Well, it is the day before my birthday and things are going okay for now. Got a card from my daughter last week when she sent her dads out she sent mine too. She knew she would forget if she didn't. I got a card from my parents yesterday and will add a little bit to what they sent me $ and buy me a new swimming suit for this year. Of course it all will wait till next week when I get paid.

I am kitty sitting this weekend or at least till Tuesday. These guys just got their eyes open on Thursday and have already won my heart and Scott's too. If I had the camera over here I'd take a pic of them but Scott has the camera over there right now. One little black one which I am calling Might Moe.....now this can be for Mighty Mouth cause it is the loudest or for Mighty Motor cause his motor runs nearly the whole time it is nursing on the bottle. The other 2 are grey and one has a bit more lighter grey around its face and I have been calling it Smokey Jo. The other has just been being called Baby for now, it is the most content during feeding time....but the hardest to get the bottle away from when it is time to quit. The other 2 pretty much quit on their own but the last one has to be told it is time to stop. Yes, I am enjoying myself doing this.

I've also learned a new name for an art thing I use to do all the time and just thought it was junk but now I see it as ZENTANGLE. Want to know more about it look here
http://www.zentangle.com/about-what-is--1.php
You never know you might be an artist and didn't even know it! It is a lot like doodling or as is pointed out in some of the material I have read about it it is also a form of meditation. I use to do things like this all the time but was told all I was doing was wasting paper......NO I was making ART.

Grumman the Wonder Cat

Just had to share this pic of Grumman the Wonder Cat......he is so funny to watch. You wouldn't believe by watching him play that back before Thanksgiving he was rescued from being an almost roadkill cat. He was in such bad shape, 2 or 3 breaks in his pelvic area, a break in his tail close to the pelvic and since then we have decided he has had a break in the tip of his tail. Also he had major nerve damage to his left leg where he was dragging it behind him......well as you can see in these pics he is now getting that leg up under him very nicely now. He also is beginning to put weight on that leg when he is moving around. You can definitely tell however, when he is tired as the leg get more lazy about pulling up under him.....there are times when Scott has to refuse to play games with him when he is like that.

Grumman has gotten where he will come up to Scott and hunch his back and act like he is going to come at him the turn around and run, it seems to be his way of trying to get Scott to play chase with him. Another thing Grumman does is when you are playing with something you are pulling and he is chasing, he has a habit of going in front of the object where he thinks it will come out at......he loves waiting for things to come out the other side. We now have several "tubes", like toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes and even a gift wrap tube that you put a small ball on the edge of them and he will literally knock the ball trying to get it to the other end. We have pics of him with his leg up to the body in the tube......he also loves looking down the tubes to see you at the other end.

The other night when Grumman was here I went into my bedroom to put up my laundry and he came to the door and talked at me like he was asking permission to come in so I told him "sure come on in". Then he went over to the bed and again like he was asking permission to get up on the bed....."sure you can get up there", so he jumped up and then came the fun part. He walked over to the pillow I use between my knees when I sleep and tried to put his head under it.......ah I thought I know what he wants. So I took a couple more pillows and made him a bridge and sure enough he dove under it. Then I went to the other side and peaked in the small tunnel and he jumped out at me. You see that is a game he and Scott play all the time of "where is the kitty" and then you look under where ever he is and he jumps out at you.....even though we know he has no front claws you can't help but jump back some when he does it......but he looks so proud of himself when it happens. Later Scott came in and played with us so even the comforter got into the act as Grumman figured out how to burrow under it so only his nose or an eye could be seen.

He is Grumman, our Wonder Cat......thank you to those who saved him from being road kill and becoming an important part of the family.

Grrrr

Well it is no wonder everyone keeps getting sick........one day it is in the 30's and then like yesterday we had the windows open. In fact I left them open all night and looks like it will be another good day weather wise. Go Figure!

