Memory Monday

Thank for the well wishes. Cataract surgery went fine. I was shocked at how painless it was.  Now three weeks of eye drops. 

It seems like we are crazy busy around here (mostly doctor appointments) and we have three more this week. But I still had the envelope of 1970's photos on my desk so we are stuck with those. 

I am starting with this one of me reading the newspaper since my last post had me on this floor reading the newspaper. I read the newspaper a lot in the 1970's. The table in front of the couch was my play table when I was little and is in my house right now and the wooden piano stool in front of the window is beside my chair and holding my coffee. 

I remember this gray coat and gray and white shift dress that I wore once for Easter.  I am not sure who bought it because I look horrible and gray when I wear gray.  But don't my legs look long? This is an optical illusion. 

This is me spreading a table cloth at a picnic. I hate picnics and had a phobia of bugs on food as a teenager.  There seem to be a lot of photos of me at picnics. I'm not sure if we were picnickers or they wanted to torture me. The man is my uncle from Illinois, my cousin Claire is in the white tee shirt, by the process of elimination I think the orange shirt is my cousin Simon and my Aunt Mary Ellen is on the opposite side of the table. 

My uncle, my aunt, my father and me with those long legs which are an optical illusion.  These also show my uniform headscarf that I wore from 1969-1971.  

Trading the kerchief for a floppy hat, I appear to be making s'mores with my cousin Claire. As a hoarder I swear I'm telling the truth when I say I still have this hat. It has red, white and blue designs with a white reversible side and my daughters and granddaughters have worn it, too. 

1971. Me scrubbing the roof of my dad's sailboat.  I believe this could be the last time I was on a boat. I am not a water person either.  

I do not remember ever scrubbing the boat but I do remember the bikini which was a dark orange with a yellow paisley print.  I do not still own the bikini. 

February Tea Party

I am scheduled for cataract surgery on Tuesday February 24 so I am scheduling this to post on Wednesday. I am not sure how well I will be able to see during the week and I have some other stuff going on but I hope to be back soon!

We finally were able to attend a tea party at the new catering facility in a nearby town! My granddaughter thought she was coming to tea at Mimi's house and was surprised that we were going somewhere even more fancy! 

That is a Valentine's tree.  We were the only group wearing hats. I think some need an education in tea parties! 

This is for one person. We all got our own tiered tray. They require you preorder and prepay for the tea.  I reserved three adult teas. The host who seated us told me that I could switch my granddaughter to the "princess" tea which had peanut butter and jelly and some treats for a lesser price.  I told her we would keep the adult teas. 

When we each got our individual pots of tea they again offered to switch her to the child's tea. This princess was not going to trade a three tiered tray for a plate of peanut butter and jelly!  (it was nice of them to offer the alternative). 

Even water tastes better in a glass goblet! 

She was not wild about the tea, but next time we can substitute hot cocoa.  This is a nice photo of the savories on the bottom tier. There are Egg Salad Sandwiches on white bread, a Cheddar Bacon Scone, Turkey and Honey Creme Fraiche on White Bread and Prosciutto with Caramelized Onion Jam and Apple on wheat bread. 

The middle tier had a Blueberry Scone, a Strawberry Cheesecake with the most delicious strawberry, and a Raspberry Swirl Cupcake with a Heart Macaroon. 

And the top tier featured an Expresso Chocolate Cake, an Almond Layer Tea Cake, and a Chocolate Dipped Cannoli. 

As experienced Tea Partiers we looked over the selection and decided what needed to be eaten fresh and what would travel well.  We all tried one of each sandwich, we ate the cheesecake and raspberry cupcake and macaroon and cut the scones and ate half.  

They had lovely little boxes and my granddaughter is looking forward to showing off her leftovers in the school lunchroom tomorrow! 

The total cost for the adult tea is $32 which I thought was reasonable for the experience, the pot of tea and all the foods which were homemade in house.  It was a special treat and I am sure we will go again in the coming months. 

Another nice feature they offer is that you can also order from a special brunch menu instead of ordering the tea.  If I could talk Mr Merry into attending, he could even order a burger instead of tea.  We will see if that can happen.  

Memory Monday

This week's edition will feature me! We are currently under a Level 2 snow emergency and I am very concerned school will be cancelled tomorrow. 

 Shoveling snow in January 1966. Showing that I have always been partial to a large hat and also that, despite being the only girl with two brothers, I was the one who was shoveling. 

This was a house we lived in for one year on Woodlawn.  We moved there from a Cape Cod style house across the street. (not pictured) And a year later we moved across town to this house. 

We moved from a 1950's rambler to an 1874 Victorian.  I am standing by the back porch with what looks like ice skates.  My friend Judy lived two doors down and her dad would flood the driveway during the winter to create an ice rink.  I do wonder why I am wearing a skirt. I am wearing another big hat.

