Saturday, February 27, 2010

Happy 101……

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   Hey I got award from Evansmom over at Just Sayin  called the Happy 101! How kind was that!!? She has a wonderful thought provoking blog over there so check her out. As with every award, there are rules of course.

The rules for me accepting this award are:
1. Copy and paste the award on your blog. Done
2. List who gave the award to you and use a link to her blog (or hyperlink).  Done
3. List 10 things that make you happy.
4. Pass the award on to other bloggers and visit their blog to let them know!
Top 10 things that make me happy….

1. Family gatherings that both my kids are present at.

2. Christmas time….all of it makes me happy.

3. Pepperoni, green pepper and onion pizza or garlic, pea pod and onion fried rice.

4. When a project I am working on comes together easily.

5. Finding a treasure at a yard sale.

6. Spending time with my husband.

7. Planting my garden and watching it grow.

8. Harvesting the garden in the fall and decorating the yard.

9. Port hole events when my brother comes home from Nashville.

10. Hanging out with Alice and just belly laughing! It’s always therapeutic~..~

Done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I am supposed to pass this award on to other bloggers and let them know on their blogs…..drum roll please…………. my Maine girls first and in no particular order…

1. Dawn at C & G Design has a very happy blog about crafting and dolls and family and ….this girl is so busy I can’t even tell you!! Check out Dawn in her Maine castle of dolls!~..~

2. Elenka at Donweastdoingstuff is a wonderful girl from one of our big cities here in Maine. She has many talents. She is a gifted artist and regardless of what she writes, it makes me smile. She is also very kind….go see Elenka doing stuff the down east way girls! ~..~

3. Sheila at Note Songs will ALWAYS put a smile on your face! There is so much happiness exuding from her it is absolutely contagious! You also get a new song with every entry….how can you beat that?? A blog and a song….wander on over to Sheila’s Texas pad!

4. Kathleen at Rural Maine Life makes me smile every time I visit. She is one of the most honest people I have met on these blogs. She’s not afraid to tell it like it is and share her struggles with losing weight with us women. I admire that and look to her for strength. Check out our Millinocket Rocket Kathleen!!  She’s a great gal.

5. Eva from Wrestling With Retirement is another one of my Maine girls! Talk about smiling every day! This lady will not only make you smile, you will be keeling over with belly laughs after reading her blog! She’s just plain hilarious! Check out my friend Eva at her laugh factory blog!

A big thank you to Evansmom at Just Sayin for awarding me ……thanks again!!

                           

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Sunday, February 21, 2010

Where my heart is…..

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   Nope….this is not another story about how my heart is doing, although I am doing a lot better….thanks everyone for your words and prayers! Yesterday I had to be at a meeting early in the morning with my husband in my beloved home town of Yarmouth, Maine. It pulls at my heartstrings when I ride through that town, and it is not often enough. I asked my husband to take the back way, coming home, going past the house I grew up in…just to steal a glance at the old place. I miss my home town. I guess I am at that age where I am pulled back to the past very easily. What is it about getting older that makes us do that so frequently? My mind wants to wander back to the days when I was a child. Time seemed to stand still back then. It was probably the best time of my life….before life became so complicated with adult choices and decisions. When we are children we cannot wait to grow up and be like the big people. When we are adults, we want to be young again!  Never satisfied I guess? Yarmouth was a wonderful place to live. It is a quaint little fishing village. It is where my mother and father grew up and had their first date. It is where I made my first friends in life. Recently, Yarmouth was in the news. There was a tree by the name of Herbie that needed to be cut down. Why would a tree make the news you say? Here’s a link to why…….  HERBIE  This old tree now has it’s own website!! It’s a really cool story that got me thinking about that area of town and my childhood friends.

    One of those childhood friends lived down the road from Herbie. I was probably 10 years old. It was on the other side of town. I had heard of that area because there was a market close by her house by the name of Spring Street Market.  A place where you could get fresh crabmeat. Not many markets carried that. We had Day’s Crabmeat of course but that’s a different story.  Regina would invite me over to her house to play. Eventually, I started staying the night. Her mother and father were so nice, they made me feel right at home. Regina’s mother was a seamstress and she worked part time at the local dry cleaners, mending peoples clothes. She also took in jobs at home like hemming up a pair of pants…etc.  Regina was an only child. She had the largest selection of Barbie and Ken dolls I think I have ever seen. She had the plastic cases with all the accessories, many different Barbie dolls and so many outfits, I could not begin to count them, almost all, made, by her seamstress mom. The only way of knowing the Mattel brand from hers were the tags! She was amazing! We spent hours mixing and matching clothes for our dolls. Putting fur stoles on them, pretending we were sending them off to a very important ball! What fun we had!! I found this old mix and match YouTube video of Barbie…….

She had a bedroom that was like an attic room….so cozy and the walls were covered with a lovely wallpaper. It had two twin beds and there were books and toys and dolls everywhere! Kind of like this one I found a photo of…

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….only bigger. We always had a box of Triscuits, nearby, that we snacked on.image To this day, I think of her when I see or buy a box of Triscuits, because that was the snack we had to have when I stayed the night! If I liked a particular piece of clothing that Mattel made for Barbie, I would tell Regina’s mom, and she would try and reproduce it. Oh she was a genius when it came to doing that, but oh so humble about it. “Well I will give it a try dear.” she would say, and it would be spot on! She could have worked for Mattel.

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Thos cute little outfits and the cases with the hangers to hand them in! I cannot imagine trying to make these little tiny clothes!! And what about Ken??

