should watch the movie King Corn. It is a documentary on how corn is grown and what happens after it is harvested. I was in the 8th grade Science room talking to the teacher and commented that I had watched the movie King Corn the night before. He stopped and stared at me for the longest time and then had me repeat myself. He finally turned to me, covered his mouth, and said, "I thought you said King Porn." No wonder he looked at me funny!
Some days I think I should just take a vow of silence and not say anything at all while I'm at work. :-)

I have decided to...

run a 1/2 marathon. Yes, you read that correctly. Sometime early last week I got the hairbrain idea to run 13.1 miles for fun. I don't anticipate running the whole thing, just finishing it. From the looks of things I will be running this fantastic race around October. I hope to complete a 5K in May and then a 10K sometime in between the two. At the moment I have been working on the wii everyday and I need to go buy a good pair of running shoes. That is on my agenda to do this week. :-) I am telling you all this so that you will hold me to this. I don't want it to sound like a good idea this month and then totally fizz out. My friend, Michelle, from work is also going to be doing this with me and that should help. I'll keep you updated.