Wow, another week gone by

A brief recap of last weekend, 'cuz I'm succinct 

Where goes the time? I cannot keep up with anything any more. Between work and going for rehab for my somewhat swollen left arm the days are flying by.
I have lymphedema, but I'd say it's not a severe case of it. The swelling has been coming and going for the past year. The treatment feels sooo good.

Daughter Allegra and I did find time to have fun Sunday. We met up with Linda, her daughter Amanda, Linda's friend, Paula, and The Visitor from England, Claire.
Linda has already written about our get-together; I didn't even try to post before she did. ;-)

We traipsed over to Norwich where Linda lives then to Canterbury to get Paula, and headed in two cars to Mrs. Bridges' Pantry in South Woodstock, Ct.

The place was packed. It turns out it was featured on a local news broadcast earlier in the week.

That brought a lot of people to the tea room. The owner said Saturday was even busier.
We enjoyed a proper British tea time with scones, soup, sandwiches, and the like. Claire had beans on toast. 

Linda and Amanda pose

But I can't show you a photo of Claire. She doesn't let people take them, which is too bad. She is a lovely woman with a great smile.
And she's really young. I felt old. Oh well. Age is just a number, right?

On Saturday Allegra volunteered to be a docent at an open-hearth cooking demonstration at the David Humphreys House in our town.
I wrote the post below for my View from the Valley newspaper blog:

Derby Historical Society docents and junior docents demonstrated cooking the Colonial way Saturday at the David Humphreys House in Ansonia.

Junior docent Jacob Hokanson, 13, of Ansonia, above, works hard at whipping cream to serve with homemade pumpkin pie.
The menu also featured roast chicken, potatoes, a mix of carrots, turnips, and parsnips, cranberry sauce, Johnny cakes and freshly-churned butter. The food was traditional Thanksgiving dinner fare.

Jacob said he has been a junior docent for the past three years.
Below is a photo of our docent daughter, Allegra, gazing at the fire in the parlor after we finished our meal.

She loves the Humphreys House, as do I. She gave several tours of the house as others prepared the meal.

My mother and I enjoyed ourselves and the food we sampled! And it was good to see so many young people involved as junior docents. 

 

