Tammy

It's been a very long two weeks. Thank you to everyone who prayed, called and sent care packages.

After experiencing 2 massive strokes, followed by more surgery, Tammy passed away last Friday evening.

Due to the hazardous weather conditions in our area over the past week, her funeral was slightly delayed. We will have her funeral and burial this coming Friday.

While we are sad that Tammy is no longer with us, we know she's in Heaven today - and I'm bettin' it's a whole lot warmer up there!

I hope to return to my regularly scheduled personality disorder programming soon.

Pray for Tammy

Tom's sister Tammy is in Cleveland Clinic Foundation Cardiac Intensive Care. (A very brief history: She's had heart problems since childhood, and had undergone open heart surgery as a teenager, and again about 4-5 years ago. She has recently been having additional health problems, and the doctors were planning to operate again later this month.) Yesterday she had to be taken to CCF for emergency surgery where they found infection around her heart. She is currently on full life support. She had to have further surgery today to remove blood clots, which will continue to be an issue as long as she remains on the heart machine. The doctors are saying they want to keep her on the support for 10 days at least, when they will decide if they should give her an artificial heart. They are saying she will need a heart transplant in the future, but have not yet placed her name on the waiting list. She is at times responding to requests to open her eyes.

We appreciate your prayers for Tammy and her husband Chris, and for her doctors.

I Miss Brutus

This is the time of year when I find myself having to exhibit more self-control that I really care to.

Fall is my favorite season. I love the smell in the air, the colors on the trees, the coolness of the mornings and the warmth of the late afternoon sun.

My love of baking always kicks into high gear during the fall season. There's so many tasty things you can bake with apples, cinnamon, pumpkin, zucchini, and chocolate!



Something else that returns is football season. Sigh. I love football. I understand football. Two years ago, I could tell you nearly anything you wanted to know about Troy Smith and his Buckeye teammates. I watched the Draft, for Pete's sake! I was furious that Troy was a 5th round pick! I love the Colts. I love the Packers. (well, the whole Brett Favre thing was a little dramatic even for me, but still...)

I didn't grow up watching football. Actually I didn't grow up watching anything, because we didn't have a television when I was a child. I don't mean we didn't have an antenna on our home. I mean, we did not own a television set. Television was the enemy. Anyone in our circle of influence - private Christian school and conservative church - who had a TV was accused of heading down the slippery slope at best, and shunned by the ultra-conservatives of the pack at worst.

The first experience with football that I recall was when I was about 12 or 13. My parents were divorcing, my mom was working full time, and it was Thanksgiving. My older sister and her husband were going to spend the holiday with his parents, so they took my little sister and I along for the weekend. We packed up my brother-in-law's little diesel Rabbit, crammed the four of us in tightly, and off we went to Cincinnati.

We spent Thanksgiving day at Grandma Bea's home, perched on a steep hill in some holler in southern Ohio. I barely remember what the house looked like, but it seems like it was small, and the living room where the TV was located was dark paneling and slightly claustrophobic. The meal was superb. It was the first time I'd ever had dumplings with Thanksgiving dinner. I thought that was weird, but it tasted good!

Grandma Bea was married to a man named Forrest. Forrest and my brother-in-law watched football on a small TV set with a grainy picture. It might have even been black and white. I sat and watched with them, mostly out of boredom, but it planted a seed. 4 hours away, unbeknownst to me, my future husband was probably doing the same thing. His family had only recently become football fans also, due to he and his siblings having the mumps and being unable to leave home for a while, yet needing entertainment. Little did we know at that age!

Fast forward almost 30 years. I now have 6 children in my home. Where in the world would I find the time to watch football? We're always playing catch-up with something, but we're never finished. I'm not the type of person who can turn on the TV and keep it playing in the background while I do other chores. If I'm watching a show, I don't want to miss one word. If I'm watching a game, how can I effectively cheer or scream about a bad play if the game doesn't have my full attention?

I know myself. If we had our television hooked up, or had our DISH reinstalled, I would sit down on Saturday at noon, and wouldn't get back up until time to go to bed Monday night. I would waste Thursday evening in the same fashion. I would create high blood pressure for myself, and I would embarrass my children when their friends are over because I would be screaming at the television. I would traumatize my 2 year old, and terrorize my baby by coaching from the couch.

I've mentioned before what lengths we have to go to, to be able to watch the Michigan/Ohio State game. We can't miss that! And our church usually has a Superbowl party, so we're safe there.But for the remainder of the season, I just have to pretend like I'm all feminine and ladylike and cultured enough to simply be appalled that grown men beat themselves up like that. (I won't even begin to discuss my fetish with professional wrestling!)

So we don't have TV. Oh, we have TVs in our home. Probably 5 or 6. Some are in closets. Some are in the kids rooms with VCRs. But we don't have outside influence. It isn't good for my health. And it's the only way I get anything done from September to February.

Is This Hereditary?

I highly doubt that my mother-in-law has ever been accused of being obsessed with Current Trends, Popular Fashion, or Keeping Up with the Joneses. She's happy to shop at garage sales and does not care that double knit hasn't yet made it's comeback. The first Thanksgiving that Tom and I were married, we had dinner at his parent's home. They used the good dishes. I would stash those dishes in the Rubbermaid camping supplies tub. She knows when Kmart discounts the almost-expired milk. She's thrifty, and pays cash for everything.

Shortly after we got married, I remember Tom telling me about a conversation he'd had with his mom. She was lamenting how automatic our society had become. This was in 1991 or 92. She said, "Pretty soon, you won't even need to talk to a real person at the bank. You'll just talk to a machine."

"Uh, Mom - they've had them for years. They're called ATM's. Automated Teller Machines."

She doesn't get out of the house nearly as much as we'd like for her to. One of the highlights of her week is to go with Tom and the boys to clean one of our churches. She always brings some kind of snack for the boys, usually a Little Debbie-type piece of junk food, sometimes a banana, maybe a candy cane. If she's been to the local business and industry show, or county fair, she'll bring pencils and writing tablets, rulers, and a flyswatter, along with every coloring book that every safety agency produces. During the 1/2 hour drive, the boys learn what meats are on sale at Chief, how Aunt Norma Jean is progressing with her chemo, how Aunt (name changed to protect the guilty) is wearing Uncle (name changed to protect the worn-out) out, what rebates Menards is offering, how mad Grandpa made her that week, and just how much she detests hearing what great sports scores various other relatives' grandkids are achieving.




Bucky likes to drink energy drinks, but if he does so, it's done in disobedience and stupidity. He learned the hard way that drinking a Monster at 9:00 pm is a great way to get a buzz that won't let you close your eyes all night. Making the trip to clean with Grandma and Dad one day, for some reason the conversation turned to caffeine and staying awake. Bucky said, "The only thing that keeps me awake at night is Monsters."

Grandma was very concerned. "Bucky! Do you have nightmares???"



Grandma couldn't be more proud of her grandkids. She gets irritated with Preston and Bucky, usually because they're trying to irritate her with stories of resisting the authorities, getting tattoos, or piercing their ears. But she thinks they're all that and a bag of chips, although she wouldn't have a clue what I just said! And she grew them a great Dad.

About the closest thing to being Hip that Grandma will ever be is that she has them.