Category Archives: brother(s)

Oct28

Brother Don hit hard in Florida

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So I’m talking about crocheting and all while my brother Don is living in chaos down in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Wilma hit them good. He hasn’t had power since Monday. Today he ran out of gas. Thank goodness our Mom sent him a little money in the mail as he was down to his last $4. Everything is on a cash basis too as the gas pumps are all electronic now. Why didn’t they at least have a ‘manual’ pump somewhere where hurricanes can strike several times a year? Dumb and dumber. Don says it’s like a third world country with no traffic lights. Wish he would pack up and move north again.
Even the webmistress who runs ‘Make A Child Smile’ said there will be no kids for November. She was driving around (lives near where Don works) trying to pick up an internet connection on her laptop to write her message above.
I wish them and all the people without power, food and money some relief soon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s really quiet here today. I do miss Mom. I forgot to mention she probably needs a hearing aide too. She’s fine talking to you when you are sitting right next to her, but move 10 feet away and it’s a yelling match. I guess that’s another thing to do soon. I’ll see her again on Monday when we stop by my brother’s on Halloween.

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Sep27

When my brothers were nice

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I tend to complain about my brothers. Some of the things they do have not been ‘right’ in the eyes of their only sister. So last night, when my brain wouldn’t shut down (I had bad knee pain), I thought about each guy and something they did that was unconditionally nice.
Dave-when I had my gallbladder out in 1987, I was in the hospital for several days. Sean was 9 months old and I missed him so! The doctor figured out it was a bum gallbladder when I started to turn yellow (lots of tests too). Anyway, Dave brought down his music cassette collection for me to listen to. I was deeply touched by him offering these to me. I also liked the way he gets all ‘dreamy-eyed’ when I use to talk about Sean when he was little. He does this now when Colleen or Ken talk about Kenny and Tori, their kids.
Don-I was really depressed as a high school junior. Deep down, I really wanted someone to care about me. I literally stopped eating for a month and went from 128 to 110 pounds. (I would love to be at 128 again). Don said that a boy I really liked was looking for me one day. (I missed almost 2 months of school that year-not all at once, but that’s a heck of a lot of time). That brought me out of my depression. I thank him for that. Thanks for your goodie packages too-he knows I love to get mail.
Ken-My little brother. I just think about him and feel mushy. He was always so cute. I thank him for helping out with our cars over the years, mom’s too. I thank him for the occassional kiss on the cheek. (Sniff).

Mar28

Interesting Easter

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It was the first time in many months that my two brothers, me and our families were together in one room. The blue eyes in that room were blinding! Out of 11 people, I have hazel eyes, Brian has green eyes and my brother Ken has brown eyes. So you see what the dominant gene is in this family.
Before we went to my brother’s house, we went to ‘brunch’ at a local restaurant that we had never eaten in. As soon as I walked in the door my throat became itchy and was that way the entire 45 minutes we were there. Seems the bar was open on Easter Sunday. That is tacky in my opinion. Along with a bar comes cigarette smoke. That was my problem. Brian and I thought we were going to a buffet.It clearly stated on the newspaper flyer that it was a ‘brunch’, so they had about 15 things on the menu. We all picked omelettes. When we got the food, I was a bit repelled by the smell of the onions in the overcooked red skin potatoes. There were mostly skins and I didn’t want to eat them. The omelettes had a ‘gas’ taste from the stove. It’s very hard to mess up a meal like this, but they did. No butter for the toast either. They won’t see us back and I feel like complaining about their lousy food.
We went to my younger brother’s house. It had been his son Kenny’s birthday on the 23rd and I had gifts for him and Easter things for him and his sister Tori. My older brother and his family stopped by too. My older brother has let his hair go almost completely white and I was a bit shocked when I saw him. Sean enjoyed hanging out with his cousins. I was always so happy that at least he saw them once in a while.
We dropped by my mom’s and Dave and his family came over there too. I threw Dave some ‘bait’ and he started teasing me like he has done all our lives. Like, saying ‘you can eat a hoagie in the rain’, etc. What really peeved me was him putting down Universal Studios saying it was a ‘glorified Great Adventure’ when he’s never been there. I think he is just jealous we are going to Florida. That’s a brother for you.

