Delayed

Hey, Y'all,
What is delayed, you may ask. Well, the day before yesterday, I was doing pretty good stitching along on my little sewing machine which also does embroidery. I was doing a decorative stitch, reinforcing the binding that I had put on Will's quilt so that it would add to the beauty of it. After breaking the second machine needle on that particular step in the quilt making, the needle's thread started breaking every few stitches. I opened the plate under the needle and cleaned out all the lint I could find. Tried it again. No luck. After I got the thread to stop breaking, then the machine began making only half of the design.

After quite of reading the instruction book (no help there),I changed needles again, and put in a smaller size, and when that didn't work, I finally gave up and called a place in Dandridge that repairs machines, and he told me to bring it over.

I took it over and he called me later in the day and asked me if it was worth over $125 to me to have it repaired. I told him that I paid over 900 dollars for it, and I didn't want to have to replace it. He told me the $125 would probably cover the labor of taking it apart. He seemed to know what was wrong with it, and described the problem to me. Something loose down under the bobbin case that is not catching the needle's thread properly seemed to be the problem.

So, I went back to doing the hand stitching on the quilt on each square. I finished another square yesterday. That only leaves 23 of them to do yet. I had finished all but part of one side of the decorative stitching around the edge of the quilt.

Well, Gramps is up today, and it is not quite 8 a.m. We went to bed last night around midnight, and he seems to be staying up longer during the day. That is good. He seems to have good days and some not so good. He stubbed a toe sometime during the night before last, and it was bleeding yesterday during the day. We put some peroxide on it and he put a bandage on it. I will check it out today and see how it is doing. He can't afford to lose a toe, having only a half foot of the other foot. He needs all the balance he can get.

He may have a therapist's visit today. I need to get him into the shower this morning some time. He just doesn't like to do showers, but we don't always get what we like, I reckon. ha.

Well, he is checking his blood sugar right now, and will soon be ready to eat. This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off for now..More later. Love to each of you. Bye for now.

Caught Up

Hey, Y'all,
Another full moon last night shone in a night sky and millions of stars twinkled in accompaniment to its light. When daylight came, there was a huge frost that covered the ground like a baby snow. It was beautiful. I was up before daylight came, and barefooted it into the kitchen to begin my day. I caught up on my laundry this morning, I cleaned out the old leftovers and gathered together the trash, bagging it up in preparation for carting it off to the local dumpster/compactor. I also stopped at the post office to mail a small package for daughter, Carol's, birthday on Saturday.

I was finished with breakfast and also with emptying the dishwasher before 8:30. I was feeling great today. I did the vacuuming yesterday morning, and we had three home health care visitors yesterday. One was to discharge Gramps from the occupational therapy, another was the physical therapist who evaluated him to see if he could benefit from another round of PT, and the last was the nurse who certified that he would be getting another 60 days of PT (Physical Therapy). Whew! We certainly had our share of visitors yesterday by 2:00 p.m.

We also got to see our niece, Donna and Gramps' sister, Bonnie Jean, who came to visit around 4:30 and stayed for about 45 minutes. I hope they will be able to stay longer the next time they visit. Donna is the major caregiver of Bonnie, since Bonnie is no longer able to live alone. Bonnie is very fortunate to have such good care. We all know that the life of a caregiver is not always smooth sailing, but is rewarding in its own way.

UPDATE on Richard (Pam's husband)
It seems he is off the ventilator, and was able to call home and talk to his wife and their granddaughters, Hannah and Haley. They absolutely love their grandpa to pieces and I am sure were delighted to hear from him in person. Please continue to keep them in your prayers, because he isn't out of the woods yet, but close to the border of them.

We had a lovely visit from our good friends (and adopted family) Mark and Allie, this afternoon. She has had a terrible cough and congestion for the last three weeks.She saw her dr. this afternoon and the doc said that she has bronchitis and pewmony, and gave her some highpowered antibiotics to take.

Gramps was in bed until a little afternoon today, so he had not been up for more than an hour and a half when the PT came to see him to give him some exercise.

