Gone are the days...

Gone are the days of getting together with your friends and talking about boys and rock bands...


Gone are the days of getting together with your friends and talking about fashion and jobs and boyfriends...


Gone are the days of getting together with your friends and talking about weddings, honeymoons, and sex (not necessarily in that order)...


Gone are the days of getting together with your friends and talking about should you get pregnant, OMG I'm NOT pregnant, OMG I'm pregnant, what do I do now that I'm pregnant, sex and sharing each other's horror story of labor and delivery...


Gone are the days of getting together with your friends and talking about your kids, ages birth to forever and sex (or lack thereof)...


Gone are the days of getting together with your friends and talking about your husband or SO, sex and your "friend"...


Welcome to the days of talking about your aches and pains, your thyroid and your gall bladder, your lasic surgery, sex and (GASP) Botox...


Yes, welcome to being our Moms and for some of us, our grandmother's.


Think about it, the last time you spent time with your girlfriends (no guys included), didn't you talk less about your kids and more about your health? Your talk included what meds and what food changes you've made in your life along with your new exercise regimen. Our bodies and what they are doing or NOT doing have taken the place of talking about other things such as books, movies, hairstyles and hot men.


Besides noticing these subtle changes creeping into my life I'm about to have one of those "woman" operations that definitively tell you that that time in your life is over - I'm having a hysterectomy in a week or so.


I'll save you the gory details and reasons. My bottom line is "the equipment never worked right in the first place so let's get rid of it!" (I'm also hoping they'll do some lipo suction on my tummy while they are there). I'm also hoping that giving rid of all this excess baggage will "Free Me", let me begin the best years of my life, let me come into myself, yada, yada, yada - just like Oprah says...


But right now, I'm just worried about not acting like a fool under anesthesia...and should I scrap this?

What a Weekend!...

You can take your Robert Redford, your Robert Pattison your Justin Beiber. We have Tim!

A week ago today Tim Holtz arrived in Buffalo for four Awesome , Wonderful, Creative, downright Fun workshops. Sharon has been jones'n this guy for our store for over two years. Thanks to her persistence, talent and generous nature we finally got a commitment to his coming to Buffalo Stamps and Stuff this year.

We started with thinking 50 students per class. We kicked that up to 75 and then we finally got the OK for 90 - How many do you think we got per class to sign up? 90 in the first three classes and 95 in the last class!

Beautiful, wonderful, talented Dimitra made lunch for each day, chicken to die for!! So good!! We even had buffalo shaped cookies - delish!

Sharon found this darling antique chalkboard. If you rolled the knobs at the top it would scroll through different school lessons like how to tell time, state capitals, grammar rules, etc. We used the sign to direct customers to the store we used for the workshops. Tim loved the board so much that Sharon gave it to him as a thank you for such a wonderful weekend.

Personal shoppers! Who knew?! We gave everyone a numbered paddle (what you can do with tongue depressors!) and as Tim used a product if a customer wanted it they would hold up their paddle and we would put the product in their corresponding bag - what service!

Memorial Day...

I once was in scrapbook journal swap that had the topic "My Favorite Holiday". Most people chose Christmas or Thanksgiving but I chose Memorial Day. I have happy memories of this holiday from when I was a child. When I was in elementary and then junior high school I was a girl scout. Every Memorial Day we would march in our village parade. That was pretty cool! What I enjoyed even more were the visits we made to the cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens.

On my dad's side of the family his father served in the WWI. My dad served in WWII in the Navy. The story goes that he went to my grandmother and said "You might as well sign to give your permission for me to enlist because I'm just going forge it if you don't" My grandmother signed her permission. My dad was a tall lanky kid and was several months shy of the legal limit when he enlisted. My dad was also the man of the house as his father (my grandfather died when my dad was 12 or 13). My grandmother was a fairly independent woman for her time. For years she worked in the central Post Office in Manhattan to support herself and my dad. A working woman way before it was in vogue.

She belonged to the VFW Auxiliary and was very patriotic. Every Memorial Day weekend my dad would drive out to Freeport to pick her up and then drive into the Lutheran cemetery in the city. I loved to go along! We would drive into Queens and stop at one of the many florist shops outside the cemeteries and pick up a few arrangements or wreaths and then go in and place them. (From what I can remember the Catholic, Jewish and Lutheran cemeteries were all butted up to each other and covered a huge area.) My dad always brought his clippers, a few yard tools some cleaning stuff to straighten up the grave sites. We also made sure we brought small American flags.

