The best laid plans...

Well, I had my day planned. But as Jeff got ready to leave for work he flipped on the news and discovered that I75 is at a dead stop and he's decided to work from home today. Because his office is upstairs and he will be on the phone most of the day, it's not feasible for me to clean upstairs today. OK - twist my arm. LOL! So, I find myself something new and fun to do. I went to RINGSURF and try to find a blog ring for homemakers. There isn't one?!?!? What is THAT about??? So, of course, I have to start one. Surely, there are other homemakers out there. Homemakers can work outside the home, of course, but their heart is with their home and their family. To me, homemakers ARE the heart of the home. We keep things moving. We make life easier for our family and we make our homes a safe place and an escape from the big bad world out there. We clean, we cook, we do laundry. Yes, we have outside interests (obviously, mine is quilting)... but our home and family are what makes our hearts go pitter-pat every day. If you're reading this and are a homemaker at heart, please join my Ring! All it really does is increase the traffic to your blog or web site. Once you sign up, I'll come visit your site (I'll take my coffee with Sweet n' Low and Cream, please!) and see that it's homemaker related, and I'll give you my stamp of approval (for all it's worth) and poof! you put a little web ring thingie on your blog or web page and off we go! I guess I should go do some laundry or soon I'll find myself lost in the land of the Internet for the day! So easy to find things to do on the 'net!

Cleaning Day

Yesterday, Brayden and I did some cleaning upstairs. He's entering his "Terrible Two's" stage (although he somehow manages to do it in a very SWEET way!), and the busier I keep him, the better behaved he is. (He learned the word "No" last week, and he's now practicing it a lot.) So, though hard to believe, one of his favorite things to do when we can't get outside is to clean! Yesterday he and I cleaned upstairs. We gathered all the trash (he brings me the trash baskets, I empty them into a larger trash bag, put in a new liner, and he puts the basket back), dusted, and he windexed toilet seats and sides of tubs while I windexed mirrors and windows. He LIKES to clean toilets, but I'm just not comfortable with exposing him to germs like that, so he's happy if he can just windex the tanks and the top of the seat lids. He also helped me put away laundry (he can reach the shelf in the linen closet for clean towels and washcloths). He didn't want me to vaccuum -- for some reason he's scared of my upstairs vac, though it's exactly the same as the downstairs vac! Last, he helped me make the bed. Downstairs, he vac'd the family room and kitchen for me. Because I have a big heavy cannister vac he can't move around, I stand behind him and hold the hose and move the vac - but he does all the manual labor. The child has a "thing" about vac'ing under furniture and wayyyy in the corners! He does a great job! So today, I need to get back upstairs and finish the cleaning. My To Do List is: -- Vac upstairs -- Vac stairs and wipe down staircase sideboards -- Finish cleaning both upstairs bathrooms - tubs, toilets -- Wash both bathroom floors -- Put clean comforter and pillowcases on guest bed -- Clean sheets on master bed -- Clean towels in bathrooms In addition, I'm trying to do a major quilt room re-organization, so I'll work on that today for the afternoon. This morning Jeff is running a little late, so I made him a breakfast burrito he can take with him on the drive to work. One of his favorite breakfasts. I buy ONE 1/4 inch thick slice of "cooked ham" (called "boiled ham" in some parts of the country), and cube this up to have in the refrigerator to use in omelettes, on salads, and to throw in bean soup when I make it. This ham is actually the least expensive lunchmeat we can buy here, despite the fact it's "pure" ham. Far more popular in New England than in Ohio. So here's my recipes for BREAKFAST BURRITO 1 tsp diced onion* 1 tbsp diced green pepper 1/4 cup (or so) cubed ham (1/4 inch cubes) 2 eggs 1 tbsp milk or cream 1 slice American cheese Dash salt, dash pepper 1 flour tortilla In a lightly buttered small fry pan, cook the onion, green pepper and ham until the onion is cooked through. In a small bowl, mix the eggs and milk as in scrambled eggs. Pour into the pan over the ham, onions, pepper. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir just like scrambled eggs until eggs are cooked through. Cut cheese slice in half and lay end to end on tortilla. Scoop cooked egg mixture on top (the heat of the eggs will melt the cheese). Roll up like a burrito and wrap in aluminum foil. *I use only a small amount of onions because I know Jeff doesn't want "onion breath" at work!

Picture of the Day

Look close -- it's not really fish!

Who's that cutie pie?

It's Brayden Lee! He helped me shovel the snow off our deck. While he was at it, he ate more than his fair share of snow. I had to teach him not to eat dirty snow -- you'd think that would come automatic, but it doesn't!

Despite it looking like we got a great deal of snow, you can see in the upper left hand corner that our yard is actually bare. There was just a bit of leftover snow on the deck and patio, and Brayden loves to shovel so when the weather hit 40 degrees last week, I took him outside to do some shoveling. Hey, I'll never say "no" to free help, no matter how little it is!

Wooooo Hooooo - It's Race Day!