Feb23

Ray and Jamie

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Now if you haven’t seen Ray, run out now before the Oscars and rent the DVD. Jamie Foxx is so good, you’ll forget it’s him and think it’s the real Ray Charles throughout the movie. People magazine is predicting a Best Actor win for Jamie. What’s interesting too about Ray Charles is that he and my mom Jeanne were born on the exact day (sorry for divulging age mom)-September 23, 1930. And my mom has a trained soprano voice, so two musical babies were born that day. So as Ray’s mom pushed down in Georgia, my grandmom Ruthie was busy up in Roslyn, PA welcoming her only daughter.
Sean went to Wally World (Walmart) over the past weekend and I asked him to either get the new Kenny Loggins cd or the Ray Charles cd (see sidebar) for me. No Kenny, so he got Ray. I’ve never bought a Ray Charles record in my life. I love his classics, but leaned toward folk rockers. There are lots of ‘duets’ with Ray that I like, especially James Taylor. Incidently both Ray and James fought heroin addictions in their lives. Ray sings with Norah Jones, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt and Michael McDonald- I like them too, with a few others like Diana Krall, Willy Nelson and Johnny Mathis. Sean sat and listened to the entire CD. You can hear Ray’s age a bit (or the effects of illness), but for a 73 yr old, he was still doing it.

Update:
Got my van ‘Winnie’ back tonight (Windstar-stop laughing) and she sounds better! Ken worked his butt off fixing her and trying to figure out what’s going on with the diffferent noises. We are taking her back in a few weeks for inspection and hopefully we will be able to drive her more.
More freakin’ snow is coming tomorrow morning! We may get up to 8 inches. Lord have mercy.

Jan30

Old tv stars unite

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I’m feeling old, really old. Now Happy Days is having their 30th reunion. I swear that show was on when I was in 9th grade, so actually it’s more like the 31 year reunion-did they forget last year? We all loved this show in junior high. I remember we started having sock hop dances. My brother and I dressed up for one. There’s a photo of us together somewhere, one of my favorite photos of the two of us. Don had his hair greased and parted on the side. I think he had on a sweater vest over his dress shirt with rolled up jeans. I had on a pretty pink dress (one of my mom’s) with a pink sweater. My long hair was in a pony tail with a scarf accent.
The other night Brian was flipping channels (as usual) and landed on the TV Land awards show, which turned out to be a year old. (Isabelle Sanford aka Weezie from The Jeffersons made an appearance but died last summer).There was Bob Denver aka as Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island, with snow white hair. Dawn Wells aka as Mary Ann looked great, did she age at all ?She has a company called Wishing Wells that help people who have trouble with clothing fasteners like zippers etc. She helped design easy to wear clothes. But all the people from the shows I loved when I was a kid, even Ron Howard aka as Richie Cunningham are getting up there, his red locks gone on the top. Goes to show that even tv stars age like the rest of us, but maybe not Barbara Eden! (Di-trivia-I saw Ms. Eden in a summer stock rendition of The Sound of Music at the Valley Forge Music Fair when I was a kid).

~Update-according to the most recent issue of TV Guide, yes indeed Happy Days premiered in January of 1974! So that’s 31 yrs ago. I was right.
~Footnote-2-3-05-watched the Happy Days reunion show (and missed The Apprentice but saw who got the boot in the last few minutes). I was pleasantly surprised by it. They all seem like nice people. Joanie didn’t love Chachi as they sat on opposite sides of the room and didn’t appear to talk or touch.

Dec28

Finally…a new desk

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The guys didn’t come home with a new desk yesterday, but a new black leather chair-for giants! It can’t be lowered so my short legs and feet can touch the floor. I think Brian didn’t do something right, because this is the first chair that I felt like I was getting a haircut in which couldn’t be lowered. Thank goodness it was basically free (we had a gift card-thank you f-in-l for that) and I have a cute little stool under my tootsies.
Today we took a drive down to Wally World (Walmart) and were about to get the armoire style with the fake wood grain in brown. We saw they had the black armoire with the fake wood grain and it was $88 and missing the top portion the other one had but it was like $60 cheaper. Bingo! We were taking too long making up our minds when another customer came over and started to look at the solo black one that was left. I said really loud, well that figures and flopped down in a computer chair (where I could touch my feet to the ground!) and maybe the guy took the hint and left! Whew! So Brian got a salesman and paid for the desk while I got a new trashbin with wheels and scurried around the 50% off area collecting a few rolls of wrapping paper and mini ornaments for something I want to make and sell for next year. I found some new things for January birthdays (my brother and pal in Colorado were both born on January 8th). I love a good sale! I did hit a sale yesterday and got some Snowbabies I liked for 33% off.
Brian got busy assembling the armoire after dinner and 3 hours later it’s not all the way done, but almost. Cosmo was really marking his territory by rubbing his mouth on various parts of it.
So the room is a mess until we get it set up. I suggested we put the old one in the drive and put a ‘FREE’ sign on it, but he’d rather haul it to the Goodwill. Oh well. I have a slight headache which I am blaming on the armoire’s pressed particle board.
My brother Ken called to say the package from our brother Don had come from Florida last night and asked if Sean was still looking for a car. We said ‘yes’. He said he had a ’98 or ’99 Ford Taurus where he worked and would check it out for us. I called tonight to see if he had and he was home sick today from a bad migraine and vomiting from it. He was sick exactly a year ago today when he was suppose to come out here for lunch and present opening. Weird.
Mom went to see her old friend Barbara who was up from South Carolina and staying at her daughter Adrienne’s house not far away. Jim is also a friend of hers. They went to an Irish style restaurant and had prime rib. Adrienne and her teen son Ryan are headed to Ireland tomorrow where they have friends and family. Cool.

