Closed For Repair

If you've ever owned an older home - or even if you own a newer home - you've probably found that the maintenance never ends. Something breaks, something wears out, something floods or starts to sound funny .... endless possibilities, especially if your house is like ours, a 1950's era bungalow (sounds better than "ranch," doesn't it?) I'm blessed with a husband who can tackle any home improvement project, given the right power tools and a little bit of free time. The project this week is our bathroom: hang a small pendant light over the sink (we've had it for 2 years, just never put it up during the original remodeling phase); install an additional vent over the shower; and re-paint the ceiling over the shower once items 1 and 2 are done. As usual, the parts of the project that he thought would be easy are a Pain, and the vent (which he thought would be the Pain) went pretty smoothly. He's spent the past 2 days running up and down the attic stairs as he's rigged up the box for the pendant light - up and down, up and down, mumbling, swearing (just a little ...), yelling for help, then whistling to himself when it's going smoothly for a minute, then more mumbling, etc. You get the picture. But now the light is in, the vent is installed and he's sanding down the ceiling - door closed, mask on, sander humming loudly. (Cats and dogs hiding downstairs because of the noise.) Progress! I'll say it again - I'm so glad I have a husband who has the skills and is driven to do these projects. He's so good at figuring out how to do anything around the house - electrical, plumbing, painting, plastering - whatever. And because he's a bit of a perfectionist (it's OK for me to say that - we all know it by now!) the job always ends up looking wonderful. We've saved hundreds (probably thousands) of dollars over the last 6 years by not having to pay people to do these jobs. Life is good with a "can-do" hubster - all things are possible for him and his trusty DeWalt!

Adult ADD

Famous People With Attention Deficit and Learning Disorders ... though not all these famous people have been "officially diagnosed," they have exhibited many of the signs of ADD, AD/HD & LD. The point of this list is to inspire those of us who have similar challenges. (We thank the Kitty Petty ADD/LD Institute for this valuable contribution to One ADD Place.)

Albert Einstein, Galileo, Mozart, Wright Brothers, Leonardo da Vinci, Tom Cruise, Charles Schwab, Henry Winkler, Walt Disney, John Lennon, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Jules Verne, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson, Nelson Rockefeller, Tomas Edison, Gen. George Patton, Agatha Christie, John F. Kennedy, Pete Rose, Robin Williams, Louis Pasteur, Werner von Braun, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert Kennedy, George Bush's children, Prince Charles, Gen. Westmoreland, Eddie Rickenbacker, George C. Scott, George Bernard Shaw, Beethoven

“The ADHD adult may have the same challenges as the ADHD child with the main difference being that adults have more sophisticated coping mechanisms than children. Behaviors may include: difficulty staying organized, difficulty finishing a task, procrastination, trouble maintaining relationships or controlling their moods, very impulsive, and/or poor financial management.”

If you think you may be an adult with ADD (or if someone who loves you thinks you have ADD) you can take a short diagnostic test and see how you score. Go to http://www.oneaddplace.com/addcheck.htm to find this test. If you read through the test and think, "WOW!, that sounds just like me!" you should consider talking to your family doctor. Adults can have ADD and they can benefit from medication such as Adderall XR. Life can become much different - and much better - with appropriate medication. Been there, done that in our household and life is good.

Christmas Day 2005

Our Christmas Day started not too terribly early. Chris is always the early-riser, every day of the year, so he was up long before the rest of us. I woke up about 8:30, got dressed and ate a breakfast muffin (courtesy of Teresa - yum!) and then woke up the sleeping beasts (teenagers). We were opening gifts by 9:15 or so - a very civilized event compared to the days of old when frenzied children could hardly contain themselves. I won't try to list all the gifts, but some of the favorites seemed to be: for Kelly, her Petz game for the computer and an electric blanket; for Matt, his set of Legos (a Star Wars X-wing fighter) (yes, he's really 19 years old and still likes Legos); for Chris, our new digital camera and his G. Gordon Liddy calendar (if you know what that means, you're grinning!); and for me - I love the new camera too, and the set of watercolor prints that Chris had framed for me. (My mom painted these portraits while in art school in 1945 or 1946. My sisters will be green with envy when they see these!) Matt gave me some incredible Godiva hot cocoa mix and Kelly gave me a bundle of GREEN bracelets that I had admired.





