Four Years Ago

Four years ago I was disappointed. Actually more than disappointed. I was upset that a person I believed was entirely inappropriate for a leadership position of any kind was elected the president of the United States of America. 

I was a stay-at-home gramma. I had left my job before retirement when my mother was diagnosed with ALS and then, after her death, my father contracted cancer, suffered from congestive heart failure and had a massive stroke. When he died, my daughter-in-law went back to work and I had a baby. I went to church and walked with the stroller. My circle was small. 

My niece referred me to a "secret" Facebook group, women of a certain age who were privately venting and crying about concerns. And from that group I found information about the Women's March in Washington DC. I wanted to go. I wanted to speak. 

I found a bus leaving for Washington the day after the inauguration. We were not disrupting the process set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America. We were not going  for any violent end. We were exercising our first amendment right to speak at a permitted venue with a permit to do so. The next weeks were filled with posts with important information. As numbers increased, I would donate more money to fundraisers for port a potties. 

I felt I was the only person I knew in my small town who felt as I did so I bought a ticket for one on a bus leaving at 1 am from an airport two hours from my home. My family expressed lots of concern, but I was going.  A few weeks later a bus was added only 45 minutes from my home and I was able to sell ticket one and purchase a ticket on Bus 2.  

I went to the bus at 11 pm one evening with my apron with the slogan "Women go higher than rude, crude and lewd" and a piece of cardboard. I met about 60 men and women from this small college town, most older than myself. It was the senior bus! I sat with a lovely retired bookkeeper named Daisie who was concerned about the repeal of Obamacare affecting her adult son with autism. 

We arrived in Washington DC - not that easily. Our bus broke down on a highway in some state somewhere around 4 am. After waiting over an hour with no repair person, our driver got on his CB and had other buses with an empty seat or two stop to pick us up in small groups. The bus Daisie and I were on got lost in Washington, threw up his hands and dropped us off in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Neither of us had ever been to Washington, but the local people were more than gracious and pointed us in the right direction. 

We walked for 10-12 hours that day, mostly nonstop. We saw college students, young mothers with babies, groups of teachers and nurses, older women such as ourselves. Everyone was respectful, helpful and kind. Many of us had brought extra trash bags for garbage. We were all "that kind" of person. We shared provisions, talked to everyone, took millions of pictures. But we never even got close to the program or the  march. There were so many women! We did march, we walked in a tight crowd on a parallel street about 3 streets over from the "real" march. Police officers and security were wonderful with questions and directing us. We were all respectful and grateful. 

Our day was not over since we had to find what happened to our bus home. A very nice woman in a uniform showed us how to find the metro that went straight to the parking lot where we hoped our bus would be parked. We finally got to sit down for about 30 minutes. We went to a lot where there were thousands of buses. After almost an hour - we found our bus! 

We drove home to a snowstorm and I got to navigate my way to my house where my nervous family were holding a vigil. The cell phone reception in Washington DC is awful and my phone was dead by the ride home. 

It was the most meaningful day in my life (okay after marriage and childbirth). I stood up for my opinion in a legal and meaningful way. What happened today in the Capital of our Country is worse than what I could ever witness. I will never forget the pictures from today. I will never forget the sadness and how sickening it was. I will never forgive my neighbors, friends and church family who rode those buses today. Yesterday was one of the worst days in the history of this country. 

Christmas Leftovers

Cleaning out the phone camera today and I found my quintessential Christmas Photo. A table set for four with only two diners, each with a computer screen ready for zooming with grandchildren while using our phones to log into the games the ten year old twins created. I have artfully hidden the power strip behind the centerpiece made for me by my eight year old grandson. 

I tried to fancy it up as much as possible. 

I thought it might be fun on Christmas eve if Mr. Merry and myself played a taste testing game with these Christmas flavored seltzers. The first flavor was Gingerbread which my husband felt tasted like the inside of a garage. 

 Our next flavor was Cranberry.  Mr. Merry felt this one tasted like kerosene. We enjoyed sips of this beverage while watching "Who's the Boss" as part of our 1970/1980 Christmas Sitcom Marathon. 

I still have second cans of these flavors as well as two cans each of the Peppermint and Green Apple.  Personally I found these pretty flavorless but tolerable. We did not repeat this exercise for New Years Eve. We had an icy rain storm over night and I was sipping decaf tea to keep warm. 

2020 Can't Say I Am Sorry to See You Go

Doesn't it seem like last New Year's Day was a decade ago? I went looking for photos and it just seems like forever. 

We babysit for some of our younger grandchildren and the baby had turned six months old. We decided it was time to leave the house and went on our first Friday Field Trip.  We took the kids out to lunch (first time for the baby in a high chair), and took our strollers to an indoor Lawn and Garden Show.  Unfortunately the next week had ice on the roads, so we stayed home. 