I had to prepare supper a little early today, so we ate about 5:00 p.m.. I fixed potato cakes from leftover mashed potatoes, made some salmon patties, and reheated some green beans that were still good. I guess we will have some dessert in a little while. (I just stopped Gramps from putting away his choppers for the night). ha. We have some leftover cake from last night and we will have that with some ice cream to accompany it. I guess I will need to make some coffee to go with it, too. We had homemade pizza last night too which was pretty good, I think.

Well, tomorrow morning I plan to begin working on Will's quilt again. I have taken a few days off from it to give my fingers and back a rest.

This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off for today. More later. Much love to each of you. Bye for now.

Happy Birthday to Matthew

Hey, Y'all,
Today is the birthday of our grandson, Matthew, and he is 25 today. I have heard it said that one's brain doesn't mature until that person reaches the age of 25. If that is true, then congratulations are truly in order for Matt! Personally, I think his brain has been quite mature for a while from many of the posts I have read of his. Matt, I hope this is a lovely day for you and one you will remember for a long time.

It has been a year and a half since I have seen Matt, but I do occasionally see pictures of him and his girl, Amy. I look forward to seeing them sometime in the spring. I also look forward to seeing the rest of the family (as does Gramps, as well.)

Speaking of Gramps, he and I had a regular breakfast this morning. I try to see that we have eggs, bacon (or ham for him when I have it), biscuits and gravy (and of course, coffee) once a week for breakfast. On other mornings he has his Cheerios, and I have my hot oatmeal with raisins, and walnuts along with a piece of toast.

After I cleaned the kitchen, I went into the living room and told Gramps that I was going down to get the paper. He wanted to know why our neighbor had so many tin cans in his yard. I looked out and saw water on the leaves, shining in the sunlight. We had a pretty heavy frost last night, and by the time he looked out, the frost was gone, leaving only water on the ground. That was what he thought were tin cans shining. Then I walked down to the road and got our Sunday paper. Last night was a clear night and when I looked out the window at 3 a.m., I saw the full moon shining brightly in the night sky. When I looked out about 6 a.m., I could no longer see the moon, but saw light from millions of tiny twinkling stars.

We are still eating left over turkey as sandwiches. They are mighty good, too. We also still have left over pumpkin pie and apple cobbler. The apple cobbler is really good when I reheat it in the microwave for a short time and then add vanilla ice cream to it. I love the pumpkin pie, too, with cool whip on top. YUM!

I am posting a picture of my family in Texas (and Illinois) which I lifted from my son-in-law's blog, and put on my computer of their Thanksgiving holiday and also celebration of Matt's birthday. Matt is the one in the white shirt, and his girl, Amy, is on the couch almost directly in front of him (she has long blonde hair).

People in the picture are: Left to right, back row: Grandson, Andrew; Son-in-law, Daryl; Grandson, Daryl; Ben, Emily's boyfriend; Granddaughter, Emily; Grandson, Matt;
Front row, left to right: Austin,( son to Dan and Whit) ; Julia (wife to Andrew) holding their daughter, Alyssa; Our daughter, Carol, (wife to Daryl) Ellie, (daughter of Dan & Whit); Whitney, wife of Daniel, holding their son Noah; Amy, Matt's girl; and Hannah, standing to the right, is Dan and Whit's oldest daughter. Naturally all the children are grandchildren of Carol and Daryl, and are our great grandchildren.
We are consumately proud of all of them and love them all dearly.

A Hardy Survivor

Hey, Y'all,
When I was headed down to the receptacle for our newspaper (which we get on Friday, Saturday and Sunday), I saw with surprise that one of my roses was still blooming. We have had some pretty cold nights recently, and it was a pleasant surprise, indeed. There were also some rosebuds, and not knowing how much longer they would last, I cut the rose and one of the larger and more open buds. I brought them in and placed them in a vase. As you can see from the picture, they are gracing our kitchen/dining room table. It was not long before I was sitting at the table with Gramps, having breakfast. Before I finished eating, I could smell the lovely scent of the rose. What a treat and a blessing! I looked at that rose and thought about what it took for that rose to survive the cold and the wind that blew constantly upon it. Isn't it wonderful that the God who gives us the grace and the hardiness to survive life's storms, also gives the same hardiness to the plants that he created to give beauty to our lives? Thank you, Lord!