Shortly after we finished opening gifts I called Mom and invited her over for a few minutes so she could see the watercolors. We visited and talked for a while, then she had to dash back home to get ready for the afternoons activities. We picked her up a little after noontime and headed out to the Liberty Township homestead for an afternoon of fun. We had a great time visiting with everyone, opened more gifts and ate a wonderful meal around 4:00. By the time we packed up and turned for home it was about 6:00, but felt like 10:00. One of the more relaxed and less stressful Christmas Days we've had in a long time!

These pictures were all taken with our new camera which we're still learning to use, hence a little bit of fuzziness on a few of them. It's got a lot of cool features, many more than our other digital camera, so we'll become more proficient as time goes on. Stay tuned for dozens, or probably hundreds of great pictures in the months to come!

A Christmas Eve Feast

You most likely think I'm going to launch into a lengthy description of a delightful holiday meal enjoyed by our family. In reality, Chris and I just returned from United Dairy Farmers where we purchased our favorite ice cream - he, a giant chocolate chip milk shake, and I chose a peppermint-stick ice cream cone. Yummy. Not exactly the nutrionally-correct dinner chosen using the food pyramid as a guide, but tasty and filling nonetheless. Don't know if we'll really eat much else this evening.

The dogs in our family, however, were lucky to have quite a dinner tonight. Chris roasted a chicken earlier today then let it cool for several hours. The dogs have been on an "elevated alert" status all day, from the time Chris popped the chicken into the oven until it was pulled apart and served at 5:00 p.m. They've been pacing in and out of the kitchen, sniffing the floor, sniffing the refrigerator door and yes, unfortunately, getting into the kitchen garbage while we were out at UDF. (Our fault, we obviously forgot to put the bag outside in the garbage can. No self-respecting canine would walk away from a perfectly delicious bag of chicken-y garbage.)

As soon as the chicken came out of the refrigerator, the dogs congregated in the kitchen. Tango always has to weasel her way into the action, as close as she can get to the source of the food. She likes to supervise (and be in a good position to snarf up anything that accidentally falls on the floor - didn't I say she's the smartest one?).

Tyson was doing his own idiotic version of the "chicken dance" as he waited impatiently for dinner to be served. For the most part, Tandie stayed back and tried to act cool as she waited for dinner to be served (even though chicken is her absolute favorite thing in the whole world).

As Chris filled their dishes the excitement grew. He added some green beans and potatoes, and dinner was served! As usual, Tyson inhaled his food as though he hadn't been fed in days, Tango sniffed and licked and finally started eating, and Tandie worked through her food at a dignified pace.

The plates were licked clean in under 5 minutes. Don't you just love an appreciative audience when you cook? We don't do this kind of meal very often, but we figure if they're "fat and happy" tonight they'll sleep soundly and not scare Santa away. Good plan, eh? Merry Christmas Eve to All!

Cheery News For Today

Oh, Joy. It's official: Winter Is Here. Yipee.

"Although you may have been welcomed into winter more than three weeks ago, today is the astronomical beginning of the season at 1:35 p.m.The word solstice, for those of you who may not have heard this before, literally means “still sun.” The sun takes its lowest apparent path across the sky and appears to “stand still” in that position for the next few days. On this day, the sun’s rays directly shine over the Tropic of Capricorn, 23½ degrees south latitude, marking the southern hemisphere’s first day of summer. Those direct rays are at their farthest point from our latitude today. Still, the coldest time is yet to come as the lag of the atmosphere gets going. You will notice the sunset time creeping later and later by a minute or two over the next two weeks. By the end of January, the lengthening daylight minutes really begin to be noticed. " Just 89 Days Until Spring!