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What a romance we created between the two of them!  What great memories.

   I can’t wait to have grandchildren so I can start playing with dolls again!! It was a great time to be young and a wonderful town to grow up in. I should try and find my childhood friend!

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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Good For All Women To Know…..

My sister in law and brother sent this email to me recently and I wanted to share it with all you women. As you know, it happened to me….somewhat like this. I had a lot of nausea and jaw pain.

 

NURSE'S HEART ATTACK EXPERIENCE
This has been  passed on from an ER nurse and is the best description of this event that she had ever heard. Please read, pay attention, and send it on!                  
FEMALE HEART ATTACKS

I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best
description I've ever read.
Women and heart attacks (Myocardial Infarction).  Did you know that women rarely have
the same dramatic symptoms that men have when experiencing heart attack ....
you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the
chest & dropping to the floor that we see in the movies.  Here is
the story of one woman's
experience with a heart attack.
I had a heart attack at about 10 :30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior
emotional trauma that one would suspect might've
brought it on.  
I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in
my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually
thinking,  'A-A-h, this is
the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped
up.
A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich
and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel
like you've swallowed a golf ball
going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You
realize you shouldn't have gulped
it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a
glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my
initial sensation---the only trouble was that I hadn't
taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.
After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing
motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my
aorta spasming), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my
sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).
This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into
both jaws.  'AHA!! NOW I
stopped puzzling about what was happening -- we all have read and/or heard
about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven't we?  I said aloud to myself and the cat, 'Dear God, I think I'm
having a heart attack!'
I lowered the footrest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step
and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart
attack, I shouldn't be walking
into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else ... but, on the other
hand, if I don't, nobody will know
that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in
moment.
I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next
room and dialed the Paramedics .. I told her I thought I was having a heart
attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my
jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or
afraid, just stating the facts.  She said she was sending the Paramedics
over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to
unbolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when
they came in.
I unlocked the door and then lay down on the floor as instructed and lost
consciousness, as I don't remember
the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting
me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the
way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the Cardiologist
was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my
stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions
(probably something like  'Have
you taken any medications?'' but I couldn't
make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer,  and
nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had
already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the
aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stents to hold
open my right coronary artery.
I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at
least 20-30 minutes before calling the Paramedics, but actually it took
perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St. Jude
are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to
the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped
somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail?  Because I
want all of  you to know what I learned first hand.
1.  Be aware that something very different is happening in your body not
the usual men's symptoms but
inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the
act).  It is said that many more  women than men die of their first
(and last) MI  because they didn't
know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some
Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they wake up
... which doesn't happen.  
My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise
you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before.
It is better to have a 'false
alarm' visitation than to risk
your life guessing what it might be!
2.  Note that I said ''Call the Paramedics.'' And
if you can,  take an aspirin.  Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!
Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER you are a hazard  to
others on the road.
Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding  and
looking anxiously at what's
happening with you instead of the road.
Do NOT call your doctor -- he doesn't
know where you  live and if it's
at night you won't reach him
anyway, and if it's daytime, his
assistants (or answering service) will  tell you to call the Paramedics.
He doesn't carry the equipment in
his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that
you need ASAP.. Your Dr. will be notified later.
3.   Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you have a normal
cholesterol count.  Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated
reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's
unbelievably high and/or accompanied  by high blood pressure). MI's are usually caused   by long-term stress
and inflammation in the  body,  which dumps all sorts of deadly
hormones into your system to sludge things up in there.
  Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep.
  Let's be careful and
be aware. The more we know,  the better chance we could survive.

A cardiologist says, if everyone who gets this mail sends it to 10 people,
you can be sure that we'll save at
least one life.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Coming along…..

   Today, for the first time in years, I walked a mile. Not only did I walk a mile, but I did it with my son. We dragged our dogs along with us. His dog Katie and my dog Obie just loved it! I am pretty proud of myself and am only a little bit sore!

   For any of you that do not read my blog on a regular basis, I had a heart attack the day after Christmas. I started Cardio Rehab not long ago. I have had two educational classes and two exercise classes. Today will be my third exercise class. They are putting me on the treadmill now. I started at my last class with 1.5 and they increased me quite quickly to 2.2. After a few minutes of that, my chest felt funny and my heart felt as though It was fluttering. I got dizzy and they took me off immediately. I am hooked up to an EKG monitor so they looked to see what was up. My heart was adding an extra beat for some reason. This happens when I am nervous (since my heart attack) and now apparently when I am exercising and nervous I guess? They were not too worried and plan on watching me. We’ll see if we can get this old body into shape some how!!

   I was searching around for a walking clipart to put in this post and came across an interesting woman. Here’s a link to her site…Walking  ….I thought I would share it. I will be reading much more and maybe even sign up. Hope all is well with you friendly bloggers. I am not up to 100% yet but slowly getting there. My son has been here for a couple of days visiting and hubby and I have enjoyed that. He and hubby have been playing a lot of Modern Warfare II on the Xbox360. It’s been fun watching the two of them. As a matter of fact, he is sitting  behind me right now playing the game and complaining about his team he is playing with online!! Apparently they are not cooperating and he’s a little ticked at them cause I am hearing some *^@# cursing going on!

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He’s killing bad guys I think…..

Friday, February 5, 2010

The Ray Charles Dancing Bird…..

   I couldn’t resist………this is just so darned funny……………dance along and make sure you shake your tail feathers!!

Are you dancing yet?? :)        

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