Instead of a field trip, I made peanut butter sandwiches and stepped into my kitchen. What used to be a straight bone in my upper arm turned into a displaced spiral fracture, my first ambulance ride, five hours in Room One of the Trauma Unit (I heard them say we are running red on their little radios), six days packed in ice, a six and a half hour surgery and an unexpected hospital stay. 

First week of lockdown. I would like to thank the United States of America for forbidding anyone I know from coming to visit me. 

Me, the next three months of a global pandemic. Still grateful for no visitors and extremely grateful to my husband who dressed me, fed me and assisted me on walks to the bathroom. Due to the pandemic, the physical therapy department of our hospital was closed so I developed a frozen shoulder in addition to the slowly healing arm and could barely move. And didn't move.

Easter

Birthdays - Yes I am wearing a hat. Still could not raise a hair brush to my head. My husband is wearing one, not as a compassionate man, but as a person making fun of me. 

Homeschool because parents still have to work. 

By September I had discovered zoom tea parties and combed hair. 

And by the time the parents contracted Covid, I was able to comb my hair and host an online storytime for quarantined grandchlldren. 

Thanksgving. You can see how this is going. 

Christmas. I love this screenshot. The top couch has missing parents chasing 3 preschoolers, we have lost one screen with me, another screen with my son-in-law and grandson, a screen with the guy on the top right's parents and brother and my husband is scratching his nose. And don't the rest look thrilled. 

Our small county has now increased to 75-100 cases a day. At a neighborhood church they had more deaths in last 10 days than all of 2019 (not all Covid related - death rates are just up).  Our governor has asked schools to remain closed an additional two weeks after Christmas, but schools systems around us are going back full time or at best, hybrid for a few days a week.  I am not sure when we will ever get a handle on this.  The big news is that our county is now going to set up it's first testing center. Previously you had to contact a doctor, get a prescription for a test, make an appointment for the days that hospital does tests and then go for your appointment.  The new testing center will be open one day a week with no appointments or test orders required. So we are only 8-10 months  behind the curve.  Bah Humbug. 

Here's to a brighter 2021!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Let's see who is smarter this week Will it be Miss Merry or the new Blogger? 

Santa is having a rough year. Perhaps you see the dollhouse behind Santa? Is it wrapped because of Covid? Or is it wrapped in plastic because of tiny fingers? Hmm. 

I decorated a few rooms. I had hidden some of my dollhouse Christmas decorations, apparently from myself. I am sure I will find them in January.

The dollhouse is a little rough. It was built in the 1970's by my father in law. It first went to my sister in law, then was her young daughter's toy. It came to me and the grandchildren can't stay away from it. It normally houses plastic furniture and we are waiting until they outgrow it until we restore it. 

Somehow the saran wrap that I wrapped around the house is still working as we enter week two! 

We loaded the car with grandchildren and went to visit a socially distance Santa. Our town normally has a big tree lighting event. This year it was a drive thru with reindeer (from a local reindeer farm), Elsa and Anna from Frozen, a church with carryout cocoa and an elf who transported your letter from the car window to Santa. My grandkids loved it!  

In previous years the city would truck in a huge tree, they would close Main Street and we did a countdown for lighting. This year the hospital donated a rooted live tree which was planted (and will grow) and it was lighted overnight. We went up with these two on a warm night in late November. 

The same night we went to see the tree, we stuck them in strollers and walked up and down both sides of the street to see the wonderful store windows all the businesses decorated this year. 

This is the first year that all the windows have been decorated and it was really wonderful. Someone asked me how many people were walking on that warm evening. We were the only family. 

I have at least 25 or 30 window photos, so I will stop now. 

It snowed. 

This guy needed a break from two baby brothers so we took him to look at a yard with an amazing model railroad and amusement park. The homeowner spent over 200 hours setting it all up. 

The small village just west of us has a factory now used as a very cool industrial furniture reclamation warehouse type business. Santa rents it for the month of December as an annex to his workshop. The elves on the opposite side of the building are animated! 

Since Christmas will be a zoom event this year, I did not need to put the leaves in my dining room table. This made room for my pink tree!  And I set the table with my pretty dishes since no one will really be sitting there. 

I haven't decided which plates to stick with yet. Perhaps I will iron some tablecloths, too. 

Aww, less wrinkled. 

One day I even baked bread. I told my four year old daughter "Look, Mimi can bake bread", she said "Mimi, don't you know grampa can just buy it at the grocery store?"

So that's what I have been up to. I guess I will press publish and see what size fonts appear!