I guess if I didn’t think they were “dear”, I wouldn’t wear these same four rings every day.
rings I wear every day
The thick band with the diamond – the band was my mother in law’s wedding band. We had a new diamond put in for our 30th wedding anniversary.
The thin band is my original wedding band.
The silver ring holds a Danburite crystal. I found it in an antique store in Sonora California while visiting my father in law in 2022. It was meant to be – I was getting ready to leave but decided to look at the jewelry and this stuck out. The crystal takes its name from Danbury Connecticut (I’m born and raised in Connecticut), and it fit perfectly!
The bottom ring is a worry band I bought while visiting with friends in Los Cabos Mexico. It was a splurge and I have worn it since early 2020.
I have a lot of other rings, but these 4 just feel so right together!
I don’t have collections in the true sense of the word like Beanie Babies, salt and pepper shakers, or baseball cards.
My collections are:
My vast amount of family photos dating back to the late 1800s, and early 1900s on both parents’ sides of the family. Many formal portraits including families, first communions, and wedding parties. Informal photos are in photo albums and labeled with dates and locations!
My mother’s postcard collection. She had a big album with all the cards categorized by location. I hung onto it and finally took them out of the album. Someday I will write some stories about some of them.
My yarn, knitting needles, and knitting books. I have baskets of yarn and a slew of knitting books! I kept the yarns by weight in file cabinet drawers until I repurposed the file cabinet for my ancestry work. I was going to get rid of a lot of the yarn but never got around to it. I guess it’s time to put the yarn away again before any moths get to it!
Do books count? I have a lot of those and I keep buying more!
But if you’re thinking my house must be filled to the rafters, you’d be wrong! All of my “collections” are in a very large room over our garage that serves as our workout room in two-thirds of the room and my “she-space” in the remaining part. We’re lucky to have such a wonderful space!
The garage/workout/she-space built 2006My She-Space
I am cold if it’s 90 degrees and a cloud passes over the sun.
I always wear a coat or sweater out the door in the morning and usually keep it on most of the day because the air conditioning is blowing on me, or if the heat is on it’s still not warm enough.
Does that give you an idea of how I feel about cold weather?
As long as I am prepared for it, I can be ok about it. But I will always turn off the ceiling fan when I sit in the living room to watch tv because it’s blowing on me!
It was a sunny Saturday in September of 1972 and I was 12 years old.
My childhood (and current) home
One of my sisters and a friend or two were performing flips in the front year. We would start from the steps and head towards the flag pole.
I completed a few flips, but on the last attempt I ran, flipped, and landed on the top of my right foot. There was intense pain and I couldn’t walk. We all shouted for my mother. She came out and off the two of us went to the emergency room. We waited for a few hours for X-rays that confirmed I broke a little bone in the back of my ankle. I came home in a cast to my knee and crutches.
My diary entry!
It was a miserable 8 weeks. First with the crutches, and then with a “walking cast” which back then was a rubber block they attached to the bottom of the cast. In my case even with my highest heel on the other side, I was still lopsided, walking like Peg-Leg Pete! I would have been better off with crutches. What a relief it was when the cast finally came off but how weird my leg looked!
But I wasn’t the only one who suffered that weekend….
The incident happened on Saturday, September 9, 1972. My older sister’s 14th birthday and the family party was scheduled for the next day. My mother was in the process of baking her delicious 4 layer chocolate cake with whipped cream between layers and covered with chocolate frosting. She was likely making whatever meal we would be eating beforehand.
Aha! proof that I didn’t spoil the party, just “her day”!
For the past 25 years, it has been a tightrope walk between work and home because my husband and I run a business together. Some of that balancing act involved the two of us but a lot of it, was my balancing.
Our remodeling company started in our basement, an unfinished, low ceiling space with a concrete floor and painted stone foundation walls. I faced crumbling painted walls at the bottom of the stairs and when my husband came home at 4 p.m. to start his estimates, he faced the oil tank.
Having a fledging business at home made both the work and home balance tough. Being home, I would realize there was laundry to do, or something needed cleaning, so I’d get immersed in that. On the weekends, I’d go to the basement to do/finish the laundry and remember a proposal to type or phone call to make and get caught up in that!
After the basement we moved the office to space above our newly built garage and then almost 20 years in, we purchased office space about 10 minutes away. Each step away, made the physical work/life balance easier. However, I found myself determined to put in as many hours a day as possible because once I left for the day, that was it. My husband put in his 7:30 to 4 and I would try to get in at 8 a.m. every day and usually stayed until 5 our shortly past. Now, mentally it was very taxing knowing there were things I was leaving behind but definitely couldn’t sneak into the office to take care of. I found myself bringing files home but letting them sit there and never touching them all weekend!
As far as my husband and I balancing business and home life together, we made a decision early on that work stayed at work. It hasn’t always been easy but if I was mad at “my boss”, I didn’t want to bring it home to my husband and vice versa! It was sort of weird and definitely an act of compartmentalizing but it has worked for us. After a few years, we also decided that our company wouldn’t physically work on the weekends or go to any estimating appointments. People found that strange but we told them, “everyone needs their weekend”.
