Take this cold and shove it

Today is day four of this miserable cold and I am ready for it to be over with. I don't have patience for feeling so lousy. I am sure it is God's way of telling me to slow down and rest, but I am so tired of resting that I now can't sleep at night. It was almost 3:30 this morning until I fell asleep. And now I am tired from a lack of sleep and miserable with this dang cold. And once again, I was not able to make morning mass. So I will spend another day taking it easy, doing smmall things around the house and catching a nap when I can.

Is there a patron saint for colds?

Happy Anniversary Hub

Happy 20th Anniversary to my special guy. Yes, we have been married for 20 years today. My how time flies when you are having fun.

And how did we spend our anniversary? Did we go out to dinner? No. Did we go to a movie? No. Did we spend the evening locked in each others arms? No.

No, we spent our anniversary at opposite ends of the sofa as I have a killer cold. And this is one thing I don't want to share with him. You see, he has had three bouts with pneumonia since late summer, and as much as I love him, I think I'll be selfish and keep the cold to myself.

Love you - always and forever!

Ground control to Major Mom.....

This is me on board the helicopter high above the Grand Canyon.
(I know I look goofy, but the camera only takes what is in front of it!)

Pictures of our Grand Canyon Adventure

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll spare you my ramblings and let the pictures speak for themselves.


A view of Joshua Tree Forest.



Hoover Dam looking into Lake Mead. The white rim indicates the low water level and the level is dropping every year.



The magnificent structure that is the Hoover Dam.


The Grand Canyon as viewed from our helicopter ride.

I've been to Vegas

I've been on a blogging holiday. I just got back last night from Las Vegas. It was a great getaway with my husband, son and our good friends and their son. We met this couple on our honeymoon almost twenty years ago. Over the years our friendship has developed into more than friends - we are like family.

We met on the second or third day of our honeymoon. We went to an all inclusive resort for couples only. We were seated together at dinner and through the course of the meal, discovered that we had quite a bit in common, including getting married on the same day at the same time and that we were all Catholic. J, like me, has two older brothers and no sisters. She and I and my husband are all the same age, while F is a few years older.

Through the week we spent time together at the beach and at meals. One night we ventured off the resort to dine in a five star restaurant located at the top of a mountain on the island. The ride there and back was an experience in itself - narrow Caribbean roads, no guard rails and it was raining. At the end of the week, we exchanged addresses and vowed to keep in touch. And we did. And the rest is history. And even though they live in Connecticut, we manage to see each other a few times a year and now that our son is in Connecticut at college (J's alma mater!) we see them even more often. And while our son is a college freshman, the are just beginning their journey as their son is in first grade. And the two boys are like brothers, a relationship that the four of us are thankful for.

So we journeyed to Las Vegas to celebrate our 20th anniversary with our boys in tow. The highlight of our trip was a day trip to the Grand Canyon. We went by SUV to the canyon and toured the canyon by helicopter. I was a little nervous as I had never been in a helicopter before, but it was great! And I can't wait to go back and do it again. We are already planning another trip there, but this time to the Arizona side (Vegas was too much for me!) for another perspective.

I hope to post pictures as soon as I get a hold of the camera and download them.

Homeboy

Archbishop John Foley will become a Cardinal soon. As a native of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, there is much pride in this local priest being elevated to Cardinal.There was a very good article on him in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday.



Friends from Philadelphia converted a Phillies baseball cap into a personalized zuchetto. Bet you won't find anything like this in Rome!

You know your boss went to Catholic School when.....

Barb had a cute post on how to know that your child goes to Catholic school. That reminded me of something that happened many moons ago, before husband and child, when I was a member of the "paying workforce."

I worked in the corporate office of a family owned company. My boss, who is still a good friend some twenty-four years later, had given me a project to do. Upon completion, I put together a packet of information (remember, that was at a time when PC's were just making it into the work place and the Internet was something used to catch fish between two boats and we had to do things the old fashioned way - on paper with a pen or pencil). As I was putting together a cover sheet with some notes for him I had the "bright" idea to head the paper as I had done many times in my Catholic school career. So at the top of the paper, I made the following notation: +JMJ+, along with our name, the date, the subject and the name of the school. Of course, I made up the school name using the company name. I knew he had gone to Catholic school as on holy days, he and I and one other person in the office would attend noon mass at OLPH. I left the paper work on his desk, as he was out of the office and waited patiently for him to return.

About an hour or so later, he returned to his desk and within a few minutes I heard the howl of laughter emanate from his office. This was followed by footsteps and his smiling face in the doorway of my office as he held up the paper and laughed. He, too, had to head his papers the same way and hadn't thought about it for ages. We shared a few of our "finer" moments from school and stories of our "favorite" nuns before returning to work. I was glad that even though it was the corporate office, it was a small one and there weren't many people in it. Because there were only one other person in the office who were Catholic and would have gotten the meaning of +JMJ+.

