Loopy New Year

We are well into 2013. We have already had some snow on the ground, ice on the overpasses ,salt all over the city, sunshine, buckets of rain, clouds overhead and even some lightning and it is only the 10th! day of January.It was 30 degrees one day last week and it is 69 today and heading for the eighties.Oh,well .

We are celebrating the birth of Carrie's baby.(Gabe's too)The baby weighed seven lbs.five ozs.and as usual with new babies, he is beautiful. He was born on January 5, at home in Seattle,Washington.His name is Benicio Aloysius Avila -Mooney.  Better known as Beni.I am anxious to meet him. He is the twenty -sixth great grand child.  !                                                                                                     
How sweet it is!


 Happy New year to all of you!!      Ciao

That's a lit of Bull

On many a Christmas Eve little children go to sleep to dream of Santa bringing a pony when he comes down the chimmney. They are not always encouraged by their parents to wish for a pony but Christmas surprises or Christmas miracles have happened before! Dispite the fact that the parents say they have no where to keep a pony or even know what to feed them, these seem to be minor objections to the young one. Hope rests eternal in the mind of the young, of course there is a place for a pony to sleep and they have plenty of food around the house. It would be the greatest of Christmas's to wake up and find a pony under the tree! Eventually the child grows up and does come to the realization that a pony is not the best choice and they think up other things that are more in line with what the parent wants.

Now, I'm pretty sure that the couple I am going to tell you about were not wishing for a pony or any other animal on Christmas  Eve but when they opened the door to their deck on Christmas morning What to their wondering eyes did appear but a full grown bull! He was in a fighting mood and had already chased the two ladies next door.

Not far behind was the new owner of  the bull. He had just purchased it on Christmas Eve and it had pulled a big escape over night. He was there to try to get it back on his property but the bull was in no mood to be fussed with.They had to give up that night and for a few more days. They finally put a ramp up to a trailor and placed grain and hay in the trailor and trapped him.

The owner decided all those steaks and ground beef  were not worth the effort and said he was taking the bull right back where it belonged.

Poor bull blew it. He could have stayed with the owner and endeared himself to him and perhaps escaped the grim reaper but as things stand now he's on his way to the grill. No bull!!Ciao

Over the Years

About thirty years ago a group of people that I worked with at de Paul school decided to join an exercise class. I was the oldest member of the group but I was sure that I could keep up with the "young".Janet, the school secretary was in her twenties, and the others were in their 40's I was in my early sixties and had six children. There were about five or six other members of the group that we did not know. After about three or four weeks of classes mosts of the others dropped out. We worked out at the ballet barr for the first segment of the class. We did basic ballet movements and were so crippled up the next day that we could hardly walk, let alone use the muscles necessary for sitting on the toilet. One of the original classmates that I met was named Toni. She was a newly wed and very enthused about things like makning a perfect dinner for her husband for Valentines's Day and other things of that nature. We listened and made appropriat comments. Through the years other people joined and dropped out at a rapid rate. We vowed not to commit their names to memory until they had lasted through three or four weeks. It was not a 'bunny' exercise course. We did our routines to music and tried to give every muscle a workout. If you were not tired and sore when it was over you know you had slacked off. We spent Lent doing leg lifts to "Put On Your Easter Bonnet". We went through the whole song, when the lady sings near the end we were happy to still be alive. I think we did a total of fifty leg lifts by the time the song was over. We named our routines by the name of the music that was playing. "Sugar, Sugar", "MyGuy", "The Angels Sing", lots of Michael Jackson tunes,a lot of country-western tunes and many, many, more. We had some funny things happen during the years. One girl could absolutely not lift her legs up while lying on her back, so she solved the problem by sewing 'handles' on the sweat pants to help her pull her legs up. In the early years, insted of using 'store bought' dumb bells we would put nickles in a sock and tie the sock around our leg. It worked! We bonded together. We had lots of laughs, many tears and we worked through them together. When we met for the last time, we vowed to stay in touch. Guess what? We did just that, we meet every six or eight weeks and go to dinner together and since I am pretty much home bound we get together at my house and have a great time. Sadly enough, our studio and our blood, sweat and tears has been a victim of progress.Buldozed down, the building but not our spirits.

