What.A.Day
Our University of Connecticut women’s and men’s basketball teams made it into their respective Final Four 🥳🥳 whew!
Women won by ? against Notre Dame but were used to that.
The men came from 19 points down to win by one with a hand up to intercept a pass and put us ahead by one with .4 left on the clock.
My husband and I LEAPED out of our chairs into the middle of the room SCREAMING. It was unbelievable.
Now it’s on to the semi-finals this weekend.
Yesterday I wrote about the week of anniversaries for this new week.
Today is Palm Sunday and it begins the Holy Week leading to Easter. So although the anniversaries of my parents’ deaths don’t line up exactly, the memories of those holidays that year are still there.
The day my dad died in 2010, it was Palm Sunday. Palm fronds were in his room when we went there to sit with him until the funeral home arrive to pick him up. His funeral was on Holy Thursday and our funeral director hustled to secure a time, other wise we’d have had to wait until after Easter.
In her eulogy, my sister recounted a vision of my father entering heaven, like Jesus entered Jerusalem, with people shouting their love for him, so happy to see him.
That Easter Sunday, on the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death, we gathered as we always do at my sister’s house to stuff ourselves full of kielbasa, babka, hardboiled eggs, and candy. That
So as I remember my dad today on Palm Sunday, I know we will all think of both of them on Easter Sunday as this week ties their holidays and their lives and deaths together.
My mother died on April 4, 1987 from brain cancer. It was an eight week blur from the hospital for tests on Day 1 to her death at home.
22 years, 11 months and 24 days later, a total of 8,394 days, my father died on March 28, 2010 of a heart attack.
In the years in between, he retired, played a lot of golf, had a small picture framing business in the basement, and got to meet and enjoy his five grandchildren.
But in the last 12 years of his life, he slowly declined. A knee replacement slowed him down, triple bypass, peripheral arterial disease took his left leg, but he kept moving along in his scooter at his assisted living facility. Until a heart attack, “an angel’s kiss”, sent him on his way to heaven.
My theory is, my mother was waiting for him all these years, but he didn’t want to leave his girls. He lost his mother when he was three, and his father just before his 11th birthday. Even though we were in our early 50s, I think he just didn’t want to leave. Finally she said, “it’s time, they’re all fine”.
Every year, this week brings up the memories of how much we loved them and miss them.
Every morning I head next door to our work out room. It’s a short walk out the door, around the corner of the house, and down 6 or 7 steps to the garage with the room above.
When I open the door, I turn on the light in the entrance but head upstairs in the dark as I anticipate my 10 minute morning meditation.
One morning while doing my mediation, I heard a key in the door downstairs. I thought it was early for my husband to be here as he’s usually 20 minutes behind me. I heard, “Nanc! Are you up there?!”. I thought, “what the heck?!” and said through gritted teeth, “yes! I’m meditating!”. He shut the door and left.
Unbeknownst to me, he watches every morning for the light at the door to go on! This particular morning, I must have been distracted, and didn’t turn it on. At first, he thought maybe I fell on the steps because in the winter they can get slippery. When he looked out and didn’t see my body lying on the ground, he remembered a car went by around the same time and he was afraid someone came and kidnapped me!
We had a good laugh about it while he was explaining himself. It’s a nice feeling to know that after 39 years, he’s watching out for me.
Green Giant changed their packaging for Riced Cauliflower to “Riced Veggies” with a smaller caption three quarters of the way down to tell us it is Cauliflower.
Naturally, I had to check online to see exactly what other vegetables are capable of being riced. None. But there are items such as Riced Cauliflower with peas and carrots (not riced!), and Riced Cauliflower with broccolini, and Riced Cauliflower with risotto.
In all fairness, I did see online that older packages of Riced Cauliflower do include “Riced Veggies” but the actual product is included right below the title which makes it a little easier to grab and go.
Lest you all think I’m wandering the aisles looking for my Riced Cauliflower, I’m not. I don’t do the grocery shopping! But changes like this do make me wonder whose bright idea it was to put what the name of the actual item is so far down the package. How much did the change cost for marketing and production.
I come from a family of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and as far as I can tell, the original was working pretty good. Now I just wonder when my husband will come home with some Riced Cauliflower Medley because he didn’t read the label and just grabbed and went.
I’m trying to up my social media game for work. I thought I’d start out with a reel on my personal Instagram, and I attempted to make one through the app on my iPad. I slaved over it! Pictures, captions, music – it felt like an hour to put it together. I uploaded it, and saw it was only showing the first two photos over and over. UGH – I took it down quickly.
I headed over to ChatGPT and asked my buddy Chatty what I did wrong. Well, I didn’t preview it! If I had, I would have seen it. Evidently, it had something to do with selecting the music first. Chatty suggested I head over to Canva and create it there, selecting the pictures and adding the captions, and then selecting the music. Chatty is like having a teacher sitting next to me telling me what to do. Canva also has a pretty good AI function to instruct me when I can’t find what I need.