Racing season is finally back! Yippy Skippy! Today was the Daytona 500 -- congrats to Ryan Newman for his win (yeah - he was one of my 5 fantasy racing picks!). I felt bad for Kyle Busch -- SO close and yet so far. And Dale Jr. was a bit of a disappointment, but at least he did better than his team mates, which is good. Jeff and I normally tape the race on our DVR, then watch it an hour or two after it starts because we like to fast forward through the commercials. Today, however, we decided to watch it live so we could have Sirius radio tuned in to the driver channels at the same time. But Holy Cow, there were a LOT of commercials. The race ran about 3 1/2 hours, and I bet 1 1/2 hours of that was commercials. Every 10 laps or so they did another 3 minutes of commercials! I know this is the "Super Bowl" of racing, but UGH... more racing, less commercials, please! Once the race started, I called Mary's house and asked what she was doing (cleaning) and what Brayden was doing (playing), so I asked her to turn the TV on and put the race on for him. She thought I was crazy, but when she turned and asked Brayden if he wanted to watch a race on TV, you could hear him running and yelling RACE RACE RACE! and then UMMA! UMMA! (that's me) as he headed for the television. Jeff and I are training him well! LOL We have races on DVD here and he likes to watch them with us. He has knows the "names" of his die cast cars -- Terry, Bobby, Dale and Kevin! And he can pick those cars out on television. Yeah baby - another race enthusiast in the family!

Do you believe in miracles?

I'm not a big believer in miracles, per se. Yes, the sun rising in the morning, flowers blooming in the Spring, the birth of babies, etc., are certainly miracles. But have you ever witnessed a non-nature-related miracle? I have. My daughter has a pinched sciatic nerve. Right after she had her son (almost 2 years ago), she went through a period of agonizing pain. I mean, this girl would get out of her car and stand in my driveway and scream like someone was killing her. She couldn't stand, she couldn't walk, she couldn't sit without screaming. It was absolutely horrible to witness, especially since as a Mom, I wanted to "fix" her and couldn't. She went to doctor after doctor, emergency room after emergency room. They wanted to either pump her full of drugs or push her on to the next doctor. Appointments sometimes took weeks to get. No one seemed to care. Her family suffered. She was not able to take care of her baby son. She missed work. If not for a very understanding boss, she could have lost her job. This dragged on forever and we just could not find any answers or anyone who would help her. Doctors (and nurses in their office) just seemed so heartless and just didn't care that she was absolutely in agony. Honestly, they just did not care. The answer to everything was drugs, and she didn't want drugs because of her past history of drug dependency and abuse. One day when she was exhausted and in shreaking pain, I got on the Internet and looked up every doctor in a 20 mile range. We started calling - one after the other. No one cared. Two weeks to an appointment, a month to an appointment, go to the nearest ER. No one cared. Until Mary made the phone call that literally changed her life. The name of the place is the West Chester Back and Pain Clinic and it was less than 2 miles from my house. At the time, it was in a strip mall and we'd passed it a thousand times and never noticed it. She called and they said "Come right in!". Mary arrived and had to be brought in in a wheelchair, moaning and screaming with pain. Forty-five minutes later, Mary walked out of Dr. Shrickel's office with a smile on her face. The pain was gone. No drugs. No pushing her to the next physician. This doctor stopped the pain then and there. It was a miracle to witness. I can't say enough about a docto who cares and who has compassion for his patients. This doctor actually gave Mary his personal cell phone number in case she needed him OVER THE HOLIDAYS! He opened up his office on New Year's Day for her -- with his children in tow! The funny thing is, our family is not a believer in chiropractors, and if we had known Dr. Shrickel was a chiropractor, Mary would never have gone to him. But we didn't know (fate)... and she did go. And he stopped her pain and made her life livable again. This past week she went through a similar incident. The pain wasn't quite as bad (at least, I didn't hear her screaming, just crying). But when she called Dr. Shrickel, he was away to a conference until Friday! She missed all but one day of work this week because she couldn't sit, couldn't stand, couldn't function. Lo and behold, she got in to see him on Friday afternoon and what do you think? Forty-five minutes later she walked out with a smile on her face. The pain was gone. Before Mary went to her doctor on Friday, I promised myself that if this worked for her a second time, I would make an appointment to see him for my back problems. One time, I said, could have been a fluke. But TWO times -- the man knows what he's doing. So this week I will gladly call for an appointment.

Picture of the Day

Blog picture of the Day

Happy Valentine's Day to the people I love...

I love my family. My son, JJ (28), and daughter, Mary (26), are so precious to me. They're grown and have their own lives now, but deep in my heart, I will always think of them like this:



I'm so lucky to be married to the world's best husband and have the world's best grandson in my life. So many grandparents these days don't know their grandchildren because they live far away. I'm so lucky to have Brayden nearby!



Happy Valentine's Day everyone -- my good friends, my family, my blog readers. I wish each one of you a special day and know that you are appreciated by me.