Category Archives: personal

Holding On Till The Next Hot Flash

Welcome to another Wrist to Forehead Sunday post.  I did not get much done today, although I tried.  I don’t know why I thought I could get anything done.  Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

It has been a cold weekend in the Mohawk Valley.  I know, it’s February, what can I expect?  As a matter of fact, I did expect it to be cold.  And I did not expect to enjoy it.  However, I will admit to feeling… not good, but as if the cold was doing me good as I walked through the Hannaford parking lot after picking up a few groceries.  You know, like an ice pack or a cold shower is sometimes just what you need.  I couldn’t pinpoint for you exactly what about me I felt needed icing at at time, but I decided to go with it.

The cold did not continue to do me good (or feel as if it was doing me good, I guess), but you’ll have that.  As usual, I just tried to hold on till the next hot flash.

We had another rehearsal for “Rubbed Out at Ruby’s,” the 1920’s murder mystery LiFT Theatre Company will present at the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls.  This week I positively will write a full blog post about it.  In the meantime, I’ll try to find a link you can click for more information.  You can also go to the Overlook’s or LiFT’s Facebook pages.

 

Snow, Costumes and Oolong Tea

Well, I am going to try to make my Scattered Saturday post before Steven comes home and we go out to meet good friends for dinner.  For one reason, I thought I would refrain from drinking and typing, as I sometimes do on a Saturday.  At least for my blog post.  About Facebook I make no promises (note to self:  make a Facebook page for Mohawk Valley Girl, in case my readers would like to Like me there).

Mmm… I paused to sip my Oolong tea.  I LOVE Oolong tea.  Why have I not been drinking it every day?  Points to ponder.  Then I paused again, because my laptop told me the battery was low.  Silly me, not plugging it in between Facebook breaks.  I moved to a different chair, plugged the damn thing in, moved my tea, which necessitated moving a piled up lace dress (that I’ll tell you about in a few), sat down, remembered my mouse, went back across the room to get the mouse… I tell you, it’s not easy being me.

We slept in this morning, because Steven did not work till 10:30.  Oh, the laziness of staying in bed till almost seven o’clock!  It was great.  It was after eight when Spunky indicated it was time for his first business meeting.  I put on a bra (do NOT tell me TMI!), my flood boots and my warmest coat.  It was still pretty frigid out, and snowing.  Spunky barked at a neighbor as she came out of her house.  We exchanged good mornings, and I told Spunky he was a silly dog (he already knew).

Steven had sensibly put off clearing the cars since more snow would fall before time to leave, but I saw that we also had to shovel.  After I got Spunky back inside, wiped his paws and gave him a treat, I went back out and started.  Steven soon joined me.  At least the snow was lightweight.  Pushing it worked fine.  Our neighbor shoveled the sidewalk in front of our house and started helping on the driveway!  How awesome of her!  I thanked her profusely, and Steven and I introduced ourselves.  After she left and Steven and I had finished up, I paid it forward by doing the walk in front of the house on the other side.

After showering and getting dressed, I wrote my weekly postcards.  My first stop on leaving the house after Steven was the post office.  Then I gassed up, got some money from the ATM and a drink at the Nice N Easy.  The drink took some debate, since I am avoiding sugar (on a doctor’s suggestion) yet wanted more than mere water.  I finally got Poland Springs Sparkling, black cherry flavor.  That stuff is awesome!  It tastes like soda only not sweet (I often don’t enjoy sweet soda after the first few sips), but there are NO calories!  Score!

I drove to Ilion Little Theatre, where a few people were hard at work on the set for Steel Magnolias.  I hope to show you a photo of the beautifully painted backdrop when it is finished.  I went upstairs to look for 1920s type costumes for the upcoming murder mystery, Rubbed Out at Ruby’s, to be presented by LiFT Theatre Company in Little Falls.  I did not have a whole lot of hope, because I went through every dress in that place when we were doing Leading Ladies and I did not remember anything I thought would work.  However, I was mistaken.  I found a few things I liked, including the lace dress I mentioned some paragraphs ago (was that mention even worth foreshadowing?).