Yesterday, we had dinner with Scott, Laurie, Mitch, Olivia and Gabriel, our neighbors. They brought with them the turkey (nicely roasted), mashed potatoes, squash, giblet gravy, jello with cranberries, and we already had here the green beans, rolls, dressing, pumpkin pies, and apple cobbler. Before we ate, Gramps and I recited the 100th Psalm, and then Scott led us in a prayer of Thanksgiving. Then we all dug in and had a great filling meal. We had set up the food in a buffet style on our kitchen counters because our table is not very large, and we are in really close communion around a table with 3 seats added to the four that originally came with the table. Not really crowded, just close. There is always room for more at our table.

After the lunch, (which we ate around 2:30), we cleared up the table, and loaded the dishwasher, took the table cloth off, and the guys (Scott and Gramps) retired to the living room to watch football. Laurie, the kids, and I sat down around the table to play games. We played a round of 'In a Pickle', and then played 'Apples to Apples'. By the time we were through with that game (which I won, by the way), it was time for them to leave. After splitting up the food so that we both families had some of each, they all gave me hugs and left. It had been a wonderful time for all of us.

A note on the Apple cobbler: what I did to flavor the filling, I used about a cup of orange/mango juice, a cup of flour, a half cup of sugar, some ground cloves, some ginger, (don't exactly know how much of them), mixed it all together, then added the thinly sliced apples (6 large granny smith, and 2 large gala that had been heated about 5 minutes in water on the stove after the slicing), which had been drained, and coated them with the mixture, and then poured it all into a pastry-lined 9x13 baking pan. I put some pats of butter on top in a few places. I topped it with strips of pastry and then baked it about an hour at 350 degrees. I didn't really time it, but just kind of kept my eyes on it while I worked on other stuff. It was delicious, by the way, and we will be having some more of it sometime today.

The dressing I made from cornbread that I baked early in the day (no, I didn't go back to bed yesterday morning), and from some slices of white bread that I dried in the oven at 170 degrees for a few minutes until it became hard. I crumbled both the breads and then chopped several pieces of celery and about 1/3 of a large vidalia onion, heating the onion and celery in a pan with a half stick of butter. I then added that to a bowl with 2 cans of swanson chicken broth and a cup of water, a cup of chopped english walnuts, a half/cup of dried cranberries, and some spices (dried parsley, rubbed sage, ground rosemary, ground thyme) all mixed together. Then I mixed everything together and pressed it into the pans and baked it at 350 degrees covered with aluminum foil and after about 30 minutes, I took off the foil and baked it another 15 or 20 minutes to brown some on top. I am an adventurous cook, I am afraid and rarely follow a recipe strictly. I guess that is how new recipes happen, hmmm?

Well, after the early awakening time yesterday, I went to bed around 8;30 and immediately crashed. I only woke up when I heard Gramps moving around in his bed in preparation to getting up to go for his early morning visit to the john. I got up and straightened his bed covers while he was in there. Then when he came back to the bedroom, I helped him cover up and then made my visit. I came back in and slept then until after 7 a.m. Yeay!

And folks, that is about it for today. It's been nice visiting with you. Thanks for reading my blog and much love to each of you. God is good all the time. Bye for now.

Early Morning Adventure

Hey, Y'all,
Happy Turkey Day to you all!

Dear Readers,
Early this morning, a new adventure in the Chronicles of Gramps...I was awakened at about 3:30 a.m. by a loud beeping sound. I sat up in bed and immediately thought FIRE Alarm. I got up and started through the house, looking for any sign of smoke or fire. Nothing. I got to the kitchen and saw the back door open and the porch light on. (I was running through the house in my nightgown and stocking feet). I went to the back door and looked out. There was someone sitting in my car just outside the door. I thought at first it was an old woman, because I could only see a profile, and I thought "wonder who is that old woman with the fuzzy looking hair". As I was looking and wondering, the driver's side of the car opened, and Gramps was revealed sitting there in the driver's seat.

