Better late than never...

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of Alexa's first day of school. I know it's getting a little old as she is 13 now and going into 8th grade. But I think she expects it of me! She doesn't complain, she even poses for the pictures. As long as I don't take pictures when the bus actually arrives, I'm cool.

Dad hangs around for the first day too. Lucky too because he looks much better in the morning than I do! Please take note of the matching lunch bag and carry-all. All perfectly coordinated with her top and skirt. Lastly, her toes were polished (by moi) to match her nails and set off with white flip flops! Ahh, the first day of fashion, er school...

Bad Romance...

I've got losts to post but I found this via my Facebook page from Sandy Parmenter and even though I'm not a fan of Lady Gaga, I'm lovin other people doing LG. I'm a 'Gleek' and I loved the version they did on 'Glee' and unlike the guys on the show, these guys have got it goin' on! Enjoy!

Another Sunday night...

It's another Sunday night and I'm watching the Emmys. If they could just eliminate the speeches, it would probably be a decent show. Case in point - Al Pacino - boring!!

ANYWAY...School is almost upon us. Alexa and I managed to do her school supply shopping without spilling any blood, tears or yanked out hair. Believe it or not, as Alexa gets older, the supply list gets shorter! (Except for the $100.00 calculator). I'm not looking forward to any clothes shopping, but luckily she has almost everything she needs for the fall semester, just a couple of pairs of new jeans and we'll be set until the end of October.

Our last challenge will be decorating Alexa's locker. Going into 8th grade (the last before high school!) Alexa still wants me to put up her locker paper and help her set up. This from a child who does not want me to set foot in her school under every other circumstance. We had to buy double sided wrapping paper, pink, of course and she mounted her schedule with pink and sparkle silver paper to be posted on the door. I figure this is the last year. I will gracefully retire from locker decoration at the end of this year and let Alexa do whatever decoration needs to be done in high school.

What I did on my summer vacation...

It's been so long since I posted that I forgot my password! For most of the summer I was the supreme lurker. I've been looking at everyone else, everywhere else. I've been asked if I was OK? Yes. Have I been away?, No. Am I still alive?!? Definitely!
I know I posted much earlier this summer but I've been gone for a while and have just now managed to get some of my pictures downloaded to the computer. Bogspot hasn't been too helpful in letting me move picture so I've been working on this for several days, taking time off so I don't take a sledge hammer to the computer. ANYWAY...here is June, wonderful, creative, Tim's visit June!

One of the cool things we did was arrange personal shoppers for Tim's visit. Everyone got a paddle with a number on it at there placesetting. We had shopping bags to match each paddle up buy all the supplies Tim used in his classes.



Tim would show us something that he did and if you wanted the product you rasied your paddle and one of the salespeople would put that item in your corresponding basket! How cool is that! Some of those bags got very heavy...



We also had to have a picture with Tim with everyone who helped out so in the picture above going clockwise from the upper left hand corner is Laura, Mona, Elisabeth, Mark, Tim, Sharon Marty, Kaitlyn, Jamie, Debbie, Jessica, and me! Mario was our picture taker so he isn't in the shot :(

Here we are again on Sunday, me, Jamie, Mona, Dimitra, Sharon and Debbie. As you can see by the table set up, Tim was incredibly organized and he brough EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON THE TABLE WITH HIM!!

This is a sample of the Patchwork Pandemonium sample we had. (If you come to the store now there is a framed version done by Dimitra and framed by Debby on display behind the register).

This was one of our welcomes to Tim. Dimitra's vintage typewriter with a welcome note to Tim!

We had a fabulous weekend with Tim Holtz! Four classes, 90 women in each class! Tim was wonderful, a great teacher, funny, and as he says, he's just Tim! Here are some more photos:

Don't you just love the look on his face! Sharon felt a little empowered when she got to use the microphone. Below is a shot of everyone working and below that is a shot with Elisabeth who came all the way from New Jersey, and Debby right next to her. Me and Tim...and yes, I was a blithering idiot most of the time, incapable of a coherent sentence or thought. I hate small talk :(

JULY was another story. Long story short, I spent about four days in the hospital after having a hysterectomy. Not a way I would recommend spending the fourth of July holiday, but the fireworks show outside my window was pretty spectacular! I had only one little minor blip, which my OB/GYN fixed quickly and I was home.