After those exertions, however, I started feeling not too well again.  How stupid of me!  Why can’t I just be healthy?  And why do I have to be such a baby about it?  And here I am, troubling my readers with my complaints.  So sorry.  This is what happens, though, when I’m typing away with one eye on the clock.  I have to plug in the curling iron and do my hair (an unaccustomed chore, to be sure).   Well, I hope you have been moderately entertained by my Scattered Saturday gyrations.  As for me, that Oolong tea has given me my first hot flash of the day and all I can say is, Thank God for menopause!  I have been freezing!  Happy Saturday, everyone.

 

On the Set

I know some of you have been waiting for an update on the set of Steel Magnolias, the play I am in at Ilion Little Theatre.  At least, I know any fellow cast-members who read my blog (DO my fellow cast members read my blog?) would like an update.  Before yesterday’s rehearsal, I remembered to pull out my tablet and I took a few shots.  I got more of the cast than the set, but, after all, isn’t it all about the people?  I think it is.

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We love each other at Ilion Little Theatre.

Kim Darling and Kara Buttermore, who play Truvy and Annelle, were working on the set when I started to click.  They immediately posed for me.  I knew that would make a good photo, but I wanted an action shot.  They offered me this scene from the beginning of the play:

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Annelle does Truvy’s hair as part of her job interview.

Meanwhile, in the audience, Kaylynn Iglesias, who recently joined the cast as Shelby, consulted with Cindy Shepherd.  Cindy, in addition to playing Ouiser, is assisting Rick Vroman in his directing duties.  I had a little problem with my tablet getting this shot.  I hope it looks OK.

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We do a lot of consulting with each other. Theatre is such a collaborative art.

Then I realized I had not gotten a shot of Kelly Stone, who plays M’Lynn.  She and Kaylynn decided to do a mother/daughter shot.

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Their characters really do love each other, although they bicker a lot in the play.

Sadly, I did not get a picture of our awesome sound and light guy, Rick DeJohn, nor of our delightful director Rick Vroman.   Perhaps in a future post.

I’ll close with a couple of shots of the set itself.  More work will be done on the set tomorrow (I’m supposed to go help.  Yikes!  What a lot I have to do tomorrow!).  I hope to include more photos in future posts.  I’d better charge up the tablet.  Happy Friday, everyone.

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The driers don’t actually work, which is actually too bad, because the sink on the other side of the set will.

 

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A center view. Alas, I did not get stage right, where the sink that will actually squirt water is located.

 

Steven and Me and Bobby McGee

I’ve been sitting here staring at the blank screen and half watching a re-run of Reba, and I feel completely unable to write a blog post.  Now Reba is over and Steven has found an episode of Snapped on Reelz.  I have to leave for rehearsal for Steel Magnolias (at Ilion Little Theatre, remember?)  in about an hour.  Oh, crap, and I have to curl my hair.  They’re taking head shots again.  I hate having my picture taken!

So I’m having a kind of a mental meltdown.  How embarrassing.  I am such a huge baby! In my defense… OK, I have no defense.  I had a migraine today, but it wasn’t all that bad of a migraine.  I made it through work.  It kind of went away when I drove to New Hartford for a doctor’s appointment.  Now it’s back.  So what?  Many people have headaches.  They take an aspirin and drive on.

Speaking of driving on, the Mohawk Valley weather has been living up to its “wait five minutes” reputation today.  When I drove to and from my appointment, the snow came down like it meant business.  The roads weren’t too bad, but they were wet and no doubt would get worse.  Yikes!  I got back to work and the sun came out.  A beautiful afternoon!  Swell!  The snow dumped down again as I drove home. OK, whatever.  The sun has come and gone twice since I’ve been home.  Go home, February, you’re drunk!

