Photo Op, 1955

Granny loved to take pictures of her oldest grandchild. She had one of those box Brownies that were so popular back in the day. This would be the only picture existing of Mom, Dad and Me together. Funny how I never realized just how much I really looked like Dad. Mom's coloring, and everything else was Dad's. I'd have druther looked like Mom, she was beautiful.

Notice the fancy footwear on me? Brown oxfords which I was stuck wearing until long after the divorce. Dad flat would not allow me to wear the ever popular Mary Jane except for church on Sundays. I wanted a pair with the swivel ankle strap that would allow me to wear it strapped or pushed back behind the heel to create a pump. Patent leather preferably. Never got them.

Thanks to Dad's insistence on oxfords, I never got the hang of wearing high heels. Which is probably OK since with Dad's genetics, they wouldn't have done a damn thing for my legs. Oh well, he did want a boy.

Love, Heartbreak and a Pack Of Lies

I've never been able to look at his picture without having an urge to cry. This was our little Munchin Kitty that a neighbor had palmed off on us back in the day. I believe it was 1994 and I learned a lesson that I would rather have avoided.

Hubby was visiting the neighbor the night this little guy was born. He has the softest heart when it comes to any animal and he  told the couple that we'd take one of the kittens. He'd go over there and play with his baby every chance he could. I only went once and found myself with some serious reservations about the whole thing.

None of the kittens eyes opened when they should have. According to the wife of Hubby's friend, it was bad mothering on the part of the Mama Kitty. She claimed she had "Instructions from the vet" on what to do and she had begun the process.

About a week before they were old enough she showed up at my door with this baby. She was upset, claiming that the dog was killing the kittens and we needed to take ours now rather than wait. Like everything else she'd said about the situation, that was a lie that we didn't find out about until their daughter told on them.

Among the lies we had been told was that they had taken the Mama Cat from a friend who was moving and had been told she was spayed only to find out when she took a supposedly sick cat to the vet that she was having kittens. And of course the bad Mama Cat wasn't doing any mothering because she was sick with Feline Leukemia Virus. Something they knew since they had exposed the Mama to their own unneutered male who had died from FeLv before the kittens were born. The dog wasn't killing the kittens, they too were dying from FeLv. All except Munchin.

His eye made me call our vet the day we got him and make an appointment for the next day. He didn't even weigh a pound, but the vet thought he was doing ok, otherwise. The eye ointment didn't cure the problem, so it was back to the vet. He'd gained weight even if the eye problem didn't get fixed. Another type of ointment and no change so another visit had to happen. By then the vet was suggesting bloodwork which yielded the information that his eye was never going to get better, he had FeLv. We decided to give him a chance since he had gained weight, and although we weren't able to keep him to a ripe old age, we did get 3 years.

Someone was watching out for us as our existing cat Bashful didn't contract the disease. We had her innoculated and let Munchin become a thorn in her side until he couldn't fight anymore. He was a playful, happy cat until the last week of his life. Content to let Bashful rule the roost as long as she let him sleep in our lap. She didn't mind, she wasn't the lap kitty kind.

This experience taught me that when it comes to pet ownership, not everyone does the right thing, even if they're saying they are. My caution saved our youngest son's family from heartbreak last week. They were looking for a ktten and had found a breeder that they were planning on purchasing from. I went with him for the visit, saw a few things I wasn't happy with and suggested that we see the vet bills so we know what they would be dealing with. The breeder, and I use that term loosely, wouldn't allow that.

Youngest declined to purchase a kitten, and he decided to report our suspicions to the local Humane Society for investigation. Sure enough, she's running a kitten mill. Sometimes I really just don't like people.

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I Thought I Knew How To Cook

Trying to change from eating habits that are bad for ones health to those that are good for ones health isn't easy. Healthy cooking is labor intensive and time consuming. I have to work for a living so I need recipes that can cook quickly so I'm not in the kitchen still trying to create a healthy meal when it's bedtime. I have yet to find a 30 minute meal that one can cook from whole foods. Actually I have, but Hubby won't eat it.

