Christmas Present

I hate it when Thanksgiving comes so late in the month.  I've have a couple little decorations for the holiday, but somehow it just seems pointless to put them out.  As soon as I do, I've got to put them away for Christmas.  CHRISTMAS!  

My Norman Rockwell idea of Christmas was not the way we celebrated Christmas when I grew up.  Six kids, lots of aunts and uncles on both sides, many houses to visit, and many gifts to open.  We never really decorated, a Christmaas tree for sure and perhaps a string of lights outside.   We didn't really sit down at the table and carve the turkey.  [Actually, this is a Norman Rockwell THANKSGIVING painting---but what the heck.  You get the idea.]

So, I've spent a lot of time as as an adult trying to create my own version of the Norman Rockwell Christmas.  For at least the past 12-13 years, I've hosted a dinner for eight of us (that's all the chairs I have) a couple weeks before the big day so that everyone can get to their own families for the 25th.  The eight participants  remained the same for many years....Lee, Suzanne, Ione, Ruthie, Dick, Peggy, the Latin Lover and me.  Old friends and my senior visitor project - Ruthie.  Ruthie died a few years ago at 97, so Pam took over her seat.  I had decided to expand the dinner this year (folding chairs---yuck) by adding my neighbors Kevin and Rita so we would now have ten.  Very sadly, Dick died this year and Ione could not make the celebration, so...once again eight.

My goal each year is to have a unique decorating plan and a unique menu---mostly recipes I've never tried before!  Yes, I know you should never try out new things, but I've only had one really bad outcome---flourless chocolate cake that was supposed to ooze out melted chocolate like an under cooked brownie.  Mine was so dry I had to cover it with Kool Whip!

This year Zebra and Red was the decorating theme.  I spent most of November and early December plotting out what I was going to do and then making the garlands, etc....Photos below attest to how it turned out.  

This garland took me days to make, but it turned out pretty well.  I'm hoping to sell all of these decorations on ebay.  On my meager retirement income I can't afford to make new things every year.  If you know of any one who wants red and zebra table cloths, napkins, etc... let me know.

Lighting the garden was a joint effort with me and my friend Rita.  Night time pictures don't really do it justice, but you get the picture.  Note to anyone who wants to do this kind of thing:  EXTENSION CORDS.  OMG, we must have used a dozen.  It will be better next year now that we know what to do.

I have fun every year matching my wrapping to the theme of the decorations.

This wreathe took me hours to make.  I copied it from one I had seen in a Christmas catalog for $359!  I like it, but now I understand why they charged so much for the original.

2013 Menu:  Emeril Legasse apricot glazed chicken and rice pilaf, Italian sauteed asparagus, and tasting desserts in mini wine glasses.  Everyone seemed to have a great time.  

I've got my theme picked out for next year.  I need peacock feathers.  Does anyone have a source?

The Garden - Fall Edition

I've been to two parties recently and at both people remarked about this blog, and surprisingly said they follow my exploits.  I felt kind of bad that I've not been keeping up with it, but as you know, retirement is so full of activity, who has time to write a blog.  So let me catch you up with what's been taking all of my time....HALLOWEEN and my garden.

I love Halloween.  When I was in college I would drive home from Purdue to take my younger siblings out trick or treating.  They probably don't even remember this, but I have fond memories of it.  Add this to the fact that I love to decorate and you have a recipe for spending money and time on ghosts, goblins and spiders.  In addition, I've always had the idea to live in a community where everyone knows each other.  So, what about a Halloween party to send off the ten little kids that live in our 30 building townhouse community?

My focus was on decorating the garden, our house and patio to welcome the little tykes, but not scare them to death.  Friendly ghosts, big spiders, a black cats eyes looking out two windows.  It was great fun for all.

 All of the neighbors who have kids or even furry kids showed up.  We had lots of witches, a lion, a mermaid, and a quarterback.  No one got too scared, except for the little girl who is afraid of spiders.  The kids and parents left for trick or treating and the rest of us manned the candy bowls.

Just as I had wanted, this garden is bringing the community together.  Now I am on to planning the Christmas lighting!

Elder care part 3 - and no where to go but up....

Time Warner Cable.  Just the name puts fear in my heart.  For the past month my little sister has been trying to untangle my parents' cable bill working through Time Warner Cable (TWC), the cable company that now provides exclusive services in southern Indiana.  Believe me if they weren't exclusive, I'd have pulled the plug on them this week.  But who can deny cable TV to their parents?