AAAAAAaaaand I just remembered: it is Non-Sequitur Thursday.  All I have to do is think of a catchy headline that doesn’t have anything to do with this foolish post and I’m done.  And, yes, I did feel I needed all those a’s in the first word of this paragraph.

 

Steven and Me

There is nothing like not having a damn thing to post about to make one less self-conscious about the thing she did NOT want to post about yesterday (one and she being, of course, me).  Additionally, when I asked Steven what I could make my blog post about, he said, “ME!”  Well, it will be about him and me, as I share a few photos and memories (yes, I’m still relying on the find a few pics method of blog posting.  I kind of like it).

The first photo is from our wedding day, back in 1990.  Check out my ugly big glasses!  Big ugly glasses are coming back into style, but I don’t think we’ll see these again.

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How handsome Steve looks! He still is pretty cute.

We are drinking the toast offered by his best man.  I have no memory about what was said.  I don’t even remember if it was a good champagne.  I like dry champagne now, and I prefer to drink it out of a flute.

This next picture was taken at the HALO Luau Fundraiser, a few years ago.  I think I wrote a blog post about it.  I wonder if I can find it and make a link.

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Us get silly for a photo op? Say it ain’t so!

This next one is more recent.  We visited Woodland Hops Farm.  I don’t think I made a blog post about it, but I wrote an article for Mohawk Valley Living magazine.  My sister Cheryl took the picture.

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Cheers!

It’s kind of too bad that we are toasting in two but not three of the pictures.  It would have been nice to have, you know, kind of a theme. On the other hand, they are all pictures of a happy couple enjoying themselves.

 

I Ax You: Is This a Good Picture of Me?

 

Oh I am having a dreadful case of Writer’s Block.  Seriously, my brain is blocking me from writing this post (I know, I know, that’s not writing, that’s typing, as Truman Capote said).  It is Tired Tuesday, but I truly did not want to spend 200 or so words whining about how tired I am and how I can’t think of anything to write.  So I went to my new standby: looking through photos we’ve downloaded to this laptop and picking a few to write about.  I had found some good ones of me and my husband, Steven.

I don’t want to post any pictures of me!  I don’t even like looking at pictures of me!  Many people feel this way.  Most of us look better in pictures to others than we look to ourselves.  I can’t tell you how many times people have said, “Oh, what a great picture of you,” and I have thought, “Wow, I’m not nearly as cute as I think I am.”  I don’t even like to have my own picture as my Facebook profile.  This is what I currently have:

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I was having a Lizzie Borden kind of a day.

The caption doesn’t show on my Facebook.  I prefer threatening people with an ax on general principles, not to get candy.  I can buy candy.

Oh, OK, I have never actually threatened anybody with an ax in real life.  On stage once, I held an ax over the guy who was playing my husband, after I had shot him and he had fallen on the floor. However, I was not threatening; I actually brought the thing down on that bastard.  He had it coming.  This was in Roxy, a play about Roxalana Druse, a famous local murderess. Herkimer County Historical Society presented it at Ilion Little Theatre in September of 2015.  Perhaps you read some of my blog posts about it at the time.

So now I am over 300 words.  Whined a little, showed a picture, shared a memory.  I call that all right for a Tired Tuesday.  Now I’m off to my rehearsal for Steel Magnolias at Ilion Little Theatre.  Maybe I can find my Tablet and take pictures of the progress made on the set.  I think it’s looking pretty good, and will make a marvelous Wordless Wednesday post.  Hope to see you then.

 

Any Anniversary at my Age

So there I was, looking at Facebook and wondering what I could make a blog post about when on my On This Day, I noticed:  Five years ago today was my first Middle-aged Musings Monday!  I know that has largely been replaced by Monday Mental Meanderings, but it just seems so perfect:  I’m looking for a topic, I notice an anniversary.  So I’m going to middled-agedly muse.

OK, so far I don’t have much to muse about.  I had kind of a lost weekend from not feeling well and not being especially ambitious before I started feeling unwell.  There must be some sort of truism about how your level of ambition is usually indirectly proportional to the amount of things you need to accomplish.  Indirectly proportional, if I am remembering junior high math class correctly (if that was even where I learned it) means as one goes up, the other goes down.  In other words, I have a lot to get done. I need to make a list.  And then start actually doing the things on the list.