I'm a bit frustrated today as I feel like I need a means of transportation of my own. I have needed to go a couple of places recently and have had to wait till Scott feels like getting out to get there......I'm sure it is part of my control issues.......wait did I really write that about control issues? I have been wanting a vehicle of my own for some time now but just don't have the bucks to get one just yet. I do feel like God has a plan for it all but you know how it is when things just seem like they are standing still and not moving at all..... Think I will get outside here in a bit and see if that doesn't help.

sitting in the "MIDDLE" of Missouri

ya know it has been really funny so far this week, and yes I know that this is just Tuesday........but here we sit in the "MIDDLE" of Missouri and yesterday while we were out we saw all kinds of chunks of packed snow in parking lots. It didn't come from Boonville......I know Aunt Judy said they got some snow in Smithton and the guy at the new local hobby shop lives in Arrow Rock and he said they got inches of snow. However, here in Boonville, I looked out and said oh it is snowing cause I saw the snow on the roof tops and then I looked out again and said......it's quit and still only a scuff on the roof tops.....and that was gone by night time.
Not complaining because we didn't get any but just think it funny how it went clear around us here. My daughter offered to package some up and send it to me from Omaha but that's okay........this gal is ready for SPRING!! Got CABIN FEVER setting in bad some days. I had it so bad the other day I walked down the way a bit and got a candy bar at In and OUT, the local convenient store over by the Casino.......then got caught in a small rain shower and had to sit over there to wait out the rain. No big deal only lasted half hour and the walked back to our building and felt good for having been out.....it was in the 60's that day.

Earlier that week Scott and I had been over to the Ft. Kemper Park, which is the grounds where Kemper Military School was, and he flew some kits while I just sat and soaked up the sun. I'm ready for good weather and some picnics..........was thinking would love to see our family......I mean the whole BIG family get together some time soon for an old fashion "GRANPA COEN" get together. I sure miss not seeing the family and I am sure there will be those that I won't even recognise any more!!

Well, time to get dressed and do something today......not sure what yet, maybe I'll go work on the train layout in the other room.

Monday!!!

Well the title should say it all, but for us it was also laundry day so I am BEAT!
We stopped by so Scott could take his laundry up to his place and he brought his cat with him to take to my house. We have so much fun messing with this poor cats head as we have all kinds of sounds coming thru the one good speaker I have on my computer. Tonight it was frog sounds from the Missouri Conservation sight of frogs from Missouri http://mdc.mo.gov/nathis/herpetol/frog/id.htm this is such a cool site not only can you see the frogs and what the look like, you can listen and if you wish download thier sounds. It is a wonder I have a speaker left when Grumman finally found the speaker where it was coming from!! I'll have to add some of the pics we took later of him trying to catch the arrow on the cursor also......so funny, Grumman would even run around and try to see the arrow in the back when we could get it off far enough from the front of the monitor.

Scott and Grumman have gone home now and I need to take meds so I can come down and get some sleep tonight. I just wasn't sleepy last night so it was almost light outside before I fell asleep. Can't let that happen very often or it just throws everything off.

I am very happy with the way my hip is healing. A little tender tonight but look for the Dr to tell me to get off the cane when I see him on the 17th of this month.
Good night all!!

We saw an Eagle yesterday

Ever have one of those days where you saw something as it moved by you fast then later you did the thing of .......Wow did I really see that? Well yesterday was one of those days.
Guess I was having a case of Cabin Fever and Scott was here so we put $5 in the tank and set out to find a Conservation site that we had seen on the web page. It was just south of Pilot Grove, it is mainly a boat access ramp for the Lamine River. Anyway we had just gotten there and Scott was getting out a kite to try to fly, I was walking down the boat ramp and suddenly looked up and there was a mature Bald Eagle flying about 50 ft off the ground and about 50 ft accross the river from us........WOW AWESOME!! I quickly called out to Scott so he could see it and frantically tried to get the camera on and get a pic. Well I did get a pic but not one where you could tell it was an Eagle. Oh well, I and Scott know what we saw and we were on a high needless to say!Of course later it was one of those things were we both thought about what we saw and wondered had we really seen the Eagle. I mean we were out in the middle of no where and saw an Eagle.....we were on a gravel road and the grader was out working on this gravel road....how cool is that??
By the way Scott did get 2 of his kites in the air, however, the wind kept changing on us so they didn't stay up very long. We did enjoy just getting out, but believe me seeing the Eagle was worth evey bit of the time we were out.

I'm still here!