I loved going to the cemetery I would roam around while my dad tended the grave site. This cemetery didn't look like today's cemeteries with their flat grave markers and flat land with very few trees. These cemeteries were built on rolling hills with parkways (highways) bisecting them with twisty narrow roads in and out. Family plots were often marked with two foot high wrought iron fences and gates. There were elaborate headstones and mausoleums. Everything was very crowded together. We'd pay our respects, place our flags and wreathes and leave.

We'd always see a veteran outside the cemetery or on a street corner in the area selling crepe paper poppies for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). In my house it was next to a sin not to buy a poppy or two or three, which we did every year. My grandmother would play "God Bless America" on the piano or the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and sing - my grandmother could not sing...I was taught to respect the flag and my country and the soldiers who had fought and died for our freedoms.

On the more fun side of our trip we also managed to find a street vendor near the cemetery selling large soft pretzels - three for a quarter! What a deal! These pretzels were warm to hot with salt and incredibly soft and delicious, just the best, ahh, what memories.

For me Memorial Day isn't just about the hot dogs, hamburgers and picnics. Nor is it about the parades. It's about remembering what and who came before us. Not only the soldiers but the families that supported them and remembered them in their hearts and in their actions. The sacrifices these past generations made for us to be able to live in this glorious country today. Freedom is never free and to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom is the least we can do. Remembering them and showing the next generation that their deaths were not in vain is our duty to them today and every day.

I'm every woman...

From the sexist commercials of the seventies - "He thinks he'll keep her", to the anthem of the 90's - "I'm every woman!" women have been trying to redefine themselves since before we had to fight for the vote to getting the "pill".

Well, I'm here to say, "I'm every woman!" - Just not all at once, at the same time to the same people. Frankly, I'm over 50 and am tired of it and it's just starting for me! Could I have not planned my life any better or is it worse, I don't know.

I'm an end of the line baby boomer who missed out on all the rebellion stuff - which was good as I'm as about as rebellious as a piece of over done toast - put a fork in me, I'm done...

I was pathetic during the disco daze - can't dance to save my life! Have no clue as to what is proper or improper bar etiquette - don't really drink.

I had to wait to see Sex in the City until it came on in edited re-runs on TBS, plus I'm closer to Samantha's age than Carrie's and NO ONE would mistake my panda bear mind set for that of Samantha's cougar personality.

I'm either a day late or a dollar short, or both... so back to this woman thing.

My household consists of me, my DH - Norman, my DD - Alexa, my MIL - Joyce and Abby, The Puppy. I'm also a member of the sandwich generation. Although my DH and I are closer in age to retirement. We have his 78 yr. old mother living with us and our 13 year old DD - Alexa across the hall. I need a full time referee from the NFL just for those two alone. Since we were all having such a good time we decided to get a dog! Perfect compliment.

Norman and I wanted one because we missed our last dog who passed away suddenly, Alexa wanted one for the cuteness factor, "I'm not picking up any poop!" can still be heard in our house a year later... Joyce didn't want a dog at all - at least nothing she had to deal with (she hated our previous dog).

Now the Puppy looks at me as pack leader. She will obey me... most of the time and while I baby her I also realize she is a dog. I'm still Mommy to her. During the day she will follow me around, sit in my lap and is for the most part agreeable and obedient. We get along very well. I close doors, don't leave food, clothes, tissues, knee highs, pens, highlighters, baseball cards, underwear and other assorted human dog treats out where she can get them. I've dog proofed the area she is allowed in in the house.

To create peace with the other humans in the house and for the duration of the Puppy's first year, she was restricted to our kitchen, family room and sometimes to the Florida room. This weekend the DH and I decided - ENOUGH! Family get ready - here comes Abby! we took down almost all the gates and cleaned up in the other common areas and everyone was instructed to do the same OR close your door! Simple enough, right...WRONG!

MIL doesn't want her scratching at her door (she can't take the pathetic sound) and she doesn't want the dog she loves (yes, she does, whole other post and story) in her room because there is too much for her (Abby) to get into so MIL will just wait until Abby is "trained not to eat her things..."

Alexa has a room like, well, you know, you've seen it. Just go down a few posts. So she wants the dog to come in but to leave all her stuff alone. This will never happen and Alexa will never clean her room so I periodically will hear a scream for "MOM! Abby's in my room and won't leave my things alone!" Did she think I put her there? It's an idea, but Alexa's shriek is much worse than Puppy's bite.