I did pretty good at home I think as my DH told me last night that I "manned up" and didn't whine, complain, make excuses or anything during my recuperation. I guess I did good!

I think I'll do the rest of my saga on another post as I have a couple more things to add and it's still a good 2 plus weeks until school starts - Yeah!!!

Flip Side...

I ended up staying in the hospital for an extra day because of my BP and blood count going a little wonky. That's my doctor's story and it's working well for me. I was slightly ambivalent about coming home. In many ways the hospital was like a hotel with your own ladies maid.


Think about it, someone comes and checks on you every hour, offers you ice water, pillows, blankets and pain meds. Those came in really handy! They were really nice too. I've never been called 'Honey' so many times in my life.


Food - no cooking! Breakfast, lunch and dinner brought to you every day on a regular schedule! The tray was also taken away and there were no dishes to do!


Sleep - sleep all day long! (nuf said).


Now the Flip Side...



I felt AWFUL!! I had to have a blood transfusion, two uncomfortable CT scans (with the bumpiest trip to radiology I never want to take again!)


Even though ALL the nurses and nurses aides were extremely solicitous, understanding, compassionate and downright good at what they do (an extremely hard job) I had a new RN/NA every eight hours my entire stay! I don't think I saw the same RN/NA twice! Thank heaven that most of them wrote their names on the wipe board I stared at 24/7 and they had name badges.


They demanded answers to questions like, are you dizzy, nauseous, unsteady on your feet, can you walk, what is your name, how do you spell it and what is your birth date - every time they gave me an IV, pain med or took blood (and that happened way too much!)


Who could eat that food, really, come on. You know what I'm talking about. They brought me dinner after I'd been out of recovery for about an hour and I could barely open my mouth it was so dry and cottony. They gave me macaroni and cheese, hot coffee, other things I can't remember and I could not eat any of it, heck, I couldn't stand the smell! Nurse, ice water PLEASE!


Sleep, glorious sleep, ahhh...Yeah, right! I've been in elementary schools and ball games that are quieter than daytime on a hospital floor! Then when you do finally go to sleep, they try to sneak in and take your BP, temp, or are doing it for your roommate and just because she's awake doesn't mean you are!


Those beds! Hard mattresses, scratchy linen and blankets. Haven't they heard of sleep number, tempur-pedic, serta, anybody???

So you would you think that I'd be delighted to be home. Well, I am but...the dog has gotten out of the yard three times since I've been home and all times but one, DH has been off bike riding, walking, out with Lex anywhere but here to help. The one time someone was home it was Alexa and she stepped up to track Abby down.

Alexa barges in to the bedroom with no knocking, balks at doing anything to help unless she is in the mood. NO ONE CLOSES THE DOOR! Norm, Lex or the dog. The Dog, that's a whole nuther story! Abby has been off the wall since I've been home and since we've all been home. She has been a terror going after everything she can get her cute little teeth on and since getting up and down is the most taxing thing I can do, she has been running me ragged.

So with hubby's sometime benign neglect, daughter's denial, and puppy's pandemonium, I'm ready to check into a hotel! Anyone have the number for the local Marriott?!

Kinda Sorta...

I'm back home after my surgery and I feel - blah! I am very grateful for central air conditioning, our recliner and my daughter's friends who have kept her very busy since I went to the hospital. Outside of that, I'm done-in and content to sit here and veg. So that's what I think I'll do. stay cool everyone.

TTFN...

I'm going to be enjoying? a few days of R&R, rest and relaxation at the hospital before I have to come home for recovery from my "woman's surgery". Although, I know hospitals are notorious for being places where you can't get rest, I'm not sure coming home to dog, daughter and MIL will be very relaxing either. As it is, Norm is planning on stopping by for a quick hello, how are you, bye! on Friday afternoon and then going to the baseball game (Bisons) Friday night - such devotion! What can I say - wife, baseball, wife baseball...see the scale teetering towards...Baseball!!! Now, if only I was Derek Jeter...oh well, ta, ta, for now!

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.