WOW has it been awhile since I was on here. So much has been happening and even more are in the works. It may be a time before I am back on here as I will be having a total Hip replacement done this coming Monday the 26th of Jan,2009. I have needed it for sometime now but while in the KC area it was very hard to find Dr who would even look at my hip. Of course having the gastric bypass and loosing the weight has helped the situation also. It has gotten a lot worse especially over the last year now and lets face it when you go to the Dr to have your knee evaluated for work done on it and the Dr comes back in after ordering ex-rays for the hip that isn't working right and he tell you lets get the hip done first.......you know it is time to get it done.

Since I was on last Scott needed to get his own place and we decided we just need to actually live apart right now.Living with being bipolar is not always an easy yhing to live with. He comes over a lot and sometimes brings his cat, Grumman over and we all have a pretty good time while he is here. He will be helping me out as he can while I go through this surgery and recooperating. Well, Scott and Grumman Kitty will be helping me out anyway. Grumman has his own litterbox here and his own toys......mostly the box from my sewing machine and a couple paper sacks...... but he is a happy kitty and knows this as his home as much as his regular home. Since Grumman is fixed and has had his front claws removed it is a lot easier on my furniture but still wish he had his claws for his sake, the vet assured us it is better for him since he has to live in apartments this way.

Okay, know this is a short message but need to try to sleep some tonight........GOOD NIGHT ALL

Don't you just wish life was easier?

The last few days have been rather rough around our household. Life keeps on going no matter what but when things like bipolar takes over our lives, one wants to give up on life. I'm not talking suicide or taking ones life, I'm just saying that those days makes you wonder where God is. Those days you want to ask Adam and Eve where their heads were for bringing this upon everyone. Oh well, life does go on and so will we.

I recently recieved some new pictures from my daughter Bridgette, and then some of her dog, my"gran'dog" Jake.





















We fell in love with Jakes Picture and have an 8x10 of it on our "Grandkids" wall. Of course this picture of Brie and another is also up on the "family" wall in the livingroom also.

Family is very important to us and we try to support the kids as much as we can. Currently Rusty my son and his friend Brenda are staying with us and have both gotten jobs here in Boonville and are just waiting for their first pay checks to get their own place to live. Here is a recent Picture of Rusty and Brenda.

Hello to all

Been awhile since I perched here......been out flying kites when the weather was right for one thing.



We have really enjoyed flying the kites this year so far. I wish I could stay at it longer but the arthur and fibro just keep interfering with my having fun.......but I just have to keep trying and not allowing it all to get me down. Unfortunetly, the days we haven't been able to get out has usually been because of the weather or no wind that day is another big problem with trying to accomplish the art of kite flying.


Flying a kite is an art you may laughingly say? Well it can be, you see kites are not all in the diamond shape we all had when we were children and the "tails" you put on your kites these days are not old rags that mom just had laying around.


We have kites that are made of ripstop nylon and out "tails" are made out of polyethelyne plastic ribbon; we have also picked up some ribbon at good ole Wally's World and put that on a couple of the smaller kites. We also have several different sizes and shapes to the things that hold the different strings in which we send our kites up on. We now have a couple places where we go to fly the kites, one is on the property of the old Kemper Military School.....which now is a city park and then last Sunday afternoon we went out to the football field at the high school and flew some of our kites there for a couple hours.

Here's 2 kite companies to look at to see different types and sizes kites can be.
http://www.gombergkites.com/index.html
and
http://www.intothewind.com/
There's a lot of kite places on the internet, in quite a few countries.

I have to watch how long I stay with the action of flying the kites due to the pain in my body. If I'm not careful I will have spasms all night in my legs and arms. I also am back to having a lot of pain in my heel again where the achilles tendon and the calcium deposits that accumilate in my heel seem to keep rubbing so bad. Having already had 3 surgeries on that foot/heel to have the deposits removed, I'm doubting it will do much good to have it done again. I am suppose to see a foot dr next month and I will talk to them about all of it again and see what this one might suggest. ONE DAY AT A TIME ......my life motto!!

Well, I an just 7lbs shy of having lost 100 lbs since surgery July25th,'07........had a couple weeks of a stand still as my body shifted the weight around some. This month when I got paid I went and bought myself womens size 24 capri pants and boy was I PLEASED!! I was still in 26 just a week before that when I had bought a pair of capri pants and they are so big I will need to put a couple tucks in them so I can continue to wear them.