Why did we move so often? I'm not sure.  My  mom liked to look at houses for sale and we were constantly putting our house up for sale and moving to a different street in our small town.  My parents were not "flippers". They did not remodel or update houses, they just moved. Once, in my Sunday School class of six first graders, two of the students lived in houses I used to live in. 

Mr Merry and I bought our house in December of 1978 and still live here. 

February

 

February. On days we don't have a snow day or days when we don't have a two hour fog delay, we eat breakfast and wait for the school bus. 

Then we drive to the recreation center and change our shoes to walk the track which goes around the upper part of the basketball courts. On a warm morning we tried to become street walkers, but between raised sidewalks from tree roots and piles of dog poo, we decided we are indoor walkers. 

Between the old man's bursitis and the old lady's issues, we walk very slowly. Very very slowly. 

One Friday I did not have any medical appointments so we went to the egg farm. It was Amish baked goods day. 

We bought a small plate with four chocolate chip cookies. 

Then we went to the home improvement store. 

Since it was a Friday and it is lent and since we were out of town where there are restaurants, I talked him into lunch at Red Lobster. 

Pretty sure this has my sodium allotment for the month. 

As did my Trader Joe Asian dinner for Valentine's Day.  

I have spent the weekend rounding up my vintage hats. I am short one large hat box with at least three hats I can name.  I am taking my youngest daughter and youngest granddaughter to the new restaurant with Sunday Tea that I had hoped to attend in January.  I am sure I will not be sticking to my diet there either. 

Last Monday I visited the pulmonary specialist who sent me for a pulmonary function test on Wednesday. I thought I aced the test since I am breathing better than I have in a long time. Apparently I am "trapping air" in my lungs, whatever that means.  This Monday I am back at the cardiologist and maybe he will know.  Then Tuesday I have my left eye cataract surgery.  

The track is closed Sunday for a big volleyball tournament. I am will be walking on Monday morning before my appointment and Tuesday morning before my eye surgery. Wednesday morning I have to go back to the eye doctor so he can check whatever.  

So that is what I have been up to.  Eating, walking and going to doctor appointments.  

Memory Monday

I have given up on any rhyme or reason for Memory Monday. So here is this week's entry. 

I was sitting home Friday night when I got a text from my friend Diane who is past president of our local genealogy society and who is a distant cousin. She was at her grandson's basketball game and was talking to another grandmother whose grandson is a Perry. 

My Great Great Grandparents Sarah Perry
and William T Snyder

Diane and I are related through the Snyder Family. She and the other gramma were wondering (at the basketball game) if I would look up how the Perrys and the Snyders are related.  

And of course I knew off the top of my head. 

My 2nd great grandfather William Snyder was married to Sarah Perry and his sister Mary Snyder was married to Sarah's uncle COH Perry and my friend Diane's 2nd great grandmother was William and Mary's sister Francis. Got all that? 

Mary Elizabeth Snyder and Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry

I don't have a photo of sister Francis Snyder and her husband George Ruggles, Diane's branch. 

It's funny because my grandmother talked about all these people and I actually feel like I know them. It is also funny because I swear I am related somehow to everyone in this county, lol. 

Now the funny fact.  Our family legend was that we were related to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Finding this trail was a mission of mine for a while. The true story? Mary Elizabeth Snyder married a man whose parents named him (first name) Commodore, (middle names) Oliver Hazard, and (last name) Perry. No relation to the military man.  He went by COH. 

My 3rd Great Grandparents Horace Perry and Sarah Ammerman. Horace is COH Perry's older brother.  

And because it is my family - my 2nd great grandfather William's wife Sarah Perry's father is Horace Perry who is the brother of COH Perry.  So I am double related to the Perrys. 

Happy Valentine's Day

 

As my nine year old granddaughter told her mom, Grampa isn't going to take Mimi to a restaurant for Valentine's Day so she made her own. 

I finally cleaned off the dining room table which still had Christmas remnants on it. The bottom right corner is a Goodwill box. 

The flower arrangement a friend sent was very droopy so I picked out some flowers and put them in mini vases. The table runner is from my older granddaughter's tea party this past summer. 

Better lighting. 

The glasses are part of the set of my grandmother's wedding crystal.  I was trying different ideas to show the etching. This is apple juice. 

This one is wine on my kitchen counter. 

Washed, on my kitchen counter.  There must be at least 100 pieces in this pattern in my china cabinet with glasses in a variety of sizes and types. I would bet that there is at least service for 12 in each glass, possibly more. And that is after the breakage by my mother who carted them around to at least six houses. I have four five china cabinets at this point. This one holds all the crystal stemware behind glass doors and my mother's china pattern in the bottom cupboards. I would bet that my mother's china was never used by her or myself.  I hope to talk a granddaughter into it. 