An Evening With Friends

Yesterday we spent the evening with our friends from church (our “small group”), snacking, playing games and just enjoying each others company. We missed Beth Ann but everyone else made it to Bob and Peggy’s house for the gathering. We had such a great time playing Apples 2 Apples and a little bit of Mad Gab towards the end – lots of laughing and joking all night long. Good clean fun with some really great friends! Merry Christmas to All!

Here Come The Holidays!

We went to our first Christmas get-together yesterday evening. Sister Rose had everyone over to her house - nieces, nephews, in-laws, sisters, mothers, sons, daughters, grandchild and a few friends - the whole crew was there. Fortunately she has lots of space for us all to spread out so we had a noisy good time. Food covered the countertops and stove and table - we did a potluck meal as usual being the sensible people that we are, but Rose still did a lot of work to pull the dinner together. I tried to get a picture of each person, so let's see how I did as I lay this out. Here's Rose, Erika (with a bag of ice for her allergy eyes), and Chris with girlfriend:



The newest family unit: Jason, Mackenzie and baby Nolan, visiting from Cleveland:


Margy, Abby and Laura: (Phill has already gone to Hilton Head and they'll meet up with him next week):

Mom, Kelly and other family and friends:

And so begins the holiday season! This coming week brings the annual Christmas play at church, my company dinner with co-workers and spouses at The Precinct, and a gathering of our friends from church for a fun games night. And then Christmas Eve! This week's going to fly by and suddenly it'll be ... Christmas Day! Remember my motto for the season: Keep it sane, keep it simple. It's really all about a Very Important Birthday, not the "stuff" we get so caught up in.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

I think I’m slowly getting a bit of Christmas spirit. I’ve been trying to take this month one day at a time so as not to become overwhelmed by all the Things I Have To Do by December 25th. So far that approach is working. It helps that we are trying really, really hard to keep the season simple, with less talk about gifts and who-wants-what and the material things.

A couple of Sundays ago I went to the annual Cookie Exchange at Sue’s house. We all baked a batch of 4 dozen cookies and each of us ended up with about a half dozen of each type of cookie. Yum. Equally good were all the snacks made by Rose and Sue – especially good since I hadn’t had time for lunch after church. We had a great time eating, talking, laughing, eating some more, catching up on news and finally we got around to swapping cookies. Got home just in time to see the Bengals win another game.

Our house has Christmas lights this year! Nothing crazy, no inflatable snow creatures, just the traditional lights-hanging-from-the-gutter and some happy little colored bulbs on the porch railing. Thank you, Chris, for climbing the ladder to do this, indulging the Baby Bird in her wish for lights on the house. They look wonderful!

We got our Christmas cards out in the mail this past weekend (right on schedule) and also put up the tree. No live tree this year due to budget cutbacks (that’s OK, we saved a tree…) so we borrowed the old “family tree” from Ma & Pops. We figure it’s about 35 years old? We opened the box and stared at the pile of prickly green limbs, trying to decide how to go about making them into a tree. We sorted the pieces into piles by color of the tip and Thank God, when we got to the bottom of the carton, there were the torn and tattered instructions. So up went the tree, then the challenge of the lights (half are flashing, half are not - ?!?) and finally the garland and decorations. It’s bee-yoo-ti-ful!

While Chris strung the lights I worked on the Nativity set and unpacked my collection of Nutcrackers. I’m trying to resist the urge to pull out ALL my Christmas knick-knacks (I have enough for several families…) and keep it simple, keep it sane. So I chose my most favorite items and arranged them to my satisfaction – and voila, it’s Christmas in our house!

My on-going project is the Christmas ornaments that are to be family gifts. I baked salt-dough shapes a couple of weeks ago, as did Kelly – I’m doing letters of the alphabet, she’s making fun things like dogs, bunnies and hearts to give to her friends. We stocked up on a new supply of the little bottles of acrylic paints and have been painting like crazy, making them into colorful works of art. I’m about half-way done, so I’m on track to have them finished in plenty of time.

Halfway through December and still sane! Oh, and just 97 days until Spring!