Well, need to close tonight and go on to bed, listened to a talk show last night that was interesting and had helpful information on it, so only got about 4 hours of sleep last night and the slept for about an hour this afternoon. Anyway meds are kicking in and need some sleep.......NIGHT ALL!

More pics to share

Well, here is a more recent pic of me.....actually taken this last Friday, Feb. 29,2008. The shirt is an early birthday present from my hubby with Tinkerbelle on the front and the jeans are my first ones i have bought myself since loosing weight. It is really nice to be able to go to Walmart and buy them off the rack and get them to fit. Not sure if I have said this recently but i am almost to having lost 100 lbs since July25th.

GO ME!!!!!

The thing on my arm and hand is because of Arthur, fibromyalgia and carpel tunnel all hitting at the same time.....which is also why I am up at this time of night/morning. We have a storm front just south of us and it is hurting me so bad tonight. I just took more pain meds so hopefully it will kick in here soon or I will need to go find both of my wrist/thumb things to put on. Can't do much for the lower half of the body that hurts but wait for the meds to kick in....amazing what you can do with one hand and using the hunt and peck system!!
These pics are of some of the thousands of geese we have seen this year flying overhead. It is very cool listening to them of a morning as they seem to head South for the day and then of an evening when the head back North for the night. There have been some flocks that you couldn't see in the sky until the sun hit them just right as they were all snow geese. This group were all trying to land in a small area just in front of a house here in the outskirts of town, there was a small pond in front of the house.




We are pretty sure that back in January we saw
eagle overhead soaring. One of our friends here in the building said he'd seen it too and was really sure that was what it was. It stayed around for about a week but it has been too cold to watch for it most of last month. It could still be around but we wouldn't know it.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday while the weather was so nice, we listened to several songbirds while we had the windows open. However, today we froze and wore extra clothes and heavy coats. I prefer the warmer weather!!


Okay, meds are kicking in.....back to trying to sleep again. Night!

Can't believe it has been so long......

Hello to all, hope this finds you all doing good and either having not had the flu or over it!! So far we have been blessed and haven't had the flu but the Fibromyalgia has been almost as bad as having it. Scott and i both have this but we are at different points in how we are affected by it. Of course it has my left side just throbbing most of the time.....my left side is the side to have something happen to it before any other part of my body.

Right now Scott is telling me what the weather is saying it will be doing tonight and tomorrow.....I liked it better today when we could sit out in the patio area and enjoy the out doors. Rain and possible snow........way to go March.....true to form! At least we were able to open the windows the last couple days and air out the house.......of course tomorrow I need to go thru and water all of the plants now since the wind dried everything out. After i finish this I will be making another entry to add some pics that we have taken of my Christmas Cactus still blooming their heads off. Ahhh let me just add them now.......

If ya look good at at least one of them you will see my ceramic toad peeking out from under the plant......he just looks so normal in there. I do have a smaller cactus plant that is blooming it's head off too but it is the same color as this one. I do have some other pics I will add over the next few days that we have taken but right now I am so hot I have to go find a cooler room. This happens after i have had some protein drink.

Jerrica's Birthday pics

Well, I discovered I for got to put up the 2 pics I have of Jerrica's birthday in October so better late than not at all.

These are ones Aunt Brie took when she took Jerrica out for her birthday, I think they went to the Zoo. It is hard to believe Jerrica will be going to school next year.

Roosting Robin

On this group, http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/ we are working on "Roosting Robins" like a round Robin but we keep our own and add things to them as they come up....if i understand it all correctly. Well, here are some pics of mine.....it helps that we got a new camera for Christmas.


















I love how it all came out, may cut down the center piece a bit so it doesn't get so big......but otherwise I'm lovin it!!

Pictures of Buildings

The bottom 2 are the original pictures of the cannery and packing House that are HO, my trains size. Then above that are some pics of Scott's buildings of the same thing, with my buildings beside them to show how much bigger His are.