My husband has now retired, but is still available when my son, who took his place, needs him. I am still working, but now that we have a very capable Client Manager and I have been able to pass all client work on to her, I am able to come in later, leave earlier and take some time off and I finally feel like there is a good and healthy balance for me both physically and mentally.
I am very comfortable leading a conversation, a discussion, or directionally around a location.
For some people, it’s their tendency to take over because they were a leader in their profession. I admire people who don’t do that. I like watching everyone have the chance to lead if they want.
But if I’m leading people around a location and lose my sense of direction, I get flustered and someone else has to take over! This happened to me in Vienna Austria with friends we met on a river cruise. One of the men stepped in to help me because I had us hopelessly lost!
I am also able to follow in those situations. When I don’t know the subject well, I listen to what other people say. If someone knows exactly where we are headed, I say “Just tell me where to go!”
First and my FAVORITE OF ALL TIME fruit is Watermelon! Just straight up – no salt, no salad – good plan old watermelon. If I let myself, I could eat a whole one, just slicing and slicing away at it.
2nd is Bananas. But they have to be “just right”. A little on the not-quite-ripe side is best. Just ripe is good too. Once they tip over towards too ripe, they get tossed into a bag and into the freezer for my smoothies!
4th is Apples. My most favorite is Macoun followed by Empire but lately, apples at the store are such a crap shoot as to whether they are crisp or mushy! I usually cut them up and eat them with peanut butter!
5th is Strawberries. They were my ultimate favorite until I worked in strawberry fields in my late teens. We spent the spring, training the vines. During picking season we weighed the containers, worked the register, and also stood at the end of rows directing people where to go. I would wear a hoodie sweatshirt and fill the pocket with strawberries! By the end of the second season, I never wanted to see another strawberry for the rest of my life! But recently, I’ve come back around to enjoy them.
Do you believe is signs from loved ones who have passed? I do! May 2nd was our 37th anniversary of meeting. One of the words in the NYT Connections game was SOULMATES – it jumped out at me as soon as I opened the game.
May 1987
May 6th was our 36th wedding anniversary. What popped up in the Connections game? COUPLE and LOVERS.
March 2024
Coincidence? No, I think my mother is sending her love to the two people she set up to meet in 1987. I’ve told this story so many times, you might already know it….I was scheduled for a vacation on March 24th because she was sick and she died on April 4th. I ended up taking the trip on May 2nd and my future husband was a last minute addition to his friend’s trip. Through a medium I went to in 2013, she confirmed she set us up.
I wrote most of the above for my facebook page on Monday the 6th but I was thinking some more about that time and coincidences. You see just before I moved out to California, someone I worked with paid for me to hand a hand analysis with her sister. Although 37 years have gone by, I still had the cassette tape of the reading and a few years ago transcribed it. I think through it my mother was trying to give me motherly advice — and I did NOT listen to it. Literally, I did not listen to that tape again for 35 years. There was actually some advice I could have used. Oh well! They say the other side will give you signs but you have the free will to listen to it or not. Sorry Ma! I’m listening now!
In January, I wrote about completing my first puzzle. I “got it for Christmas” in 2022 but it and the roll up pad sat for a year before our Aunt Mindy’s dedication to hers inspired me to start on mine!
After I took that puzzle apart, I looked for another by the same maker, Eeboo, but quickly realized my coffee table was not large enough! Evidently the “A Day In Paris” was the only one and that one just squeaked in.
We went to Amatos Toy and Hobby in Middletown to find a new puzzle (I was armed with the table measurement!), and I bought one by White Mountain called New York New York and is made up of New York State landmarks. There’s a bit of a theme there – puzzles based on places I’ve been. Anyway, the puzzle was a few inches too big but my husband told me he’d get a piece of plywood to cover for the few extra inches needed. Didn’t happen! 😂 I started looking for a coffee table that was wider. Can’t decide on one! 😂
I ended up perusing the puzzle aisle of Walmart with my measurements and found this Buffalo Games and Puzzles Charles Wysocki puzzle called “Sunday Morning Stroll”.
I’ve been at it for about a month now and boy, it’s a tough one! Usually I finish the perimeter first but for this one, I removed and switched pieces constantly because pieces that didn’t go together, seemed to fit! The pieces are smaller than the last and there are so many similar colors!
Colors for the leftColors for the right
Every night as we watch our scheduled show, I listen more than watch it as I pick away at the trees and sky.
I started wearing ear plugs one summer when the sound of the air conditioner started me crazy. I kept it up in the winter and it’s a hard habit to break.
It makes me feel like I’m underwater because any sounds are muted and since I burrow under the covers (until I fling them off in a sweaty mess) it’s like I’m in a world of my own. There in lies the problem.
What if something happens and I don’t hear it? My phone gets an emergency call? My husband stumbles on the way to the bathroom? The smoke alarm goes off??
I’m debating giving them up and and hoping I get used to the night sounds again.
Do you wear ear plugs at night? Tell me if there are other options!
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 