I put together a reel for my personal accounts about wandering in the backyard this morning. I don’t have the video feature here, but I can give you a link to my YouTube page because I put it on there! You can find it in “shorts”.
After I posted it to Instagram, I could see some areas I need to be aware of next time, like where the captions go – sometimes they are too high or too wide. Notes for next time!
When I uploaded it to YouTube the first time, there was no music but then I remembered the video in Canva didn’t have any, which is what was uploaded to YouTube. So, ever the perfectionist, I deleted that when I finally figured out how to add music!
Once I figured that out, I went through my videos for something to share on our company account. I had a few videos up but I uploaded one here. That’s when I figured out how to add music. This is also in the “shorts” category.
Let me know what you think of them. I accept all constructive comments!
Every morning when I come downstairs to the kitchen and turn on the light, I look at the temperature on the thermostat.
In this week, in my house at 5:45 am, we have gone from temps of 59 and 61 to 71 and it is shocking!
My body became so used to teens and 20s all day long, wearing my long down coat, and always having a pair of fingerless gloves available, that the adjustment is hard to make. My hand reaches towards that down jacket….
I do love this warmer weather but as the trees and bushes start popping, I will wake up with a headache and it will take an hour or so until the old sinuses do their thing and the headache is gone.
This afternoon we should be back to a “normal” March temperature of somewhere in the 20s and a chance for snow.
Welcome to New England.
I usually have pretty good skills with technology but I’ve reached the end of my rope with my printer.
It is my home printer, a simple Canon TR8520, which, for its inexpensive cost, has always worked well for scanning and printing pictures, and printing emails and such.
I periodically have problems with its connection between my phone, or iPad, or computer which can be very frustrating. But now, it is a whole different situation.
Code 5011! Evidently this code means it can be any number of things. Hardware, wi-fi connection, or paper jam. In my case it could be wi-fi because ours did go out on Sunday and I accidentally left something I wanted printed in the queue searching for most of the day?!
I have a much older and larger Canon printer that has lost its ability to print photos well so I use it primarily for scanning. Since I had something to photocopy, I went to my craft space next door to do that. Oh my word, the theatrics that this printer goes through just to print something! Then it pops up that 2 cartridges need replacing and one is near the end of its life. I felt my blood pressure rise. “Great”, I thought. “All this technology and I can’t get one single piece of paper to print anywhere.” Thankfully, it decided to allow me to photocopy the pages I needed.
Although I’m tempted to throw my printer out the window and start fresh, I’ll call “my computer guy” and see if he can fix the TR8520 for me. I have too many ink cartridges left to cast it aside right now.
I started volunteering for an organization in town last summer. I worked at an open house in the summer, essentially on my own, parked in the hallway of the 2nd floor answering questions about the house. During the holidays, I greeted and checked people in during a home tour. I became a board member in January and am now working on an annual event.
I’m learning how to work with women. I’m not doing a very good job.
I’m one of the chairpersons for the event. There’s been an issue with the permanent supplies for it. One of the women who I worked with on the first two events is a very lovely woman, we hit it off the first time we met, and she chaired the event last year. To make a long story short, My tone was sharp with her because I’m frustrated that there are no notes to refer to from the previous year and how and where and what we’ve been looking for weren’t as described. I couldn’t tell her that or how frustrating it was for her to show up a half hour late when we were initially looking for the supplies. If she had been there, she might have said, “oh, this is what we used! They must have separated the bins.” Instead she made a comment about that morning and I sharply told her how we really didn’t look through the bins the first time because we didn’t know what we were looking for, and it wasn’t until the other chairwoman and I went back and dug through each bin did we find what we needed. I could feel my blood pressure rising and left shortly after that.
I chewed on it all day and night. This morning I sent an email to her and the other chairperson for speaking in such a defensive tone, and apologized and offered to go with her to get sponsors for the event. I felt better.
She emailed me this evening and said how mean spirited I was, and how I had been so nice to work with and ever since we started planning this event, I haven’t been nice at all. But she would accept my apology. I’d get the exact words from the email, but I’m too embarrassed to read it again. She said the other chairwoman has offered to go with her so three would be a crowd. I’m sure after I left, the other women were wondering what the heck was wrong with me.
I’ll see the chair on Monday and the other lady at the board meeting on Thursday so there’s no avoiding anyone for any period of time!
Ugh I’m pretty embarrassed and angry at myself.
I didn’t realize I missed my early morning stars until I saw them this morning because of the time change!
I suffered a little yesterday from losing the hour of sleep. We always say we’re going to stay in bed on the weekend, but never do. We were up at 6am, which was really 5am. It was especially tough for me because we went out to dinner on Saturday night so I went to bed about an hour later than normal! That made 2 hours of lost sleep. No wonder why I felt off balance, figuratively and literally!
I went to bed last night at my usual time, heading upstairs around 9:15, read a bit, and had my light out by 9:40. I woke up refreshed and ready to go.
So it looks like I survived the time change and I’m actually happy to step out into the dark.
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 