 And Friday we said "whatever" to the heart healthy diet and Mr Merry took me to the ice cream parlor for lunch. He had the ginormous banana split. 

And I had the apple dumpling sundae with a huge warm apple dumpling made from sweet dough surrounding a whole cored apple stuffed with cinnamon butter filling and covered in icing with ice cold homemade vanilla bean ice cream, whipped topping and almonds with a caramel drizzle.

Tomorrow we are enjoying a quiet evening at home with some frozen Trader Joe's chinese meals. All purchased prior to looking at labels for sodium content. 

It's a Full Time Job

As a novice to medical issues I am shocked at how time consuming this is! 

We started Monday with eye exams at the opthamologist. Mr Merry's prescription had not changed in ten years, but we ordered new glasses for him since his glasses were ten years old.  I got to experience a new student employee so that my preliminary exam took twice as long (or longer). Then the doctor came in and we found out that my cataracts are "ready".  I am having surgery on my left eye on the 24th and he assures me that when I see the difference, I will want to do the right eye two weeks later. 

He uses a special concoction of eye drops that is mixed in a pharmacy out of state and it has taken me two days of missing each others calls to arrangement payment and shipment. 

Today was my visit with my new pulmonologist. He is very nice and knowledgeable and we got along great. I am actually breathing better now (after 3 days of breathing treatments in the hospital and all those Lasix IVs) than I have in years.  I will have a pulmonary function test next week and I think we are repeating the CT of the lungs in two months. 

I had a visit with my new cardiologist last week and he changed the dosage of my three new prescriptions and sent that information to my pharmacy. Friday afternoon I got a message from my pharmacy stating that they had the medications on order and that the price of one of them would be $1032 since my insurance denied it. I knew it would be useless to try to straighten it out over the weekend so I stopped in Monday morning. The clerks had 5 of those new pills for me, the rest still on order and the other two prescriptions were still on order and they had no clue when they would arrive or how much the $1032 prescription would cost me out of pocket until it got there. They acted like I was the troublemaker here and taking up their time with dumb questions. We stopped back on Tuesday and got the rest of the expensive prescription. The cost was $408.28 for 30 days. I checked my policy online and I believe the cost for March and April will be the same, then it will go down to $200 for May and around $100 for the rest of year. Which is much better than $1000 a month. By Wednesday the other two prescriptions were here. One is $1 out of pocket and the other is $10. 

After we visit doctors and pharmacies, we are using our newly purchased passes to the city recreation center. There is a track (actually mats) around the basketball courts on the ground floor that is 1/10 of a mile. We change our shoes and do 10 rounds, which is my limit right now. Almost everyone passes me. It is interesting to watch people at the open gym, mostly young men in their 20's. One day we had a wheelchair player, a young man with no legs. Today there was a lady even older than me who could not bend her knees and walked with two crutches, still faster than me. It makes me realize how lucky I am and how I need to keep at it. 

Saturday we had to use the upstairs track which is walking on the left and running on the right, due to a basketball tournament. My issue is the stairs leave me breathless and we were unable to find the elevator. Tuesday is my new favorite because the gym floor is used for Toddler Time, lots of adorable children aged four and under with mats and toys.  Mr Merry is being a good sport and coming with me everyday. 

All this means is that we leave in the morning as soon as we get the grandkids on the bus and try hard to get home for lunch. So much for the leisure life.

I was pretty excited to finally have lunch with friends on Friday but one of my friends has a repair person coming so we had to cancel. I do have a Trader Joe trip scheduled for the next week. 

I hope everyone has a great Valentine's Day - it's Galentines Day at my house - and eats lots of chocolate. 

I am trying to keep up with everyone's blogs as best I can until I can get my new routine.

Memory Monday: Til Death Does Us Part

I was trying to move back one generation at a time, but I thought this story was so perfect for Valentine's Week. 

My great great great grandfather Daniel was born in Warren County, NY in 1819 and moved to my county in 1833 at age 14 "and took full share into supporting the family". During warmer months he cut and sold wood and also worked with the masons who were erecting the first brick building in town. In the snow months he attended "winter school". 

In 1844 he married my 3rd great grandmother Almira who was born in Genesee County, NY in 1824 and who came in Ohio when she was 10 years old.  Daniel and Almira started farming on 40 acres and moved to various farms in the county before coming back to the original land.  

Daniel and Almira were affiliated with the Society of Friends although Almira did join the Methodist Church for a time.  The couple were parents of four sons, Nathaniel, Charles, Daniel and my great great grandfather Henry and a daughter Sarah who died at one year old. 