I asked him, "What in the world are you doing out here?" He replied, "I was signaling for some help. I went to the bathroom, and was looking for the path. I was afraid the dogs were loose, so I got into the car and blew the horn." He had the flashlight in his right hand, and apparently had taken it with him outside or had found it in the car. I keep one in the rider's side of the car. (Thank goodness the neighbor has dogs that stay alert..otherwise, Gramps could be missing by now!)

"Did you use the bathroom outside?" I asked him. He answered, "No, I used it in there, but couldn't find the way back to the bed. I need some help."

I gave him my hand to hold on to to get him back into the house. He was in his stocking feet as well, and his feet are too tender to walk on even the carport or up the ramp. Anyway, I helped him back to bed, and covered him up and so now he is sleeping. What a way to wake up! (Thank you, Jesus, for looking after him for us!)

I tried to go back to sleep but couldn't, so I decided to go ahead and get started on baking the pies I should have baked last night, but was too tired to. Man! I was sleeping so good! I was kind of keyed up and had difficulty getting to sleep because I was anticipating what I had to do today. I KNEW I should have done my baking yesterday! Ha.

So at 4:30, I got up and began my baking. First, I baked the cornbread for the dressing I will be making later today, then got out the filling for the pumpkin pies. I mixed up the filling before going to bed, so it was ready to pour into the 2 pie shells. When I took out the cornbread, I put the pies into the oven because they were to begin baking at the same temperature as the cornbread baked.

Then when I started to begin the apple pies, I remembered I had used all the ground cinnamon that I had in the pumpkin pies, I realized I would have to wait until later to do the apple pies, and borrow some cinnamon from Laurie, or just substitute cloves. I may just be creative and use cloves and ginger and make an apple pan cobbler instead. We will see. Right now the pumpkin pies are baking at the reduced temperature of 350 degrees. I had to begin them at 425 and then turn down temp to 350 and cook an additional 45-50 minutes.

We had a really good time on Monday evening with Scott, Laurie and their 3 children. I had made a big pot of potato soup and we ate it all. Then we had the German chocolate cake and ate half of that and sent the rest home with them, because we certainly didn't need that, with Gramps being diabetic and me trying to keep my girlish figure. Ha.

Tuesday and Wednesday passed fairly uneventfully. Gramps' therapists came to see him and work with him, and we found out yesterday that they are discharging him for right now from Home Health care, because he has reached the potential for improvement. I can't tell any real difference in his strength, but maybe they can.

I did get my little 32"tall fiberoptic revolving Christmas tree out of the basement, along with the string of lights that go across my fireplace mantle. I also put together two end tables that I purchased at the "gettin' place" (Wally world). I placed the tree on one and the living room phone on the other one. I had borrowed the end table that the phone had been on in order to put it beside my bed so I could put the touch lamp on it.

I think I have told you about Gramps' obsession that he has some of his collectible cars in the basement and was insisting that he had seen them down there. When our neighbor's son, Mitch, came over yesterday to empty the water from the basement dehumidifier, I said, "Okay, let's go down and you can look for them (the cars)". So we very carefully went down the steps, he was holding on carefully to the railing on each side, and I followed him down. Mitch preceded us, and waited at the foot of the steps. When Gramps got down there, he looked around and said, "what happened to all the stuff that was down here?"

"This is all that was down here," I replied. "There wasn't anything else down here, but look around and you will see that there are no little cars down here." He proceeded to look at all the empty boxes that are stacked down there on the two folding tables. He finally agreed that there were no cars to be seen down there, but stated he would go back down anytime he wanted to. Well, as the saying goes, "Baby, that ain't gonna happen". As I told you earlier, there is now a padlock on the door to the basement, and I have the key on my keychain, and he has no idea where the key is to the padlock if he has even noticed the padlock.

