God Tissue

Have you ever noticed how some older women will keep a tissue in the cuff of their sleeve? For as long as I can remember my mother's nose seemed to be always running and she would avail herself of her ever ready tissue. And everytime I would take my mom in her wheel chair to Ross For Less or Marshalls, the sweater that we would look for always had to have at least one pocket on the side for her tissues. If not a pocket, her t-shirt or sweater needed to have a cuff to be able to house the nose wipe. To this day, three years after my mom has passed away, I still look for her favorite kind of sweaters in these discount stores and say to myself, "Oh, mom would have especially liked this one; it's got a double pocket for the tissues." My sister, too, has always been a nose blower and keeps tissues at hand for herself. When my sister travels out to see me from New York I always have to go to the supermarket ahead of time so that she has her supply of tissues in my house. I need to have one box in the kitchen, one in the downstairs bathroom and one in my bedroom.

I must have picked up the typical California allergies when I moved out here from the east coast because my nose never runs unless I have a cold; it's always stuffed. I don't even keep tissue boxes in the house. I'm a toilet paper person for the few times I need to blow my nose.

But today was one of my biggest panics. In my senior fitness class I realized that one of my best friends keeps a tissue in her cuff and that's probably why she always wears a thin sweater to class. So now that I saw this I figure it wont be long until I join the geriatic ritual of carrying a tissue on me all the time. I'll soon have to buy the two dozen boxes of tissues from Costco just to be ready for my senior sneezes and runny nose.

Spirit Awakening

My four grandchildren are all the loves of my life and the heart of my heart. Without their even knowing it, they are the reasons I wake up each morning and want to take care of my health. I want to live a long life so that I can be with them for each of their life cycle events. I dream about them and plan different scenarious with them. Sometimes I imagine that we're all in a marching band wearing identical red, white and blue t-shirts; they are marching behind me to the commands I give out. Sometimes I want us to be in a show, on stage, where we are performing for lots of people to the marching tunes of John Philip Sousa. Everyone is applauding because they are so good. Sometimes in my dreams they are very small infants and after they are one or two months old, they start talking in complete sentences and no one can believe that they're doing that. It must be a grandma's pride that makes me have dreams like that.

When I am not having such a good day, my thoughts will often turn to my little ones and I will imagine how they run up to me and hug and kiss me after not having seen me for a long time. And then I feel refreshed, my spirits soar and I feel blessed for what I have been given.

Rosie's Revenge

I now have 9 or 10 viewers who have been to my website. And guess what? All are my children except for two. It is rare that my kids will ever email more than one or two words after I email them something. It's either "o.k." or "thanks mom." Something like that. So now that I've written three blogs prior to this one I notice that my blogs have engaged them in at least 1 or 2 sentence comments. I may be receiving negative attention by putting some guilt into them (see 2nd post) but at least I'm hearing from them! And that, my readers, is my revenge. My revenge for changing their mustard diapers and then their NOT SO mustard diapers as they went onto solid foods BUT STILL WEREN'T POTTY TRAINED. As Sally Fields once said, "they like me...they really like me."

Nobody Digs to China Anymore

This morning my sister emailed me about the wonderful weekend she spent with 3 of her grandchildren. Most of the time was spent at the beach and while they built castles and buried each other in the sand, my sister informed me that"Nobody digs tunnels to China anymore!" What? It's unheard of!!! What's happened to passing these activities, old adages and oral tales down to our grandchildren? How come my grandkids aren't scared if they don't finish their food? Don't they know that there are starving children in India and Biafra and the Sudan etc. ? Or does anyone say to their kids anymore "Don't masturbate or you'll go blind?" (That was a good one!) I think that that oral command is long gone, especially since our kids saw that none of their friends lost their sight! Even I didn't pass down to my daughter that if she touched a plant while she was menstruating, the plant would die! Or "not to go to the cemetary if she was pregnant", like I was told,or she'd lose the baby. I loved all those "bubbe mayses" when I was growing up. Of course I grew up afraid of everything because of these Old Wives Tales. Remember the admonition to your kids that if they went outside with wet hair they'd catch a cold? How about if they blew out ALL of their birthday candles their wish'd come true? What about the old tale that coffee stunts your growth? My parents had me petrified to drink it. And carrots? I ate them non- stop thinking I'd no longer have to wear glasses because my vision would improve. Who's afraid of swallowing a watermelon pit anymore? Has anyone grown a watermelon in their stomach in this latest generation? Have your kids stopped going to the doctor's because they eat an apple each day? Yet now that some of us are getting up in years do we dare not "knock on wood" if we hear of someone's good fortune? Will our grandkids knock on wood or will they dare to dare the evil spirits? I don't know about you but I'm going to make a wish tomorrow as I throw a coin into the fountain at the mall where I work. It can't hurt!

My New Blog

So I have this new blogsite that I started today and I'm deliriously excited. I told my daughter to go and read it nine hours ago and I told one of my sons three hours ago. I keep going to my email and the blog site to see if either of them has commented on it. And, of course, they haven't. I didn't inform my oldest son about it because his girlfriend's name is also Rosie, and I'm not supposed to know that he even has a girlfriend, let alone that she has the same name as me!!!!! So here I am at work, with no sales, checking my email twice on the hour for the last 6 or 7 hours and have nary a comment. Kids These Days! I have gotten so excited for them since they were babies for every little thing they have accomplished, received, built, written, drawn, delivered, climbed, passed, grown etc... you get the picture. But that their mom, who isn't exactly computer literate, has started a blog.....NOTHING. I suppose that after my daughter has put her two kids to bed, cleaned up after dinner etc. and my son has finished watching the movie he rented, they might open their emails and go to my blog site. But until then, I'll just have to be proud of me alone. And so I am.

Parking Situation

This is my first blog. Ever since I set up a page/layout for blogging (2 days ago), I've had writer's cramp and didn't know what the "h" to write. But a conversation a few minutes ago with my housemate has given me the inspiration to write.

We have a middle eastern couple who live next door to us who either hate us or don't understand parking in a neighborhood tract. For the last 3 1/2 years my friend has always had 2 cars parked in front of my house while I use the garage for my car. More often than not whenever he comes home from work, his second parking space has been filled by one of our neighbors' cars. Mind you, they also have 2 spaces in front of their house, but for some reason they must think that it's better for them to leave both their 2 spaces free of cars while filling up the 2nd space in front of our house. (They also keep one of their cars in their garage.) So when my friend comes home, he now has to park in the space in front of our other neighbor's house which causes me some bit of embarrassment. I mean...we already have 2 spaces. I don't think our other neighbors are thrilled when they see one of our cars in front of their house. I realize this is all public parking and we all pay the homeowners insurance. I just don't get it. Last night when my friend came home from work, our neighbor had already parked partially in front of his house (by the garage) and partially across our 2nd space. Their Honda mini-van was also parked outside and not in their garage for some reason. So now they have more than one full space left in front of their house, nothing in their garage and there's no good place for my friend to park. So this is what he does: With what little space is left between the back of his car, and the front of our neighbor's car he New York parallel parks! There is maybe an inch for our neighbor to move his car in front and maybe 5 inches for him to back up. So today, of course, his wife has to come out, move her mini-van first and then he can move his car. So whad'ya think? Do they hate us or is this the custom in Pakistan?