My parents' bill started to suddenly have a $30 fee added to it.  When little sister went to TWC offices, she was told that my mom had tried to pay the bill on line using a credit card.  As my mom does not know how to turn on a computer, sis found this a bit strange.  She also found it strange that mom has her bill paid through her bank account automatically every month, and when she pointed this out, the TWC rep insisted that she was also trying to pay it on line.  The $30 was because the on-line credit card payment was always denied.

When I got home, I went on the TWC site, then "chatted" with a number of TWC chatters.  All were quite nice, but none could make any decisions and none were at a level that they could help me.  Using their language, "It seems that this issue needs to be escalated to our escalation support team."  Not one TWC rep could answer more than one question.  This meant that I had to talk to numerous people for each issue I raised.
 

So, here are the problems:

1. Mom had paid the bill previously with a credit card.  For some reason, that card was cancelled (she probably had lost it).  So Mom changed the way she paid the bill to a direct debit from her checking account.  Since that time her bank has been paying the bill monthly.  Since that time, TWC (and its predecessor - Insight) has been trying to also pay the bill from the now defunct credit card.  Had the TWC office personnel told this to sis, we could have worked this out weeks ago.  Telling her that mom was trying to pay the bill on-line got us no where.  Additionally, sis did not know that the card was mom's since TWC would not divulge the name on the card.  She only worked this out by going back into the bills until she found the last four digits of the credit card on some other statement.
2. TWC started charging the $30 only recently.  This is what brought the problem to mom's attention.  By now she has racked up over $65 in this fee and late fees.
3. Parents bill also showed a 75 cent charge for each of five digital adapters ($3.75.month)   Although the adapters were provided for free, apparently users were told that there would be a charge in the future.  Insight provided the adapters and began charging 75 cents per adapter ($3.75/month for five) four months ago.  Then TWC took over the company and continued the 75 cent fee.  TWC website states that no fees will be charged until 2014 and then they will be 99 cents per adapter ($4.95 for five/month).  When I asked why parents were being charged in 2013, TWC rep said it is because Insight was charging them...but Insight doesn't exist any longer.  Right?  
4. The plot thickens.  TWC website shows that parents have five "digital adapters"...they have only two TVs.  I point out that parents have only 2 TVs and only 2 adapters.  How does TWC know these were provided to my parents?  How can we prove that we don't have them?  What can we do about this?  TWC answer:  pay them $100 for each of the three shown on my parents account, or continue paying $2.98 a month for the rest of their lives.  Did TWC inform customers that these adapters were worth $100 and must be returned or paid for?  Did customers sign for the adapters?  Why can't TWC identify where the adapters are being used?  One TWC rep told me that they could "see" that the adapters were being used....so surely they can "see" where they are being used....and it's not at parents' home.

So yesterday, TWC calls mom and threatens to turn off their cable if the bill is not paid.  Talk about making me angry!  Here are folks who always pay their bills, who have taken steps to make sure the bills are paid automatically, and they are threatening them?  HOW DARE YOU.

So I call TWC and I am told that they cannot talk to me because I am not listed on the account (why didn't the other TWC folks know that last week?).

Bottom line:  In this digital age, the elderly are left out to dry.  The cable bills are so difficult to read and understand--my parents' bill had 16 different itemized charges.  When the bills go up (as it did almost monthly in small increments) who would notice until it got so high that it caused concern?  That's when the kids are called in to figure it out.  By then, it is so frigging messed up that it takes me and sis many days to untangle it.  So, I'm paying the bills now and I'm getting them electronically.  TWC - I'm looking at you!

End of life as I knew it

It is the end of life as I knew it.

My beloved Washington Post has dropped my possibly even more beloved Get Fuzzy comic strip.  Donna Peremes defends her decision in today's Post, but Donna, you don't convince me.

For the past many years I have opened the comics page every morning to get my Get Fuzzy fix.  Many friends don't get the humor, but those two characters reminded me of my own boys, Chapi and Indy.  Chapi was the Satchel Pooch character.  So loving, so gullible, so naive.  Indy is my Bucky Katt guy.  He steals Chapi's food, grouches if Chapi is in "his" bed, and barks until one of us moves Chapi out of his way.  All four of them make my life so much happier.

I love to laugh and start the morning that way.  So, goodbye Post paper, hello Post on line.  Luckily, the strip will be available on line.  Post Publishers, you are killing me.....

Wadjda/Enough Said

As much as I want to write about the bike/barge trip, life just gets in the way.  Other interesting things enter my life that seem to take precedence.  