DH - you'd think I'd have a partner, a like thinking, dog proofing, sympathetic hubby - NOT !! He expects Abby to be Lassie, or Rin Tin Tin or at least every well behaved dog that walks besides it's human behaving perfectly in all those dog food commercials. What was I thinking? This man leaves pens, highlighters, papers, sports magazines all over the house - shoes, socks - don't get me started on the socks!

So I can either be a mother, wife, DIL to my human family and deal with them or I can be Mommy to the Puppy and deal with her - NOT BOTH - at least not at the same time! Abby was fine all day long, we went for a ride in the car this morning, got a biscuit at the bank and a bagel chip at Bagel Jay's - yum! We did a little laundry, ran around the house, she barked at the traffic walking and driving past the front door. We played Frisbee in the backyard, she told me when she had to go out. She had a little lap time while Mom watched 'Young and the Restless' - overall a very good day.

Then the two legged family came home and all hope was lost. She got into MIL's room and scarfed down a chocolate bar - I know BAD, very BAD! Alexa just stood there and yelled to us describing what she was doing in her perfect local reporter style, while doing NOTHING!! MIL threw in her 2 cents on what we were doing wrong (with Alexa too, for good measure). DH's presence just incited the dog to jump up and run around even more. he made dinner (YES) while ignoring all bad behavior, shaking his head at HIS mother's comments and walking away as soon as possible and who was left to clean up and in the middle - ME!

So I promptly ran upstairs, sat down at the computer and wrote this. Can you tell!!!!!! I'll never be every woman - and frankly, in this house, it would kill me first!

Shopping til you drop...

I'm surrounded by shoppers, at home and at work - shoppers, shoppers everwhere! The funny thing is they all fall into different categories, let me explain.



The Shopaholic Diva: One guess as to who this is...Alexa, duh! She loves to shop, so much so that she keeps the shopping bags (only the cool stores, of course) as souvenirs. When she gets home she shows us everything she bought, emphasizes the items on sale and then she goes up to her room and photographs her buys! I kid you not. She's got a ton of pictures on her camera of her clothes - oh, to reminisce about the good times!



The Vegas High Roller: This one might be a little harder to guess. It's my MIL (mother-in-law) Joyce. Joyce is on a fixed budget and her one really big joy is the equivalent to hitting it big at the craps table in Vegas - using coupons! She grabs the Sunday paper, takes the circulars with her and goes over them the same way Phil Ivey sizes up the other players at the featured table at the World Series of Poker! Very often at dinner she'll announce how much money she saved that day (along with how many cute babies she saw during her travels!)



The Secret Shopper: Who's left - Norman. Norm will just run out to Dash's after dinner...and come back with all kinds groceries for I don't know what! Or, he'll just go out to run a few errands and come home from BJ's with more stuff for the freezer and paper goods than we need for a few months! My favorite is his favorite Friday evening, after dinner exercise, perusing the aisles of Barnes & Nobles - and coming home with a pile of books whose cost will not be mentioned...



The Lucky Shopper: no, not Abby, Sharon, my boss. She has the most amazing luck when she shops garage sales, antique stores, flea markets and estate sales. The store is decorated with many of her finds. Last weekend I got to go along with Sharon and Dimitra on a shopping adventure down to Caledonia. A story too long to repeat so check it out here.



Now, don't get me wrong, I love to shop but I usually don't take pictures of my finds. How excited can you get over Tylenol sinus and knee highs? I've never been the one for coupons. I'll be sure I won't need the Michael's or JoAnn's 40% off because I'M NOT SHOPPING THERE THIS WEEK AND I DON'T NEED ANYTHING!!! and sure enough I end up at either one or the other. Same with those never ending coupon cards from Macy's - 20% shopping pass! - You pick the date! The weeks I bring them - I don't go. The weeks I go, I forget them or don't bring because (refer to the bold print above).



I go food shopping and find my husband has already bought what we need and not told me, or he comes home the same night with the same thing!



Clothing - I don't even want to go there. Even when I do buy something new, Alexa gives it the once over and I get,"New top? I wouldn't wear that!" Duh! "How much did it cost?" and the twenty questions go on and on...



Wonder finds? - I'm the kind that likes nice even aisles, coordinated displays and everything out in the open. Half the time I walk past the best stuff! I have to know exactly what I'm looking for and I was never good at haggling over a price.