Dec27

Ahhh…some quiet time here…for a while

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Well the guys went looking for a computer desk and it’s ‘me’ time right now. No cookie baking, cleaning, etc. My time to surf the web and do a little blogging. I am dying to hit a few after Christmas sales, and I may….afterwards.
Christmas Eve and Christmas were nice. Not really hectic. We didn’t have to go out on the 24th until 4 pm. We then went to my mom’s and I basically had to redo the lights on her tree. My hair totally fell out and I had spent like an hour with the steam rollers! Mom’s house was a disaster. She can’t seem to allot time for cleaning much. She only gets moving around 11 or 12 every day. We told her not to worry about gifts and she got me like 6 tops that I really didn’t need. We went out to our favorite local restaurant which is conveniently up the road from my mom’s house. Her boarder and friend Jim came and somehow I got stuck sitting next to him and not my son or husband. He gets really tight wadded and pointed to the children’s hamburger and wanted to order it! Craphead. I think this will be the last year he will come along. His room is a mess and the rest of the place is starting to look bad.
We went over to my brother’s house to see them which was nice. Their house looks beautiful as they did a reversal making the dining room the living room (now the eating area is closer to the kitchen where he knocked down a doorway). My little brother amazes me with his talents. He does tend to get overwhelmed at times and takes it out on my mom, etc. Next he wants to redo his kitchen-just what I want to do next in my house. Bet he beats us to it!
That night we got home at 10:30 and decided to find a midnight mass service to attend. We went to a church in nearby Delaware and it was a nice change. We got to lounge around the next morning instead of running out the door to our church. Christmas was still a bit hectic for me as I made a big roast beef dinner. We gave each other thoughtful gifts, my favorite was an amethyst crucifix from Brian and Elton John’s 4 set DVD from Sean.
Sean and I went over to see my ailing uncle and his wife yesterday. Mom, Ken and his family went too. It was a nice visit and the kids opened their gifts from us over there. Tori went ga ga over a Barbie Swan Lake musicbox I gave her! I love when that happens. I got it for half nothing at a Kohl’s sale last year.
Well, that’s the last few days in a nutshell. Glad it’s over, but miss it already.

Nov30

If I was born a guy…

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How would your life differ if you were born a member of the opposite sex?
Apart from the obvious, anatomy, clothes, romance and marriage, what things might be better? Worse? Would it change the opportunities and problems you were presented? How would you take advantage of the changes? If you could switch sexes for a day, would you? How about forever?
First of all, I’d feel terribly sorry for my mom as she would have had 4 sons. She always reminisces that when I was born she couldn’t believe I was a girl and the nurses had to keep saying-‘yes, it’s a girl’. Being the only girl made me a little more special than my brothers, but I felt left out sometimes too. Not to say I wasn’t on the floor playing with my brother Don’s Hot Wheels either! I just didn’t have that many people to play dolls with and ‘to be a girl’ with. We had neighbor girls, but they were a bit younger than me. My brother Don was my best friend until he was 13 (we are a year apart in age). I am sure it may have been a little easier to have another boy who could share clothes with his brothers. I was in a good position-#2 of 4, but actually was a middle child for 7 years. Middle children have a hard time occasionally and if I was a boy I would have felt it more.
I don’t care to switch sexes. I lived around boys/men my entire life and that’s enough for me and definitely wouldn’t want to switch forever.