An UPDATE on Pam's husband ----Donna called me last night about 10 p.m. with the news that they thought he had experienced a blood clot, but couldn't find evidence of one. However, they discovered that he has developed pneumonia, and so have put him back on the ventilator and are giving him medication for the pneumonia. Please continue to pray for them. It is a very difficult time for them. Their grandchildren, Hannah and Haley, think there is no one like their grandpa, and understandably are quite upset.

It is now closed to 6 a.m. and the pumpkin pies are almost done. I will be taking them out of the oven soon and maybe going back to bed for a while and see if I can sleep some more. This is Blabbin' Grammy wishing each of you a blessed Thanksgiving Day and signing off for now. Reports later on how this day progressed and finished up. Love to each of you, my friends. Bye for now.

Winter is Near

Hey, Y'all,

From the looks of the weather outside and from what the newscasters are reporting, November weather is finally here. I know we are going to miss the mild days that we have been enjoying here in East Tennessee over the past few weeks. This is a very quiet morning. I was up at 7:15, and stitching for about an hour on Will's quilt. It has 36 squares, each with a flower on it, and I am hand stitching around each flower. So far I have done 4 of them since Monday, and had already done 6 of them before I started working on the quilt after my summer's illness. So there are 26 to go, including the square I am working on now. It takes a good day's work to do one, so, guess I won't get it finished for Christmas. Hmmmm.

GRAMPS (UPDATE)

Well, Gramps lately has begun talking about buying a car and getting a job. He seems to think that he is capable of working an all day job, and driving again. He also believes that he just recently retired, even though it has been 21 years since he taught school. He believs that it has only been a couple of weeks since he worked at a job in a wholesale warehouse when it was actually at least 47 or 48 years ago. He, of course, is not thinking rationally. I believe he would be happy to be living back at the assisted living facility if I were there with him. I am just not ready to do that yet.

I asked him if he would be interested in standing at the door of Wal-mart and saying "welcome to walmart" and he said, "no, I can't stand up that long". He seems to think he could work at a local brickyard that was in operation over 20 years ago. He said he had been offered a job there by one of the other teachers whose family owned the brickyard. Of course, this offer was made before he retired, and it is no longer in business. It keeps me busy thinking of replies to make to ward off his ideas.

He says some really amusing things sometimes, and every once in a while his former wit still comes shining through. He has a difficult time of getting out of his covers to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I will give him encouragement sometimes like, "keep moving, keep moving". He will ask me which way to the bathroom and I will say, "just head for the light". (we keep a night light on in the bathroom and we can see the light from it in our doorway. Well, the other night I was saying, "keep moving, honey, keep moving". He said, "I don't need a cheerleader!" ha I just had to laugh to myself.

I recently put a small end table beside my bed, and placed a touch lamp on it so that when he needs to get up or get back in bed, I can turn it on with a simple touch. Of course, I am always awakened when he gets up. He really gives his bed covers a rough time of it, too, and they never stay tucked in at the end of the bed. He wraps up in them and becomes entangled in them.

RICHARD (PAM'S HUSBAND)

The other night, we got a call from our niece, Donna, that her sister, Pam, had just taken her husband, Richard, to the emergency room at Jefferson City, with a heart attack. They then took him by Lifestar Helicopter service to the St. Mary's hospital in Knoxville. At Knoxville they immediately took him into surgery and using angioplasty, removed blockage from one of his arteries which had 100% blockage, placed him on a ventilator, and as I understand it, he was still on ventilator last night, and had been running a fever of 104, but it had come down to 102. Please pray for him, and I will keep you updated. He still has blockage in another artery of 75%, and they will probably do another angioplasty on that one when he becomss stabilized. Thanks for your prayers.

THANKSGIVING INVITATION

Well, on Thursday, we went up to Terrace Estates around 4:30 to have Thanksgiving supper with a lot of people who had been invited (as we were) also. It was wonderful to see so many of the people we had met in August and had become friends with. The whole driveway was filled with cars, and when we saw how many people were there, I realized that they had a big job on their hands to feed them all. I think there must have been close to 200 people fed that evening and all were served within an hour's time! Tables had been set up in both the dining hall and in the living room area. It was amazing.