Naturally the first thing on my list would be Make Blog Post.  It is, in fact, one of the few things I reliably get done.  Not always easily.  For example, just now it took me several tries to type in a sentence because I couldn’t quite make up my mind if using “reliably”  and “on a regular basis” in the same sentence would constitute a tautology.  Tautology is when you say the same thing more than once.  It is redundant.  Yes, that is a joke I make on a regular basis:  You used a tautology by being redundant and saying the same thing more than once!

As you may guess, I am not feeling a whole hell of a lot better than I did yesterday.  I went to the doctor today, and I’ll probably have something else to complain about soon.  In the meantime, I need to eat more chicken soup.  I’ll try for a better blog post on Tired Tuesday.

 

Wrist to Severed Head?

I interrupt my Severed Head Sunday entertainment to make my blog post.  I did not realize this was going to be a Severed Head Sunday.  I thought I was having a perfectly normal Wrist to Forehead Sunday, not getting enough done, sorry I have to go to work tomorrow, feeling a big angsty about it all.  But Steven and I decided to watch movies instead of our usual Snapped marathon.  When we agreed on Lake Placid, I realized what kind of Sunday it was.

Lake Placid, for the uninitiated, is a horror movie from 1999 about alligators terrorizing a Maine lake which is, in fact, not called Lake Placid.  I wrote a blog post about it some time ago (I wonder if I can find it and make a link).  I think it is a fun flick.  Of course, to make this a true Severed Head Sunday, it might be nice to watch at least one more movie that involves decapitation.  Or there may be an episode of Snapped that can fulfill that requirement.  I am nothing if not flexible in these things.

I have done some writing today, but not much.  At the risk of becoming tiresome, I will just mention VERY BRIEFLY that my cold seems to be back.  Perhaps I do not get enough Vitamin C in my life.   However, I liked what I wrote and I may write a little more, when the movie watching, hanging out with husband portion of the day is over.  After all, one must hang out with one’s husband.

 

Cold Run, Dusty Blog Post

I had already started writing this post when Steven put on a Dusty Springfield CD.  Oh, this was JUST what I needed!  “I Only Want to Be with You”!  It’s peppy, it’s happy, it’s about me and Steve!  I love it!  I’ve been feeling vaguely down most of the day and ill with the cold I’ve been fighting (I’m losing).  I sometimes forget the healing properties of music.

Oh dear.  I started a post.  I got distracted by the CD and wrote a fun headline of “Sing it, Dusty!”  then realized I can only say so much about how nice it is to listen to good music with a nice husband.  Perhaps I should go back to the post I started to write.  What a distracting lead!  I guess this is Non-Sequitur Saturday (which has the charm of alliteration that Non-Sequitur Thursday lacks) (does alliteration make something more of a sequitur?  Discuss amongst yourselves).

This is what I started to write:

Usually I make my Saturday Running Commentary in the morning, shortly after my run.  It is fresh in my mind and it works out very well.  Today I did not do so.  However, rather than making another Scattered Saturday post (although those can be kind of fun), I think I will attempt a Running Commentary.

The sun was almost up when I realized it was either run or eat.  I picked run.  The temperature was in the low 30s, so I put on the warmest running pants I own, a gift from my sister Victoria and her daughter Gillian.  Technically, I believe they are yoga pants, but one must not allow a mere technicality to keep one from improving one’s health and reaching one’s weight-loss goals.

Dusty is now singing “Wishin’ and Hopin'”  which reminds us irresistibly of My Best Friend’s Wedding.  Ah, Julia Roberts.  What a woman.  I’ve been thinking of her a lot lately, since she was in the movie version of Steel Magnolias, the play I am in at Ilion Little Theatre.

