The Roller Coaster Day

Tuesday, September 22, started off with plans to take my mother to The Center for a few hours while I went to our ladies Bible Study group. This quickly changed when my mom was in too much pain to go. Plan B goes into action. My friend was called and agreed to lead the study group, so I dropped off the materials at church and promptly went to get my mom's left side x-rayed~the source of the pain. A few days before, mom had fallen and the doctor examined her and felt that even though there was no bruising there, she should have it x-rayed for a possible bruised or cracked rib. The doctor said mom also had an infection, so wait 'til she felt better for the x-ray and put her on an antibiotic and I asked for a pain med. The x-ray pictures showed 5 cracked ribs-yikes-the pain must have been horrible. So off to the ER to see if there was any other damage. One night in the hospital for observation was put into motion. Mom did have a tiny puncture to a lung, but no breathing issues, so that would be okay. Apparently cracked ribs heal over time and management for the pain is all that can be done. As I am sitting in her hospital room and I am just beginning to answer question after question for the nurse to enter into the computer, my cell phone rings. I answer and my daughter says, "Mama, I just got engaged!!" I held up 1 finger for the nurse to give me a second and shared my daughter's joy. You might think the first person I shared the news with was my mom,the grandmother of the bride-to-be, but with mom's hearing loss and dementia, nothing would compute. The scene would have been me shouting into my mom's ear about the engagement, only to have my mom say something like, "What? Who's in a rage? What cage? We should call the police!!" So the nice nurse was the first person I told about our happy news! The first day of fall was indeed a day of falling and rising again~emotionwise.

This is what I believe

Here is a clip of one of my favorite songs.It really helps when I am running on the treadmill. Enjoy!! Oh and thanks, Becca, for showing me how to do this kind of a post.:)

The Bible Study of Estrogen~I mean Esther

Today is the beginning of the third year of a ladies Bible study group that a friend of mine and I started in the fall of 2007. If any of you have ever read the Yada-Yada Prayer Group books by Neta Jackson, then you can have a fairly good idea of the composition of our group. We are a group of 10 ladies give or take a few. The group has changed since we began as some have stayed, some have left and others have come. We are mostly in our fifties with one in her forties and a couple beyond their fifties:) We are a hodge-podge of denominations with the same belief in The One True God. God is using each of us to encourage one another when we have a difficult day, when we are afraid to try something risky, when we need a listening ear and just to be there for each other for all the other stuff. We have studied The Life You've Always Wanted by Jon Ortberg, The Lord's Prayer, If You Want to Walk on Water You Have to Get Out of the Boat, also by Ortberg, lessons from each of us as we shared topics that we felt God wanted us to share and now we are studying the Beth Moore study of Esther. Beth Moore, if you do not know who she is,she is a dynamic fireball to put it mildly. She is PASSIONATE, shall we say. My mom watched a short part of the introductory session and in her words, "Boy, can she preach!" I guess that is the Baptist part mom was seeing. Did I mention Beth Moore can get fired up? Well, with the estrogen already present in a ladies' Bible study and the book of Esther too, we are in for a hormonally charged fall season. We're goin' have fun!!

9-09-09

Today is the ninth month,the ninth day and the ninth year. On this day, the three little feral kittens used up their nine lives as they succumbed to a virus called Fading Kitten Syndrome. On Monday they were healthy, although the muted calico female did look like she wasn't doing very well. According to our vet, Fading Kitten Syndrome comes on suddenly and there isn't anything that can be done to stop the fading. She said it was most likely a virus passed on to the kittens from the mother cat. FYI, it can also happen to puppies at about this age (5 weeks). The kitten that had shown signs of illness died during the night and I buried her. Our vet kept the two remaining kittens when I left her office today, so that I wouldn't have to bury them. What a blessing to have such a loving and compassionate vet and office assistants. It is hard when you get attached to animals even if they are feral and then lose them. I wasn't planning on keeping them, but had hoped to find good homes for them. I guess the lesson in all of this is that death is part of life and we mourn, yes even if it is a feral kitten, and keep living.

The Cookie Jar

When I was a little girl, I would sing or maybe chant is a better term, the following:

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?
Number 1 stole the cookie from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Not me!/Couldn't be!/Wasn't me!
Then who?
Number 2 stole the cookie from the cookie jar, and then repeat the above.

I guess you could put a child's name in for #1, #2, etc., but for some reason that I can't remember, numbers were used.

Isn't it funny how the mind can remember jingles or sing-songy rhymes from years ago? My mom who suffers from dementia still remembers all of the counties of West Virginia in alphabetical order from her junior high school days back in the 1930's.

I happened to start saying this Cookie Jar Jingle as I thought about cookie jars this morning. I think every home cannot truly be called a home without a cookie jar. My grandmothers' homes had them and they were always filled with cookies. Although the cookies were not always homemade, most of the time that is what they were. My uncle worked for a glass company that made drinking glasses, ashtrays, bowls and yes, cookie jars. He would give us the ones with ever so slight imperfections that couldn't be sold. These cookie jars were your standard everyday variety. Nowadays,cookie jars are made of glass, plastic, tin, ceramic, you name it. The glass ones are the best,in my humble opinion.

In our house, we have a ceramic Mickey Mouse cookie jar that one of my students bought for me when he visited Disney World. It is on the small size which is good, since it is mostly my husband and I stealing cookies these days. Gingersnaps are in this jar at all times because that is my husband's favorite cookie. I can get bored with just one kind of cookie, so I will keep a few chocolate chip, fig newtons, oatmeal raisin or any other kind in a plastic ziploc bag once in a while. The point is that it doesn't really matter what kind of cookies you have, it's the jar that needs to be on that counter top with cookies to steal inside. So,if your kitchen counter is cluttered or if it isn't that's alright, but if it is missing a cookie jar, you need to do something about that.