College Laundry

I was talking with my son on the phone today. I don't get to talk with him often as he is one busy college freshman. He is a member of the student senate and the crew team and has quite a bit of work with his classes. Because he is a freshman and on a sports team, he is required to spend eight hours a week in a "study hall" which means that eight hours a week he must report to a room on campus, sign in and study there, thus assuring the school that athletes study at least eight hours a week. Thus, there aren't many hours in the week for mom.

But back to the topic. While speaking with him today, he told me that he was doing his laundry today. He told me he had to wait almost an hour to get a dryer because they were all filled with clothes that people left there. When asked why he didn't just take them out and put them on a table or on top of a dryer, he told me that he couldn't because they were filled with girls clothes and he didn't want to be caught pulling female underclothes out of the dryer.

Now that got me thinking about the laundry room in college. For the first two years, the dorm that I lived in was an all girl dorm. My third, and final year of both college and living in the dorm (yes, I was one of those crazy people who rushed through school and completed it in three years so I could begin my work career - if I only knew then what I know now....), the dorm became a co-ed one and that changed things.

Each floor in the dorm had its own laundry room and I spent a lot of time there. I learned early in my freshman year that the laundry room was about the quietest place to study in the dorm. It was warm there, and most people didn't hang around listening to the whirl of the washers and the thump-thump of the dryers. I found this to be the closest thing to "white noise" on campus. I would head there with my cup of tea or soda armed with text and note books and a highlighter to study in peace and quiet. Until my last year. When the guys moved in.

Suddenly the laundry room wasn't quiet until ten or eleven at night. And the guys were not good about changing their wash, or emptying the dryer or even picking up their clothes that someone had emptied in order to use a machine. They weren't quiet when they came in and if they saw you studying, it made them louder.

I don't know what the laundry room at my son's school is like. I was only in his dorm room briefly on move in day and when we took him back to school Columbus weekend. And I didn't get the tour of the rest of the facilities in the dorm. But I know that he occasionally does his wash. Because the two weekends he was home, his clothes were clean and his duffel bag didn't smell like dirty clothes.

Prayers requested

Please remember Michele in your prayers. She has pleruisy and is quite ill. And for her mother-in-law who has terminal cancer.

My husband could have predicted this result

You Are Totally Like Your Mom

You and your mom are practically clones. You think alike, and you even seem to read each other's minds. You're definitely you're mother's child... and that's just fine with you.

Are You Like Your Mom?

My husband often comments that he married his mother-in-law. Many might see this as a dig at his mother-in-law, but secretly, I think he's glad I'm so much like her - she's a fun lady who can take his ribbing - and give it right back to him.

Something to consider when you write your Christmas cards

(A friend passed this on to me and I thought I would share it with anyone who reads my blog:

When you are writing out your Christmas cards this year, please consider sending a card to one of our injured military service persons. You can address it as follows:

A Recovering American soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue,NW
Washington,D.C. 20307-5001

Your kindness will brighten the day for some deserving service person.)

NOTE: Barb let me know that sending mail this way won't get to the soldiers. She sent me this link: http://gijunecleaver.blogspot.com/2007/11/send-christmasgreeting-to-wounded.html for ideas of how to help.

This request reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in a town that had an Army Hospital and my neighbor's job was to transport soldiers from Ft. Dix in NJ to the Army Hospital about an hour and a half away in PA. His wife was our Brownie Scout leader and for many holidays, like Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Fourth of July and others, our troop would make tissue flowers, tint the edges in a color appropriate for the holiday and her husband would distribute them to the soldiers that he transported. It was a small and seemingly insignificant thing to do, but it brightened the day for many men who were returning from Vietnam who were missing limbs, were scarred or needed rehabilitation from their injuries.

Why I will never be a "crazy cat lady!"

The past two weeks I have been helping to take care of the cats that belong to Sister C and the late Sister R. Sister C is at the mother house for a few weeks. Besides dealing with losing her best friend Sister R, she had already scheduled cataract surgery so she is staying there while she has the surgery and for her recuperation period. So my friend N and I are taking care of the "convent cats."

Now I have never been a fan of cats. When I was 8 or 9 I was visiting a farm with Brownie Scouts and was scratched (and traumatized) by a kitten. It was at that time that I swore off cats. Besides, I had a dog at home and I preferred the companionship of a dog to the aloofness of a cat.

As far as the care that cats need, I have always heard that cats are easier to take care of than dogs. No way. I may have a high maintenance dog with her allergies, two leg surgeries and and having to take her to get groomed, but to me, they pale in comparison to dealing with litter boxes. Dogs can be easily taken care of with a plastic bag (I use the ones the newspapers come in) and you don't have to deal with clumps of nasty smelling litter from their liquid waste.

I will gladly help to take care of these cats, but under no circumstances will I have one in my home. I am a "dog person" through and through.