It was cold and not quite light out.  I had worn my reflective vest (road guard vest, to my army friends), as much for an extra layer and a pouch for tissues as for safety.  It turned out to be a pretty safe run, because the sidewalks were bare and I mostly stuck to them.  I went in the road for a while, though, out Main Street.  I went up part of a steep hill that ends in a dead end.  It didn’t used to be a dead end, but part of the road collapsed.  Pedestrians can still get by.  I got by and ran in the road part of the way down, um, Steuben Street?  I think that’s what it called.  Then I went down Dorf Street, part of which also has no sidewalks.

Now she is singing, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.”  I know some man also sang this song.  I wanted to say Tom Jones at first but then I thought I had heard it on the radio many years ago not on a CD we own recently (YES, I listen to Tom Jones CDs!), so I thought Paul Anka, but that didn’t sound right either.  I may check that out before I hit publish.

My run was not bad, although my hands got quite stiff.  I made it to 26 minutes, only two less (fewer?) than I accomplished earlier in the week on the mini-tramp.  With a good hill in the freezing cold, I thought that was pretty good.  If I would have written the blog post right away, the blog post might have been as good as the run, but that is something we will never know.

I wonder what Steven will want to listen to after Dusty Springfield.  And by the way, according to YouTube, both Tom Jones and Elvis Presley sang “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.”  Where did I get Paul Anka?

 

Come On, Steve!

That is  silly headline, but since this is Lame Post Friday, I do not apologize.  I have been scurrying around since I left work as if I thought I was going to get something done.  Ha!  How long have I known me?  But at least I can cross Make Blog Post off my list (full disclosure:  it is only a mental list today) before going back to enjoying my Friday.

Immediately after leaving work, I went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store (known as Salvation Armani to some) in Ilion, NY.  I was seeking a costume for the 1920s murder mystery LiFT Theatre Company is doing at the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls in February (I keep promising more on that later; maybe tomorrow I’ll finally write that one). I thought I could find a prom or bridesmaid’s gown that would work.  I thought drop-waist, light material, maybe a little lace, at least knee length.  Some ’20s costumes are short, of course, by my character is an older, glamorous, rich lady.  Well, she thinks she’s glamorous.  Actually she’s kind of a lush, but I digress.

I went through two racks of all kinds of dresses.  I found one that was ridiculously close to perfect, although it was black instead of red (my character’s name is Ruby).  Also, it was a size zero.  Now, you may not believe this, but I did have a 25 inch waist roughly a hundred years ago.  However, I have never, ever, for one moment ever in my life, been a size zero.  I kept looking.

The stop at the Thrift Store was not a total loss.  I found four books, two of which are the old, pulp fiction paperbacks I collect.  No, I did not think I was going to find a dress in with the books.  Did you think I was not going to look at the books?  How long have you known me?  Oh well, I guess some of you may not have known me that long.  I like to look at the books.

After buying the books, I went to New 2 You Consignments in Central Plaza.  They have a lot of prom dresses!  I tried on one that might kind of sort of work.  I don’t know.

Then I felt discouraged and went home.  I chatted on Facebook with a friend who had talked about coming over for drinks and snacks tonight.  I realized I’d better run to the store and get some food.  I went to Hannaford.  I am so indecisive.  It took me a while, but I got home with some stuff.  I started mixing dip and chopping vegetables, occasionally running to the computer to check if my friend was in town and on her way over.  As it turned out, once she got home, she felt tired and cold and wanted to stay there.  I surely could not blame her for that.  For one reason, I don’t want her getting sick.  She is in both Steel Magnolias and the murder mystery.

I finished my chopping and mixing, because Steven and I still have to eat.  It was almost time for him to get home.  I poured myself a glass of wine and sat down to make my blog post.  Which was, you know, this.

Incidentally, Steven got home about three paragraphs ago.  I started typing faster, pausing as he started to tell me about his day.  But now I think I have typed enough to hit publish.  I need to eat some of the food I indecisively bought and hurriedly chopped up and/or mixed.  Happy Friday, everyone.