That said, I did come across something at an estate sale and went wild an woolly and got it because it was 30% off. Want to see?
I found these at an estate sale. The couple selling the house had lived in China for a number of years and the house had a lot of Chinese art, pictures and furniture. This is Chinese embroidery. It is just lovely. Brilliant vibrant colors and the artist's chop (signature) in the lower right corner. In front of it is a jade bowl with silver lattice work around it. Don't know if either is worth much, don't care - I just like them!

Oh, and the Shopping Diva - she left earlier this evening for a horse riding, sleep-over, shopping trip with her friend Brenda. She also asked for the Macy's charge before she left because she had both the 20% shopping coupon and $20 off coupon ready to go!

Warning: Parents of Teenagers BEWARE contents!

Exhibit A

You've been warned... So have I for that matter. I'm the mother of a teenager, a full fledged, fashion loving, selective hearing, selective behavior, Jekyll and Hyde teenager - and the female of the species at that - much, much more dangerous.

We've been having that age old tug of war between Mom and Dad and Darling Daughter - CLEAN-UP YOUR ROOM! It was so bad a little over two weeks ago that we grounded her for two weeks. Didn't work. We got her an organizer drawer set for her hair, makeup, beauty, skin, nail, etc. tools - Didn't work.

Exhibit B

Abby loves Alexa's room. She never knows what delightful (to a dog) wonders she is going to find. Adding to the problem is the fact that the door won't latch closed, so all Abby has to do is push it open with her paws, (she usually takes a running jump), and she's in - makes it her favorite room in the house.

So today when Abby(our other demon child) got into her room and disappeared under the bed and could not be coaxed out for love or biscuits (until she decimated whatever it was she found so appealing) I decided it was time to go public.

Exhibit C

Here the 'other daughter' is enjoying her find...Now believe it or not, the room was worse. You could not see the carpet two weeks ago, at all, not even a piece big enough for a big toe to fit.

Now, I admit it, I'm not neat by ANY stretch of the imagination, my craft room is STILL a mess, but the dog doesn't go in and grab my stuff and hide and chew it all to bits. I can still find stuff in my room and my door doesn't latch just like Lex's. With Alexa's room things just kinda migrate into it from their normal locations, like phones, cameras, chargers, food, other people's scissors, markers, glue and adhesives, nail polish remover, you get the idea. This has just gone too far and yes, I know, it's only going to get worse.... HELP!!!!

Let's just forget last week, OK....

Last week sucked - sorry for the language (that is one of my least favorite, never use unless desperate or really true)... So glad it's over and I'm starting on a new week. Nothing big happening, just taking care of some stuff that is long overdue, like the coin that weighs a ton that Alexa decided to roll a few weeks ago...not sure how I'm going to get it the bank (carry that is).

Puppy is getting her stitches out today and is going to groomer on Thursday. We'll have our beautiful, fluffy puppy back!

Norm got short changed on his birthday last week, plus he had to deal with my melodrama. I owe him a dinner...

Alexa is Alexa - spent from Friday afternoon when she got picked up from school by a friend's mother, to yesterday (Sunday) at friend's house for a two day sleep over with shopping thrown in...

Me, well I'm finally going to get some professional help for a pain that has been plaguing me for about 35 years now - enough said...

Good news - The Hillside Scrappers retreat is only 10 - count'em 10 days away! WAHOOO!!! We're going to have a Martini tasting party - if all goes well. Anyone got any good recipes out there??

Sunday - Funday...?

I'm too in a rush to move these so I'll pre-empt my blog notations by showing you a few recent layouts in photo form. Sorry there isn't a lot of close-up detail, but you'll see below I'm kinda-sorta-not-right-now-working on it.

Glam 13 - Alexa's 13th birthday party. The girls had their nails done, cake by Dessert Deli, games like 'Tin Foil Dresses' and make-up and glam photos by moi. The collage of photos was done by Walgreens - who knew?!?

I am always telling customers in the store that I don't stamp, I scrapbook! (usually in hushed tones) So here is a layout that features that statement - i don't stamp! {That's MY STORY and I'm sticking to it} I'm a scrapbooker! I put examples of my favorite stamp lines along with a list of them (yeah, that many).

I took a 5x7 of Alexa's school picture for this year and I'm trying to channel some of the designers I most admire from My Creative Scrapbook Kit Club to do a layout of our girl.