Here junior docents Lauren Fadiman, left, and Quentin Salgado, both 13 and from Shelton, wave to passing motorists Saturday in front of the David Humphreys House, 37 Elm St., Ansonia. 

~~~
That's about all I've got right now. I managed to mention some stuff about lymphedema, so I can say this is another of an occasional series on my breast cancer journey.   

Shadow Shot Sunday

{Straight out of camera shadow shot}

I had lunch yesterday at a new restaurant with daughter Allegra and a friend.

When we were paying at the counter our friend pointed out this shadow..he knows Ralph and I are into shadow shots!

{Straight out of camera shadow shot}

Join the fun! See lots more shadows at Shadow Shot Sunday 2.

Shadow Shot Sunday 2 ~ New Haven Harbor

I snapped this last March when I was with my friend Linda (Duchess of Norwich-Upon-Thames) on a girls' day out, two days before I had breast cancer surgery.
Linda was so kind to take me out for some fun before my upcoming operation and recuperation. And we did indeed have a good (albeit chilly) time driving around taking photos, eating lunch and shopping (and giggling) at IKEA. 


We went to Fort Nathan Hale Park in New Haven (Ct.) to take photos, and found that the Elm City skyline was good for photographing as well.
Ralph told me this photo has some shadows in it, and encouraged me to use it today. ;-)


Join the fun and see lots more shadowy scenes from around the world at Shadow Shot Sunday 2.

Shadow Shot Sunday 2

The afternoon sun on a window pane made this cross-shaped shadow on my guardian angel. Cool, huh?
The piece was created by my talented artist friend, Rich DiCarlo.

One morning last week our daughter put a water bottle on the dining room table, and this is what I saw.


You can see lots more shadowy photos at Shadow Shot Sunday 2.

I'm thankful for a lot on this Thanksgiving Day

Money makes the world go around, or at least the song from 'Cabaret' would have us believe that.

Call me crazy, but I prefer instead to believe love makes the world go 'round. Yup. Who's with me?

In the past four days I have gotten a lot of love: every day was another surprise. 

Hmm...I wonder what today will bring?

Over the weekend a cousin (who is a regular reader of my blog but doesn't comment) e-mailed me to tell me he had ordered two magazine subscriptions for me.

He was hoping I didn't already subscribe. Of course I don't! 

Who can afford magazines? Although a certain unnamed man in this house gets a couple that deal with cars. It's his therapy.

On Monday an artist friend gave me five Christmas ornaments he had made three years ago. They still have the price tags on them. ;-) 

My favorite is a lump that is black on one side to resemble coal with the word naughty painted on it and the other side is painted to look like a gold nugget, and it says nice.

On Tuesday a woman I've met through my job gave me a ceramic guardian angel to hang on the wall to watch over me.

And yesterday as I was leaving radiation one of the technicians wished me a Happy Thanksgiving and handed me a homemade apple pie. It's delicious! What a nice surprise!

And after that I covered a story and tried to interview four-year-olds. When I was ready to leave two of the girls asked their teacher if they could give hugs. So they hugged me around my knees. It was adorable.

'Tis better to give than receive but I must say being the recipient this week hasn't been bad at all! 

Yesterday was our Cameron's 21st birthday. We didn't sing Happy Birthday or have his cake, so we'll do that today after dinner, if we can stuff anything more into our stuffed selves. He understood I was busy with work and other things.

I do have a lot for which I'm thankful. I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Shadow Shot Sunday ~ pix from a fun jaunt with a friend

Today I'm using more shadowy photos from a foliage trip I took in early October with my friend and chauffeur, Linda, through Connecticut, Massachusetts and into southern Vermont.

It wasn't easy finding autumn colors, but we did find some interesting places to photograph along the way!

This is an Episcopal church "somewhere" in western Massachusetts. I'm not sure what town we were in at the time.

We both liked the shadows created by the noonday sun.

 

 See lots more shadow shots from around the world at our awesome Aussie friend Tracy's Hey Harriet blog! 

Shadow Shot Sunday ~ historic

Four weeks ago my friend Linda picked me up on a sunny Saturday to seek some autumn foliage in Connecticut. 

Of course we were armed with our cameras and were ready to capture colorful leaves and trees for posterity (or at least for our blogs!)

We didn't see much color in Connecticut, so Linda kept driving over the border into Massachusetts. Still not much color for Oct. 8 in New England. It was disappointing.

She saw that Bennington, Vt. was a mere 38 miles further north, so north we headed. I'm so good at being a passenger!  

Here are five of many photos I took in Bennington that have shadows in them.

The fall foliage was at about 10 percent there. You'd think Vermont would be colorful in October...not really. Maybe it's because we were in southern Vermont.

I did find shadows in the historic cemetery adjacent to the First Congregational Church of Bennington. 

Robert Frost is buried there, and we weren't the only ones walking down the path through the graveyard to see his gravestone. 

There were arrows pointing the way to the Frost family's site, and there were lots of folks there when we were, thanks to lots of tour buses in the area.  

The fence below was in front of the cemetery, along the sidewalk. I was able to get a photo without cars and tour buses in it! Woo hoo!

I thought it was pretty and so typical New England. Notice the green leaves on the trees.

And here's Linda photographing The Walloomsac Inn, directly across the street from the church.

It was once a grand hotel, but now it seems like a perfect place for someone to set up a scary Halloween house. It looks kinda haunted!

I read that someone lives there, but I have my doubts. Who'd want to live there?

I urge you to visit our awesome Aussie friend Tracy at her Hey Harriet blog to discover lots of shadowy shots! 

Impromptu x 2

I had two unplanned get-togethers with friends Wednesday, thus the title of the post.