The philosophy behind the Whole Food movement is that food in it's natural state is better for you. It's nutrient dense and doesn't have any preservatives added. Of course, organic is preferred. I can't always afford that so I'm trying to do the best I can with the fresh produce I find at the grocers.

I was doing really well with it until I decided to make a pot of Chili for supper. Since one can't use canned goods in a whole food meal, this means I must cook my own whole tomatoes and kidney beans from a dried state.

The process of cooking tomatoes means you have to skin them by boiling them in hot water until they start to split and then plunge them into ice water which will make the skin loose. Once they're skinned, out comes the food mill so you can crush them up and remove the seeds.

One needs to do twice the amount of tomatoes because they will cook down and if I'm needing say 1 quart, I need a lot of tomatoes. Two to three hours later I have a big pot of crushed, uncooked tomatoes and it's time to clean the kitchen because this process is really, really messy.

One pound of kidney beans had been put to soaking the night before so while I was mucking about with the tomatoes, the beans had been cooking on the stove. They were ready, the tomatoes still needed to cook down. Another hour at least if not more.

Put the tomatoes on the burner, start cleaning up the mess and by now I really, really need to go sit down. The tomatoes hadn't cooked down much so I went and plunked my bottom down in front of the computer. After checking the simmering tomatoes and figuring out that they weren't cooking down very much I looked at the flame under the pot. There wasn't one, I'd run out of LP in the gas bottle.

It was now 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon, I'd been working on this pot of chili since 11 in the morning. I'm tired, I'm hungry and I don't have a redolent pot of chili simmering on the stove which means I have nothing cooking for supper.

Hubby strapped the 80 pound tank into his pickup to go get it filled. I put the tomatoes and kidney beans in containers in the fridge. Hubby got home just before 5 with my LP gas for the kitchen range and a pizza. I can eat that, it's got peppers and mushrooms on it.

The chili was finished off the next day. Cooking it healthy meant I shouldn't use beef. Hubby won't eat it without beef so I used half beef and half ground turkey. He was satisfied and I made a decision.

There are just some things that I will continue to use canned food for. I figured out that I spent close to 8 hours cooking that pot of chili, imagine what it would be like to do a pot of spaghetti sauce this way? I don't even want to think about that.

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With Whipped Cream and A Cherry On Top

Anyone who knows me understands that I have some really bad eating habits. While I don't come near to being among the super obese, much of my life has been spent shopping in the fat girls section of the clothing store. When I get a grip and DIET, I have managed to lose enough weight to wear a size 8. Which isn't where my body type indicates I should be. I look like death warmed over at that size. Seriously.

Recently I discovered, to my dismay, that my food choices were killing me. Not because I am overweight, but because I am consuming far too many preservatives and other toxic chemicals with my food. Salt is anathema to a person with a family history of high blood pressure and sugar is a death sentence to someone with a family history of diabetes. Guess who has both of those problems in their family history?

Convenience foods make life simpler and easier along with shorter and more painful. Roast beef or pork along with mashed taters and gravy, bisquits, maybe some corn or peas and I'm in heaven. Follow that up with a large hunk of chocolate cake and scoop or two of ice cream and you see my problem?

This past Fall, I went shopping at a large local craft fair. I didn't get to see all of the vendors because half way through the walking around, I was in agony from lower back, hip and leg pain. I limped back to my vehicle, drove myself home in tears. Call that a wake up call and a half.

At 61 years old, I wasn't feeling well because almost every joint in my body was drying up and grinding bone on bone. When it hurts to do anything, you tend not to do anything which makes the entire situation worse. I spent days taking whatever would ease the pain. Not much worked. I was limping through my work day unable to stand up straight.

Sheer determination and a computer on which I could do some research kept me going until I decided that I needed to change my bad habits. I started following the Mediterrainian Food Pyramid making the choice to replace meat and gravy with fruit, vegetables and whole grain. I also started taking a joint supplement called Move Free. The pain eased after a week on it. I had been taking Aleeve or Advil, neither of which is as good as the advertisements claim.