MOVIE DAY

Yesterday (Saturday) was movie day, and instead of going out to eat, I decided to take dinner to eat at Imazo's. I stopped at the Cracker Barrel and picked up chicken salad sandwiches, and stopped at Food City and picked up some apple danishes for dessert. Imazo made a pot of coffee and we sat down at her dining room table and had lunch. She and Mae started talking about they needed some groceries, and had no way to get them, so I said, "I'll just take you all to get groceries and Dub can stay here and watch television. We can see the movie next week." Mae said, "I don't think I want to go, I am too tired today to go. I can stay here with Dub and watch the movie with him".

So while Imazo made out her list of what to get, I went in and set up the movie for them to watch (being the media expert - the only one who knows how to set it up- among them). Well, they are both hard of hearing and so I set the sound to where I thought they could both hear it. Imazo and I left then to go to the grocery store. When we got back, I discovered that, yes, they could both hear it and it was too loud. They couldn't find the control to turn it down, and it was about to drive them nuts. Imazo's remote doesn't work, so they couldn't use that. Poor people, what a revoltin' development that was!

Well, that is about it for today. Gramps (aka Dub) is just up, and it is time to see to his needs. There is a full, (really full) basket of laundry to fold and put away, too, along with a cake to bake for tomorrow's supper with the neighbors. I am making Potato soup and baking cornbread muffins to eat with it. Dessert will be a simple sheet cake of german chocolate with cream cheese frosting. (Ice cream to go with it if wished for). Tomorrow, I will be picking up the turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner which Laurie my neighbor will be roasting for our shared dinner on Thursday.

This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off for today. Much love to each of you. Bye for now. More later.

Just Stuff

Hey, Y'all,
This is Tuesday evening and all is quiet (kind of - if you can count two tevee's going). Gramps is in bed for the night - after having taken a 4 hour nap this afternoon - and is watching tevee from his bed. Yesterday and today have been beautiful unseasonable weather days. Tomorrow is supposed to be cool and drizzly.

Yesterday and today I have spent several hours doing handstitching on Will's quilt. It is a really BIG quilt and quite unwieldy, but manageable. By the time I get through wagging it around, it will have to be laundered. That will be the last thing I do with it until it is packed up and mailed (probably to his mom so she can see it before sending it on to him). I will certainly post a picture of it before mailing it.

Yesterday we had our neighbors down to supper and we had a really great time and we played "Aggravation" while they were here. Scott, the dad, put a padlock on the basement door so that Gramps would not be able to go down there when I am not here. I just can't take the chance that he would decide to try to go down there and fall on the way down. He has recently decided that he was pushed out of his job teaching and made to retire. Not so. He can't remember how long he has been retired, but he says he is still getting paid. ha. And that is true.

This morning I went to my eye doctor and after a couple of tests, was pronounced no bad change in my eye condition. Thank you, Jesus!

I had called a septic tank drain company yesterday to come and drain our septic tank, and they came near noon today. They had to search around to find the septic tank and finally located it near the edge of the property near the fence row to the right of our house (looking out of the house's front). It took them about a couple of hours to do all of the digging and draining, and then they left. I sat out in the sunshine and watched their progress. I also cleaned the dead hummingbird vine off the hummingbird feeder pole.

I met with my neighbor, Laurie, this afternoon and we planned our Thanksgiving meal. She is going to prepare some of it and I will prepare some of it. Then they will bring their part down here and we will all pig out together. Ha. They are such wonderful people!

Well, that is about all for now. Here are some more pictures from last Sunday celebrating Mae's 90th birthday. (l)Mae prepares to blow out the candle on her birthday cake; (2) Mae's great grandchild with grandmother, Doris; (3) Mike (nephew and son of my brother, Ralph) standing by Lisa (Mae's granddaughter);
(4) My cousin, Cheryl, talking with Mae.

For supper tonight, I put a Stouffer's lasagna into the oven and then woke Gramps up to share it with me, and put the leftover into the fridge for sometime tomorrow.

Well, folks, that is about it for now. This is Blabbin' Grammy signing off for now. Much love to all of you. More later. Bye for now.