Thanks Martha!!

Turkey 101Thanks Martha! I was at work on Wednesday and saw several Martha Stewart videos on http://food.yahoo.com. It was really DELICIOUS!! First time that I cooked a turkey with cheesecloth, butter and wine. Everyone that ate it complimented me and I thought it was the best too!

I cooked on Friday. The menu was turkey, stuffing (2 types - sage and oyster - the sage was best), yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, homemade rolls, green beans, parsnips and he made pumpkin pie, fruit salad. Everything was wonderful.

We had a few friends over and it was good - I cooked all days, hung out with them for a while, then went to dialysis with my sweetie.

Thanksgiving Day Feast

What a day we have planned. Actually it's a 2-day event. On Thanksgiving we are going to our friend's house for dinner. There are a few of us that are here with no family, except those we live with. So since we're friends, we're going to get together and celebrate Thanksgiving. We all have so much to be thankful for. We have food, a place to live, friends, jobs, and our lives. That's pretty good stuff!! Plus we all have family and friends living in other parts of the country.

Hey, it's not like it used to be. This will be my second Thanksgiving away from my family. And to be honest, I'm worried that my oldest daughter won't have any place to go to have thanksgiving dinner. I really hope she either goes to our family's house or goes with some of her friends. My son and his new wife will be fine. They will go to his grandma's and relive the wedding memories and begin to make their own memories. And of course, my youngest daughter is here with us, so she'll be having dinner with us.

So back to the dinner and the 2-day event!! So we go to dinner on Thanksgiving at a friends, then on Friday, I do it all over again for ourselves. Very nice!! So I have a 15 lb turkey, will roast it and stuff it with my favorite sage dressing, take the rest of the dressing and add oysters and cook those outside of the bird. We'll have parsnips, yams, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, fruit and pumpkin pie!! I'll not eat everything that I fix and neither will they. But I'll make enough different things that there's something good here for everyone.

One thing that I'm not going to do is add sugar and sauces to the veggies. You know, like candied yams or green bean casserole. That way it will keep the veggies natural and more healthy. Besides, I gain weight so easily, I'd rather save it for the pumpkin pie!! And what a pie it will be! I'm so excited, my sweetie loves to bake pies and he's very good at it. And his pumpkin pie is excellent. So I'll let him make those.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I'm going to make homemade rolls! I haven't made those in a long time so that will also be a treat! They are so easy and delicious!!

I'm not sure who will be around on Friday, but my house is open for friends and family to stop by and enjoy a delicious meal, glass of wine and great conversation! Hope yours is just as wonderful.

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

-- Colin Powell

Time for a Refresh!!

Thought I'd upgrade my blog, give it a face-lift, upgrade to Blogger Beta, and do a little maintenance. Personally, I really like the new Blogger and I hope you're enjoying it too!!

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

-- Colin Powell

The Tablecloth

I don’t know how true this story is, but regardless it’s very touching and I thought I would share:

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in early October. Excited about their opportunities, when they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.

They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished.

On December 19 a terrible tempest - a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.

On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.

The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. On the way he noticed that a local business was hving a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.

By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor
invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.

She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.

Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?" The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.

The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the Tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.

What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving.

The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike.

He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between.

The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.

True Story - submitted by Pastor Rob Reid

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

-- Colin Powell

Thanksgiving next week

Next week is Thanksgiving - where are you going? and what are you going to eat??

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

-- Colin Powell

surgery QUEEN

OUCH!! Surgery!

Monday I had a little cyst removed from my finger. It makes typing a challenge, have to 3 finger it on my left hand. Lots of mistakes and lots of "do overs"!! But it was a piece of cake. Bandage on until next Monday, no big deal!

Now, I have had my pre-op appt with my surgeon. He explained everything that I will go through, what to expect during recovery and beyond. I am going into this VERY optimistic, as usual. I don't know how to be anything else. Positive and upbeat!!

So, over the next few weeks, I'm going to get out and walk as much as I can. I am going to enjoy my upright freedom until I'm home bound, bed bound and wheelchair bound for 5-6 weeks!! YIKES!!

I'll take before and after pictures and hope for the best!!

long awaited surgery

And I am soooooooo nervous!! I have a secret. Actually it's a deformity. I don't let too many people in on it. It's more of an embarrassment when others see it because they stare. I don't blame them, I guess I would look too. In fact, I look at other people's when they are exposed and occasionally I find someone with the same deformity.

The deformity is in my feet. My right foot is worse than my left, but regardless, they both have "issues". I even hate to admit it here. It's like somewhere in my head I feel like it's my fault, but my Dr. says it's not due to anything I have done - the only thing I'm guilty of is procrastinating, out of shame and fear, to have this procedure done. I have to have bunion and hammertoe surgery. There.....I said it! Man, it's hard to say.

Everyone wants their body to be perfect and for those of you who know me, already know my body is NOT anywhere close to perfect. But even people that have been close to me have never seen me bare-footed.

I have wanted this procedure done for a couple of years now. I wasn't really scared until now. Now that they have scheduled it for Nov 27th, I'm scared shitless!! I have been reading what others have gone through and so far I have only read the bad stories.

This is what is leading me to blog this topic - I would love to hear about successful surgery - recovery times, someone that says it was a piece of cake, anything positive! Please comment if you have had or know someone that has had either of these surgeries successfully.

"Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
- Robert Frost

Pain in the....

HEAD!!

I've had a headache for hours and hours now! What is that all about?? I deal with enough pain all the time, I don't need to have more. Especially some that won't fucking go away!!!!!!!!!!!

Japanese Restaurant

I went to pick up carry out Friday night from one of my favorite Japanese restaurants. I don't want to name it because this really doesn't have anything to do with the restaurant specifically. The restaurant is in a strip mall and there are tons of shops right by it.

When I was coming out of the restaurant and walked in front of the realtors office I saw a long tail scurry into the bushes and then it turned around and scurried tail, body, whiskers and nose past me as it ran across the sidewalk into another set of bushes. You know, there's one thing that you don't want to see when you walk out of a restaurant and that's a rat!! YIKES!!