I made some changes because I was in pain without realizing how close I was to dying. Sounds dramatic doesn't it? It is, however, the truth. In January, during a routine work assessment, my blood pressure registered at a whopping 240/110. I was unable to get into my own doctors office and without health insurance it's a safe bet I wasn't going to go to the Emergency Room as I was instructed by the receptionist.

I have the best kind of friends. Ones that grab you by the hand and drag you into the answer to your problem. In this case it's a Doctor of Osteopathy who believes that the body will heal itself if you give it the right tools. What are the right tools? Activity, stress reduction, whole foods and nutraceuticals to support the organs that all the preservatives I've been consuming in my life have damaged.

I'm making changes one at a time and have lost 22 pounds plus lowered my blood pressure to stage 1 hypertension. I was at stage 4 with the higher number and there is no stage 5.

At my age, I'm not taking a journey into hotness, I am taking one into health. Not being perfect, it might be a long journey with maybe a banana split or two along the way. After all, some journeys need a few nuts with whipped cream and cherries to make them better.

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Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

At first, I wasn't going to blog anyplace. Then I realized what I'd be losing if I didn't. First off, there's the title of my original Blogstream blog. It was chosen when I started blogging on April 26, 2006. One month after my Mom died. I'm not nearly as upset by the loss of the blog itself as I was with the loss of the title. Much of what kept me in Blogstream has changed, but the title is my tribute to my Mom and has a meaning to me that others might not fully understand. Honestly, sometimes I don't understand it either.

I created this blog in 2008, in anger actually. The original title was "Gawd Dang Lucky Frogs They Eat What Bugs Em". It was meant to be a place for me to vent my anger, and I had anger. I discovered that anger doesn't make for a great blog. Not that my Blogstream blog was all that great a blog. It had it's moments of lucidity amidst the insanity that was me.

I began to panic over losing the title two days after I knew that Blogstream would close on April 30. I wasn't sure what to do at first, but then I remembered this dormant blog. One whole post in 2010. I started thinking things through and decided that I would continue blogging here. With my Mom watching over me since I brought her title here.

This isn't going to be any greater a blog than version 1 was. I will make one serious change. There will be no political posts here. Those I will reserve for my friend Egaladeist's blog site TheTAZZone.com.

This blog will be a journey of sorts. Call it my journey into health and sanity. My sanity, which is something my grip on is tenuous some days. Posts will be about the things I'm learning from my doctor. The lifestyle changes I'm making. My job and the people I meet during the course of the day. My cat Butterscotch will be featured prominently, as always. Which reminds me that I want to go find the pink mouse in Hubby's undershorts post from my soon to be dead and gone blog. Hey! Strange things happen in this house, trust me on that.

Most of my favorite posts from Blogstream have been either archived as drafts, or posted here. I might repost them from time to time. They should be good for a few laughs on those days when life kicks me in the teeth. Who knows? If I keep blogging maybe I really will find that raindrops do make things beautiful. At least, on a blog they can't stop me from having some fun. I'm a girl, I just like fun.

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Couldn't Wait

The more I thought of it, the better I liked the idea of a name change for this blog. Suddenly didn't want to wait until May 1 to do it and yet, didn't want to create too much confusion over 2 blogs with the same name. So RMTB2 was born.

Working on deciding whether I want to choose a new template. I'm liking the one I have now, so we'll see. Maybe something new will appeal.

As you can see something did appeal. I guess I'm done decorating. Now, if I could only find a topic to post about. Oh well, there's a lot of time to do that.

Wow, You Just Never Know

I guess all good things must come to an end and it just happens to be happening on April 30, 2011. On that date my other blogsite will cease to exist. Thankfully all of the blog posts I wanted to save are all ready archived over here.

I will resume blogging on this page when that happens and will be changing the name of this blog. I started blogging a few weeks after my Mom died and chose my blog title according to something she always said to me when I complained about rainy weather. Although I saw the end of Blogstream.com coming, and I'm only mildly saddened by it, the loss of my blog name sent me into a tailspin. Finally realized that on the date Blogstream ceases to exist, I can rename this blog.

So, Lucky Frogs will become "Raindrops Make Things Beautiful" on May 1, 2011. It's my blog title and I like it.

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