"Both were excellent people as parents and citizens, and possessed broad sympathy for the unfortunate. At their golden wedding, held February 11, 1891, the large number of relatives and friends demonstrated clearly the esteem in which the old couple were held"

And here is the family "love story": 

Almira, listed in the paper as "Mrs. Daniel" was in poor health that winter and passed away on in March, 1891. Daniel told the family and friends that he could not live without her. 

"Here he resided until his death March 16, 1891; the death of his wife the preceding day, affected him so powerfully as to cause his death within 24 hours, and the pioneers were buried side by side in Olena Cemetery."

So, how's it goin?

Tonight it is raining ice at my house. This is the view from our cameras. Since we are trapped inside, I thought I would post a catchup. 

When I went to the hospital, well when I felt better at the hospital (I was not thinking in the ambulance or the first hour in the ER), I really had not planned to mention this little episode to anyone. But we were expecting grandkids at 7am for breakfast  so I had to let the parents know.  My text said "Long story short, I'm in the hospital, but your dad will be home to get the kids at 7. Will anyone be around town in the morning to pick them up so he can come back here?"

Well that started it. Kids calling off work, One driving in from out of town.  I had a board meeting the first afternoon - I sent a message that I was calling off AGAIN and understood I might be fired (from my volunteer job).  They joked that next time I would need a doctor's excuse. Surprise, when I texted a few days later that I would be off for at least a few weeks and that I did have a doctor's excuse. 

Word spread around town and as much as I am not crazy about people in my business, it has brought tears to my eyes the amount of people who have called, texted, sent cards and even flowers.  I was on a few prayer chains.  I have had so many people offering to bring food or go shopping for me.  I do tell them I have a freezer full of those dang healthy meals, please don't bring food. I also have a healthy husband with time on his hands, but it is so nice of people to offer.  I feel like I have a lot more friends than I realize.  

This week everyone wants to know how I am doing. The truth is I feel better than I have for months and it really makes me feel like a fraud. Losing all that fluid in my lungs allows me to breath better than ever and I lost a lot of swelling especially in my legs and ankles (I wasn't fat- I was puffy!). Of course I am basically doing nothing so I am well rested, lol.  We did stop at the Cancer Thrift Shop on the way back from a doctor's appointment and I found this fabulous lamp. It didn't accidentally come home with me, I was actually looking for a lamp. 

My best friend forever (since fifth grade) came to town to take me to lunch. She just wanted to see if I was telling the truth about doing better. A local restaurant has a new owner and the interior and ambiance is wonderful. The food and service so-so. 

We have been going to doctor's appointments and even ran errands. We bought passes at the city recreation center and are using the walking track. Mr Merry is walking along because he is still on edge about letting me out alone. 

Today I visited the cardiologist and he increased the dosages on all my new medicines. So even though I feel fabulous, I have to remind myself that we, or me, are dealing with issues. Unfortunately the drug store texted me that my insurance doesn't want to cover one medicine which is $1032 a month. Since it is Friday night, I am planning on checking with the drug store Monday morning, calling the insurance company next and if I finish those calls and don't have a solution before 5pm, calling the doctor's office to see if there is a substitute. 

He is sending me to cardio rehab and said he doesn't want me to do any heavy activities until we work that out since the insurance company may not cover that either. (My refractory is one point over the qualifying number). Meanwhile I have the okay for walking.  

I kind of feel like I am in a holding pattern. I go to the pulmonologist this week and the cardiologist in 2 weeks to see how I am doing and at this point, I just want to get back to normal. Whatever that is.  

What's Cooking

 My nightly dilemma of coming up with dinner ideas has been temporarily solved with my beef producer having another recipe challenge. 

This time it is a slow cooker challenge and to make things more exciting - I am changing the recipes to low-sodium as directed by my new doctors. 

This would have been easy except that I had to make the meatballs, find a low-sodium recipe for dry onion soup, find a low-sodium recipe for gravy mix and find salt-free beef broth in my small town. 

I did find the broth and it was three times the price of unsalted and tasted like water. My solution in the future will be to use the broth from the unsalted beef roasts I cook myself. Here are my recipes:

And here is our version: 

I'm not going to lie, it needed salt.  My next mission is to find a salt substitute with a salty flavor. 

And today we did week 2! 

My changes were to use round steak since that was in the front of the freezer, I added carrots and celery to the mushrooms and onions since I had some in the fridge to use up and I used the rest of my salt-free beef broth and gravy mix.  Cornstarch has no sodium. 

And here is our version:

This is Mr Merry's plate. I had a smaller piece and salad instead of potatoes (which could have been sodium free except I used instant). 

There is enough leftover for two more meals so I hope Mr Merry meant it when he said he liked it! 

I am hoping next week doesn't involve the beef broth/gravy mix pattern, especially with as many times as we will be eating this week's recipe!