Merry Christmas is on the Way

I have been challenged once again by my computer. I am so lacking in technological skills that I embarrass myself. I have other skills, I could jump double-dutch, I could do a comlete back-bend, I bake a great pie, I used to have a good alto singing voice and I could go on and on but when it comes to my computer I'm out and out dumb!! I have been writing blogs since about 2004 and getting along just fine with it but 'they, the mysterous dough heads' desided to 'upgrade',there-by losing me totally. I now have blogs that are floating around in cyberspace aimlessly. I have drafts that I wonder if I or anyone else will ever see again. I hate to sound so down this close to Christmas but what's a body to do? I hope that St. Nick sends someone to aid me before the year ends! (I hope Pat reads this) Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Year to all of you. I wish I could hug each and everyone of you and express my true love for you. Ciao~!!!!

Twilight Zone

I was in a world of pain when I was admitted to the hospital, so they did what they usually do in the ER, they gave me morphine. I promptly entered a zone that is not for the timid. I completely lost all contact with the real world. I heard stories of the outrageous things that I said but the dreams and night mares that I was having were frightening. Despite the fact that I was off kilter, the hospital personnel insisted on asking their routine questions. "Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?, Do you have your own teeth?" I became very perturbed by these questions and caused my family quite a bit of embarrassment when I gave non-sense answers. They would change from morphine and give me other narcotics but it did not bring me back. Finally one of the doctors said"Enough!!"No more narcotics. It was with great joy that Kristin came into my room one morning and said,"Grandma,you're back!" No more fantasies. I returned to my real self. Of course all of the family was happy to see me 'in my right mind' but a few of them insisted that I was "loopy", their word, not mine. I became very upset when I would make a statement and they would tell me that I was making it up or that I did not really know what was going on. One night, I wakened up and felt my bed moving! It was as if I was levitating. Just a smooth move across the floor and then in a minute or so I 'floated' back and a man came out from under the bed and proceded to leave my room. The next day I related the experience to my daughter and she said,"Mama, that did not happen! You just dreamed that" I insisted that I was sure that it did happen and became a little agitated that my 'sanity' was being questioned. Later on a nurse came into the room and my daughter told her of my experience. The nurse, said there had been some problem with the electric outlet and the electrician said he could handle the problem without waking me up. So in fact there was a man under my bed! I had to shoot down any ideas that I was 'Loopy'off and on during my stay. People think I'm not for real on a daily basis, you would think I'd be used to it by now but not so! I did have an evaluation while I was there in the hosp. and I passed with flying colors. So there! Ciao.

Going through Hell

Winston Churchill said, "When going through Hell, keep going." That's pretty much what I've been doing for the major part of this past year. On February 4th I entered Baptist East Hospital for surgery and stayed there for most of the next six months. I was released to a rehab center for a few weeks but returned to the hospital again. I finally got to come home at the end of June but two days later I fell and broke my hip so back into the Hospital for another month. I had a few brushes with death during that time. I think I 'coded' three times and the call out went to all family members to come home to be with me. I took Churchill's advise and just kept on going and was back in the game again before too long. The family went back to their lives and I continued on my path to recovery. Believe me it was an arduous time, it took all of my strength and tenacity to survive. I am no longer in the hospital but I am pretty much home bound. I can walk very well with my walker!I have not fully recovered yet and who knows, this could be as good as it gets at my age. Next Monday, I will be 88 years old and all of the things that you hear about growing old are all true. I cannot open anything,I can't always hear everything, my eyes are growing weary, I have gaps in my memory. I forget things for brief periods of time and then the forgotten things pop up again in my memory. Some people call those 'senior' moments, I call them Versed moments. (Versed is commonly called "milk of amnesia") I have had it so often that I think it has left me with a part time brain! The one thing I can open is a book,so I spend a lot of time reading which is my first choice of what to do when you have time on your hands. I am re-entering the Blog World and will be relaying some of the happenings of my year. Ciao