Several months ago I did a layout with a photocopy of a vintage photo of my mother as a baby, my grandparents (my grandmother, on the left, is so young and pretty in this photo) and my great grandparents on my grandfather's side (I think) using Graphic 45 paper and Prima flowers. The black oval scallop in the center is where my journaling should be - I'm getting there.

Now on to my blog entry for today:

Someone, Connie I think, accused me of not posting lately :-( Well, I did just this past Thursday, but I thought I'd give it a go again. My scrap room looks even worse than after the last time my so called organizing tornado swept through so because I have a whole Sunday at home with hubby and DD downstairs to keep Puccini (the puppy) company, I'm going to spend the day in my room cleaning - or a similar facsimile thereof...

Mind you, the tornado has spread to the hall where I've stacked organized stuff so I can get at my unorganized stuff...and later today I hope to ooze down to the living room to lay out paper for sorting (It's the only room big enough, without foot traffic and doggie paws).

So of course I'm starting my day by doing nothing related to this clean-up at all...trying to figure out how to post layouts and stitch layouts better on 2Peas. Since my layouts are all at work, I've gotten a reprieve from doing that but the governor of scrapping has denied my appeal for delay again, on starting to organize and clean. So here it is, a new post for Connie a photo attempt of my latest layouts (till I can do it the right way) and a shout out for Brian Vickers to come in in the top ten or PLEASE top five in today's 'Hotlanta' Nascar race.

Girl, in the immortal words of DW - Boogity, boogity, boogity!!! Let's go cleaning????

Happy Birthday Abby????...

Today is the puppy's 1st Birthday! That's the good news! The not so good news is she is spending the day at the vet's getting spayed :-(

Poor baby came through her surgery OK and I'm going to pick her up in a few hours. What a birthday present!

Sorry no image, computer doesn't seem to want to access my photos today, what else!?!?!

Winter Hibernation...

Just call me "Bear". I'm really getting into this hibernation idea. Get up in the morning, have some coffee, let the dog out, settle in to read a little, then watch afternoon at the Olymics - Curling is my favorite for a relaxing afternoon. Slide into the 5:00 news, have a quiet little dinner, do only what you have to until 8:00 p.m. when you settle in with the remote and a dog on your lap and watch the evening Olympics until midnight. Your options for the end of the day are: wait until the news is over (preferably with a Law and Order re-run) and watch the Olympic review, watch the shows I DVD'd or go quietly and sleepily to bed, having been lulled by your daily hibernation routine - now complete. Wake up the next day and repeat...

Yep, just call me "Bear".

I've pretty much been an Olympic junkie since last Friday. I do make a few exceptions like "Jack" (24) on Mondays, but I pretty much will tape anything else I normally watch. Outside of that it's been pretty much me and puppy. Alexa is back to school after the week off. She went shopping, had two sleepovers, went ice skating and managed to collaborate with a friend on a frightfully creative cell project - complete with midocondria and protozoa in a colorful 3-D display.

My equally intelligent husband is leaving for Taiwan on Wednesday with his boss to finalize an agreement with a university there. He's already looking forward to the warm temperatures. His "Silly Game" season gets underway shortly as the cards from Strat-O-Matic came in the mail last week. For those of you who have never heard of Strat-O-Matic sports games - BE THANKFUL!!!! This game is one of my DH's very few vices. Every year since he was in high school (we're talking 40 years!) he sends away for a new set of cards that reflect the statistics of every major league baseball player from the season before. Norm sits down with all these cards and an atlas (yes, ATLAS) to create his own teams and name them after cities, and towns all the country. Then he divides his teams into two leagues (American and National) and starts playing.

Now, this will give you an idea why my DH is so techno challenged. This game has no batteries, no lights, no fancy spinners or game board, no automatic scoring and uses no electricity! You have scorepage, you roll the dice, match the numbers on the dice with what it says on the card and somehow get a full nine inning game of baseball out of it - not counting games that might go extra innings...Norm starts playing in March and plays until he has played an entire schedule of games, post season and World Series. He usually finishes around July or August with a stack of scorecards of each fame about three inches tall (because you score by hand)!

This is Norman's idea of relaxation, excitement and just down right fun. The only thing that would make him happier would be to be in Italy, in a Tuscan villa, playing this "Silly Game". Me I'd rather be on Lake Como with George Clooney - but hey, I always have scrapbooking in Buffalo!