First off I took a morning walk with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. I wrote about it and posted a photo here. I'm cool like that. ;-)

I also snapped the photo below while we walked and talked.

Then Wednesday afternoon Duchess Linda of Norwich Upon Thames Facebook messaged me to see if we could meet her for dinner after she picked up daughter Amanda from the New Haven train station.
We could and we did! It was great to see them again.

All in all Wednesday was a lot of fun. Note to self: Need to do more of that!

Cake for moi!

Some things have not been going so great lately (breast cancer diagnosis and money woes come to mind), but in the spirit of taking the bitter with the better - or in this case the bitter with the sweeter - a few things have been going well.

And they're things that money cannot buy.

In the past few years I've been fortunate to have met some wonderful people and to have made several friends.

One of them is Troy, a guy who always makes me smile. Actually he cracks me up.

I just met him in April when Ralph, Allegra, and I attended a viewing party to watch the SyFy channel's "Ghost Hunters" episode that focused on an investigation at the Sterling Opera House in Derby, Ct.
I just happened to be interviewed for that episode, and my interview was on TV. ;-)
You can read about my 15 minutes of fame here.

Once you meet Troy you feel like you've known him for years. He's a friendly chap, that's for sure.

Yesterday he surprised me with a delicious chocolate Bundt cake he baked (see above).

He already told me Bundt cakes were his specialty and he'd bake me one for my birthday, but instead I got the cake yesterday ~ five months early. It was such a cool surprise!

Thanks so much, Troy, you made my weekend!

Aren't they beautiful?

I got this lovely arrangement from a friend and her husband yesterday.

Thanks, J. and G. ;-)

Linus likes it too. Below he's checking out the different scents. =^ . ^=

On friends who are visiting, visiting nurses, cards, and flowers

More musings as I use writing to keep my spirits high.

Linus the cat (my baby) has been getting scared. Every time a visitor stops by he runs and hides behind the water heater.

This afternoon two friends brought over food. What a nice surprise. Tonight's menu will be homemade chicken pot pie (thanks, Virginia!) and freshly baked lemon cookies (thanks, Beth!).

We still have lots of leftover lasagna and salad greens, grape tomatoes, and a red pepper (thanks, Barb!) and coconut chocolate chip cookies (thanks, Amy!) We're going to freeze the lasagna. No way we can eat all that now.

Wow. I'm going to gain weight unless I start moving around more. But I'm supposed to rest.

Tomorrow a friend from church is stopping by with dinner. I'm totally overwhelmed.

Today I got a lovely get well card and note from a Facebook friend I've never met. And a beautiful arrangement of flowers from a friend and former co-worker and her husband.

This Ace bandage I am wearing is the longest bandage I've ever seen. The tiny nurse who has visited me twice so far has to wrap it and wrap it around me. That takes longer than taking my vitals.

Some of my lovely parting gifts from the hospital:

An update to yesterday's post about friends

I just read my friend Karen's note on Facebook from earlier today...her sister Gail died yesterday.

Karen said she went in peace, and she knows that Gail is in a better place.

Make new friends, but keep the old

...one is silver and the other's gold.

Those words certainly rang true for me Saturday when I got back together with a friend ~ who I had not seen in almost 40 (gulp!) years. She has lived in Michigan since she went away to college.

I have been thinking about Karen all week and trying to decide whether or not to write about what it was like meeting up with a friend after all these years had gone by.

It was great to see her; we chatted about our memories of growing up, about our teachers and classmates, our children and our careers. That part was fun. We had no trouble reconnecting.

But my brief reunion with Karen was tainted with much sadness. Her only sister is dying, and she is back in Connecticut to be with her. Her parents and younger brother have already passed away, and her sister is her only tie to her original family.

I don't want to go into any details. I'll just say the situation is terribly sad and unfair. Her sister has a husband and two adult children. They are all making sure that she doesn't face the end of her life alone.

Karen has a deep faith. I admire her strength in this most trying situation, and I know she will weather whatever comes her way.

What's cooking? Not much.

I can't seem to focus sometimes. If I doth not write things/events on the calendar, I doth forget.
I had completely forgotten about the fact we were invited to a get-together last night. I had been planning to bake a loaf of the Amish Friendship Bread after I was done with work and dinner and stuff.
Friday was Day 10, also known as "baking day." Now it's Day 11, so it must be too late. I think I shall have to throw out the starter batter. Notice how I don't seem too upset about this?

Safe to say this baking project was doomed from the start!

On the bright side, at least I was able to get several blog posts out of it. And we had a wonderful time at the party. Too much food, but a lot of laughs.

It has been quite a year

My first blogiversary. Yippee!!
I've had an interesting first year in the blogosphere, meeting new friends, learning stuff, going different places that other writers take me in their blogs. Much fun.

My first blog post was titled "Boomer in Bloom" and the first sentence was: Chronicling the travels of a middle-aged wife and mother of two teen-agers on what once was called the Information Superhighway.

Have I done that? I think so. My goal is to practice more creative writing. We'll see. That takes work!

My earliest commenters were my daughter, my sister-in-law Michele, two friends and a new acquaintance.
My first reader who arrived from the blogosphere was dear Joan, The Erstwhile Librarian. Thanks for discovering me, Joan! That was the beginning of my blog journey, or blourney, as Queen Mimi might say.
All I can say at the moment is on to year two ~ and bigger and better posts.
Looks like some of us are having a relaxing Monday morning! We just spotted them posing atop our headboard. At least the camera didn't spook them.