Happy New Year

Can't believe it has been so long since i last wrote on here. I've thought about it several times but just can't bring myself to sit that long seems like on some days. Tried to work on Christmas things over the last month or so, got some things done but not really what I'd like to have accomplished. Have to blame some of it on the weird sleeping habits I seem to have. Since I can't sleep laying down due to the hip hurting have been sleeping in the recliner, and due to fibro I fall asleep a lot when I have the pain and problems from there. So far dear sweet hubby hasn't had to do as much sleeping so hopefully he is not having as much fibro as i am right now. Carpal tunnel in left hand is really screaming at me today so hopefully haven't made to many mistakes on this blog entry.

I am trying to work on a quilt thing we are doing thru http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scratchingpost/?yguid=198049275
or this is her public site.......
http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/

Sindy has so many good patterns and thru her group we do a few other things together. She even fixed me a Lady Bug I requested http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/2008_special_requests.htm
I have a granddaughter we call Julie Bug and she loves Lady Bugs also.
Check out her site!

My husband has been working on LARGE buildings lately. He took one of my HO buildings and created ones in the sizes he needs for His size Rail Road. They are coming along very good, just have no clue where we are suppose to put them once he get them done.....well, anyone who does RR knows that things never get completely done, you are always changing things. I have a few buildings i want to work on also so will have to find a balance between the many projects i have to do.

Sooooo.....that said guess i will go find the card table and try to get my chickens together for the Roosting Robin thru Sindy's group.
L8r

Here are the difference HO, Gn -15 and On30

Okay one thing to remember here, all of these trains are HO gauge, which means they can use the same size track, however, they are each their own Scale, with Ho being the smallest of the 3 and then comes On30, then the Gn-15 so on the pictures they are set up in that order. So here goes the pic then I have to hit the bed as this has taken me toooo long to write.

WOW the fronts that have passed thru.....

Okay, back on line .....again after another storm passing thru. The one this early AM now had left us with very weird power, only a couple rooms would be on full and the others had just enough power to put a small glow in the lamps. Of course it all caught us off guard and knocked out the computers. I had just started a program to try to save things off my computer when Scott came in and said we would have a storm passing thru before long and before i could put back all the files I was loading to cd everything turned black.

I feel like we have a very good protection on our machines, however, you wonder sometimes if it really is that good......it was this time. Doesn't seem to be any loses of material or componets on the computer. The there is the factor i face where we wonder if the on/off button on my computer is going out, so it is very scary when I do have to pull the plug on my computer.......will it come back on and as you can see.....it did this time anyway.

I had planned on writing in here before the storm hit and post some pics showing the difference in the 3 sizes of our trains that Scott and i have together. I think I will go ahead and put the pics up in a posting all their own before i quit it all today. I see by the time it is almost 3AM, I am not too worried about the time as i have slept off and on all day now.

My pain levels have shot through the roof the last couple days now. I finally went to the Dr this morning to see what to do about all the pain. Dr Handley decided to give me more generic Vicodin , He just cut the amount in mil. and that way I can take it more often, like every 3 to 4 hours as needed. Not sure how it is going but something must be okay as i have slept a good lot of the day and keep losing my thoughts here today trying to write.
Soooooo if nothing makes sense, remember I have a good excuse!!

Ever wish you could claim "Redo" like the games you played as a child?

Sunday is usually pretty good days for me but this is one day that I wish I could "redo" this time. Seems like it has just been a bad day for me. I didn't have much sleep the night before and then I woke up and realised I'd over spent the day before.....and it wasn't even the first day of the month!! I just don't do that, I always have taken my obligations seriously.......but Saturday was just one of those days for me and then Sunday turned out bad because of what I did Saturday. Not good!!

Of course the fact that I had gotten a call from my Brother Paul with the news that Dad has cancer again. Paul believes that from things he heard while around our folks that they expect this to be a fast moving cancer, again not good for the making of a good day. It is like all sense just left me.....Dad will be 80 this year and we are planning to go up there on the 20th and all of us meet and take mom and dad out to dinner for their birthdays. Hopefully we can come up with the money to do that now.

