Location, Location, Location

Anyone who knows me very well at all knows that I suffer, verily I say, suffer from two hand maladies.  The first is that my hands get unnaturally cold in the winter.  The second is that I have small hands and short fingers.  When I say small, I mean small!  When I taught first grade I would amaze those six year olds by comparing my hands to their's and they would be the same size.  Sometimes their fingers would even be longer than mine!

So, about this time every year I start the search for the perfect glove or mitten to keep these two ice cubes that I call hands warm.  Most of the time I settle for a mitten because of the aforementioned unnaturally short fingers.  Burt sometimes the sight of a 57 year old memaw sporting  mittens is a bit much and I will venture out into that demon world of gloves.

My quest for the perfect hand warming apparel led me to Target this week.  I was ecstatic to see that they had some Isotoner gloves and mittens.  They were perfection.  Suede-like outer surface and lined with a fur-like (nod to PETA).  I settled on the mittens (I know, I know.  Fifty-seven year old memaw with mittens) after the gloves presented the problem I always have with gloves.  Fingers way to long for my little stumpy digits.

Now, I know you are thinking this is a lot of wordage about gloves.  But wait. There is a point to all this.  The gloves at Target were $20.00, a small price for warm hands.  But later on. I went out to the mall and visited an upscale store which shall remain nameless. (But if you live in Las Cruces, NM, you know the only such store in our mall.) And guess what?  They had the same exact gloves for...

Forty dollars!  $40.00!  Forty smackaroos!

What is going on with that?

It's all about location, location, location!

Angels Unawares

The room was dark and completely silent except for the soft sound of the monitor.  My gravely ill husband lay motionless in the hospital bed.

All the friends had left.  The doctor was gone.  There was only Danny and I left in the hospital room.  I pulled a chair up close to the side of his bed so that I could hold the hand that did not have tubes in it.

I was scared.  I was more scared than I had ever been in my life.

I bowed my head to pray and all I could say was, "Not this man.  Not this man.  Not this man."  Over and over.  I began to rock slowly back and forth, back and forth.  "Not this man.  Not this man. Not this man."

Then  I felt a light touch on my shoulder.  A cleaning lady had come, unnoticed by me, into the room.  She leaned close to me and whispered in halting English, "God bless you." And then she left

I felt some of the load lift off my shoulders.

I believe she was an "angel unawares" sent to comfort me in my time of great need.  And she did.

All angels don't have wings.  Some have mops.

POSTSCRIPT:  Don't worry to much about Danny Dearest.  He recovered completely.  So completely, in fact, that in a couple of weeks he will compete in his third Tour de Tucson, a 111 mile bike race since his illness.  God is good.

Awareness Time

If you have been reading my little blog for any time at all, you know that I was diagnosed with diabetes fourteen years ago. 

And if you will take a little glance to the right, you will see that November is Diabetes Awareness month. 

Now, I know that it seems that every disease has a month nowadays and I won't argue that fact. But considering that CDC estimates that 25.8 million people (or 8.3% of Americans) have diabetes, perhaps we should be looking at his disease more closely.  Of that 25.8 million, 18.8 million have been diagnosed.  And here is the scary part,  7 million are UNDIAGNOSED.  In other words, they are walking time bombs just waiting to go off.  As long as we are looking at scary statistics, here is another one.  One third of Americans have  the indicators that are sometimes called prediabetes. 

One third people. 

This is a problem.

I won't recite a list of the complications of diabetes that almost everyone knows, but the one that sticks out to me personally is that 2 out 3 people who have diabetes will die from a stroke or heart disease.

But there is hope.  As a diabetic, I plan to run the Las Cruces Half Marathon in December (if my stinky ankle heals in time).  As a diabetic, I ate Halloween candy.  As a diabetic, I plan on holding my great-grandbabies in my arms and spoiling them silly.

Yes, I Did It Again...I Can't Believe It!

Last month I signed up for the NaBloPoMo to write a blog post every day.  The pressure I put on myself in October was incredible.So what did I do?

I signed up again for NOVEMBER!

I can't believe I did this...again!

I can't believe that I signed up again!

Yes, I did again.  Why?  Because the discipline of knowing I have to post every day has made me open my eyes to the what is happening around me.  I watch for little and big things to write about.

 And Danny Dearest says that I always have something to say about everything.

I Did It

At the beginning of the month, I made a commitment to join NaBloPoMo to write a blog post every day for the month of October.

Just let me say it was a struggle.

Some days were easy, some day were difficult. Some post were good and some were not so good. But now it's October 31 and all I can say is...

And I will see you tomorrow.

Halloween...A Retrospective

Since tomorrow is Halloween, I thought I would  take a trip down memory lane and look at Baby Susan's Halloween costumes over the years. I hope these are in the correct order because the apparently the approximately two seconds that it would take to write the year on the back of these photos would be W-A-Y too much. So here's hoping for the best.

Let's start when Baby Susan was about 10 months old.

She left the witch's hat on just long enough to take the picture.

And then the next year we went with classic fairy tales.  Presenting Little Red Riding Hood.

Isn't she just too cute?

The next year Baby Susan rocked the princess look, aluminum foil crown and all.

I think she has developed a relationship with that jack-o-lantern,

The next year was the witch again,  And there seems to be a very large clown in the photo.

That clown would scare small children!

The next year was fairy princess time.  Please notice the wand. Danny Dearest made it for her. It is a dowel rod with a star carved out of a 1" by 4" piece of wood.  When this fairy princess hit you with her wand, you knew it!

And that is quite the pumpkin family!

The next year, I think Baby Susan's mother has started her studies at the university and was feeling a little overwhelmed because the costume was a little lacking in originality.

The basic cut and glue jack-o-lantern from the fabric shop.  But she rocked it with a smile.

The next year Baby Susan's mother got a little bit back in the groove.  This is an adult gown  we purchased at a Goodwill type store and cut up to make a princess.

Looks like a princess to me.

Then we have the gypsy look.

Let's go in for a close-up of that makeup job, shall we?

How clever is that?

And what was the point of all this dressing up, you ask?

We don't believe in cavities around here!

Why CANDY of course!

Another Saturday in Paradise

I slept in late this morning, if 8:00 is late on Saturday.  During my college days you didn't see me on Saturday until 10:00 unless I had to drag myself to work.  But, now that I am older 8:00  is the new sleeping in. What can I say?

After I finally got out of bed, I went shopping!  What else could a late sleeping princess do?  After purchasing a just "too cute for words" top and jeans, I went to watch the New Mexico State Aggie basketball team do some preseason practice.

It looks like a good basketball season!

Later tonight Danny Dearest and I will go see the Aggie Football team.  We are supposed to lose by two touchdowns but hope springs eternal in the breast of a Aggie fan.