I managed to make the best of the rest of Sunday......first we joined the Santa Fe Baptist Church where we have been going. Scott and I both pretty well knew last week that we were going to join, we just needed to take the step and so we did this morning. We both feel wanted and needed there at the church, a couple from here at the apartment and another lady from here go there too. Stanley and Donna both teach an adult class, Stanley the mens and Donna the women, we have decided to join the Pastors new class that He and his Wife are starting.

Polly, the other lady from the apartments, has a time just before the message, during the service where all the small children come to the front and Polly talks with the kids and presents a small lesson for them. Today they talked about pets and she was asking them about their pets, at the time we couldn't see who said they had crickets for a pet but afterwards, Pastor Tom had the man in the booth turn on the video in the daycare center where his wife was and informed her they needed to see about a dog as their son David told everyone his pet was cricket. It really was funny and i agree with Pastor Tom, you never know what kids are going to say. Pastor Tom did tell us they had crickets real bad in their basement and they were trying to get rid of them, but in the meantime his sons did catch them and put them in jars from time to time.

I have not felt good at all today and the other stress just added to it. I have hurt pretty bad for the last few days and have not been able to get much sleep because of it. I did sleep for a couple hours after church, then got up and went down to commons room to watch Chiefs Football. We were behind when I got downstairs and it was about time for the half time, but we made up for it in the last half and went on to win 30 to 17 over San Diego Chargers....way to go Chiefs!! I got to hurting more so went back upstairs and spent the evening watching TV and working on the chimneys and windows of one of the Train buildings I have, will take a picture and post it tomorrow. I really like the way it is coming together now and I think that Scott does too. He made a comment tonight that he wondered if it would ever get made and now he is seeing it and likes what he sees. He has helped me a time or two when something was just not going for me or when My hand was just too shaky to place something straight.

Okay feels like pain meds has started to work so off to bed for me.....Night

Where has time gone?

Wow....in approximately 2 more months this coming Monday and it will be Christmas 2007......Where has time gone? Things here are moving along pretty good. I had a spell of not being to keep the chicken from the home made soup down tonight. Wasn't able to eat desert either....GGGRRRRRR Not sure what causes it but with such a small stomach it doesn't feel real good to lose what is in it. I have an appointment on the 23rd of October to have another scan....maybe they can find the answer. As I write this I am downing a protein shake, at least this way I am sure to get the protein down. It might very well be the fact that I don't really have enough teeth to properly chew up the chicken meat that caused tonight's episode. I guess I can run the meat through the processor, would rather not have all the other stuff mush, but maybe the meat could go through.

I did go today and get the blood tests I was needing to get for the 3rd month checkup. They will fax the results over to the Bariatrics Office for me. I don't know what they will find but hopefully I am okay with everything and we won't have to add any more vitamins of anything like that. If not before I will get the results of those when I go for the checkup on the 23rd too, after the scan.

Haven't heard from my son lately but know he wasn't going to reactivate his phone for awhile and try to catch up on bills. My dd Brie had his girls with her over night a couple weekends ago and took the to the renaissance festival. Jerrica loved it and Julie did okay but she was fighting a summer cold and that makes anyone miserable. Scott and I got to talk to them on the phone while they were there because Brie has the free calling on her phone. That was such a joy to talk to them, we miss the little buggers!! Jerrica let us know that she wanted to talk to Papa Scott, they get along pretty good now since she used some of his stuff to build with....that surprised us all how she was drawn to art and making things.

Well I am trying to get a group up here in the apartments to doing crafts and Hobbies. I know there are several who do quilts and some who embroidery, some who do cross stitch.....I am anxious to see how this comes about. One of the things I think I will do is to make up small circles with Pins on the back of them and have the group make their own pins, like a woman head......and maybe I can come up with a pattern i can sew up some small dolls and have them decorate them. I hope we can make this something everyone will want to participate in.

I have rejoined the FairieGoddessMothers again. I missed this group a lot and am glad to be back in it. Now I do need to get busy and do a quilts with the fairie pattern sent to me. They also have a lot of different things that I can get involved in.

Well, protein drink is gone so guess I'd better get started to bed soon. Night!

Newest building I have been working on

This is a combination of 2 kits that are the same. Reminds me some of a Boys boarding School. The small green buildings in the background are some Scott had started and almost desroyed when he was having some problems. i saved them and now with his help we are trying to restore them to go back on my RR.