WADJDA  Seeing this film makes me wish I were a better writer.  I wish I could somehow express how great the movie is and how much more it is than a story of a ten year old Saudi girl who wants to earn money to buy a bicycle so that she can beat her friend Abdullah in a race.  Wadjda and Abdullah are two Saudi children who never acted before this film.  Abdullah stole my heart in every scene.  Just a beautiful child and so obviously smitten with Wadjda.  But I loved the film not only because Wadjda wants a bike and will get into all kinds of commerce to save enough to buy it, but because she is a girl in a society where girls don't ride bikes and she doesn't seem to let it bother her.  The subplots about how girls and women are viewed in the Saudi culture at once angered me and gave me wonder at the ways the women work through the system.  See this film.

Okay, I love James Gandolfini, but that's not the only reason I loved this film.  Enough Said is a romantic comedy about two divorced people and their attempts to connect.  Gandolfini is superb with those soulful eyes that say everything.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus is terrific.  The premise of the film is that people come to new relationships with the history of their previous breakups.  Is the reason they broke up before a show stopper? Or do some characteristics spell doom for some relationships but not for others.  I loved the film.

How lucky is that?  Two GREAT films in two days.  Doesn't get any better.

Stressing and Decompressing

NOTE:  My 15 year old nephew left earlier this week, so I’ve been de-compressing for a few days.  Nothing out of the ordinary, or so everyone tells me, but I’ve decided to wait until the whole lot turns 25 or so before I spend a whole week with any of them again.  Teenagers.  I know I was not like this when I was 15 because I didn’t have a cell phone.

I still don't have the mind-set to work on describing the rest of the bike trip, not just because of the TEENAGER, but because of our illustrious leadership. I've got to stop watching the news and reading the Post, but it's like watching a train wreck.  Can't take my eyes off.

So this post will bring you up to date on what's made my blood boil besides TEENAGERS. 

Ted Cruz.  Where are the birthers now?  The Tea Party darling was born in a foreign country (at least I believe Canada is still a sovereign state), of a foreign born father (whose home country is COMMUNIST - bwaaa haaa haaa haaa haaa), and it appears he will be making a run for the presidency in 2016.  Hmmmmmmm.  Come on.  Don't we have any liberal birthers out there?

Dan Cuccinelli.  With all of the problems we have in this country (SEE ABOVE) and in this state, our attorney general (and aspiring governor) has a lazer focus on our bedrooms (or wherever else folks have sex).

Ken Cuccinelli Loses Bid to Re-Ban Sodomy 

World War II Memorial.  I agree wholeheartedly that the WWII vets should have access to the memorial.  BUT, if government is closed because you bozos can't get a budget together, whose fault is that?  Not the lowly Park Service employees.  And HOW DARE YOU make this a spot for your political grandstanding.  Get back to the Capitol and work on the GD budget.  You can't pick and choose what is open.  I don't see any bleeding for the folks who can't pay their bills or get assistance, for Head Start kids and their mothers, or families who can't get into medical trials at NIH,not to mention the Federal employees who have become your favorite punching bags.  Who do you think writes the laws that Federal employees must enforce?  

Republican Congressman Randy Neugebauer caught on camera yelling at park service ranger for government shutdown  

People of Lubbock Texas, you should be ashamed if this guy gets re-elected.

One bright spot in the week, however. 

Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post wrote a beautiful piece about Our beautiful city.   How sick we all are of hearing how "Washington is broke, how much THEY don't want to be associated with Washington (even though they spent loads to get here)."  Petula sets it straight.  We love Washington and the surrounding areas.  Best place in the world to live.

ZITS

My blessings to all of you parents who have either gotten through the teenage years or (even more blessings) still have them to "look forward to..."  My 15 year old extremely intelligent and nice nephew is visiting.  No one told me that "they" don't talk!  Yikes.  I'm talking non-stop like some middle-aged character in a cartoon.  

Oh yeah, that's why I named today's blog, ZITS.

He has been here for four days.  I'd been planning a three day trip to civil war battlegrounds.   We were going to Harper's Ferry, zip lining, and visiting Antietam and Gettysburg.  But thanks, Congress for shutting them all down!  I should send him to your place for a week.  Maybe that would shake things up enough for you to get something done.  Anyway, I digress....

So I've been punting.  Punting is kind of hard when you can't rely on your teammate to snap you the ball.  I had heard that teenagers don't talk, and in fact experienced a bit of this when my friend brought her 16 year old niece on our trip to New York.  But at the time, I just thought something was wrong with her niece.   Now I know differently.

If he didn't have his phone I'd wonder if he were alive, but the non-stop texting tells me there is some brain activity going on....just not directed at me.

Don't get me wrong.  I love this guy.  When he does talk, he has such a dry sense of humor.  He is smart, funny, and even witty.  When he was 3 years old he told my husband that he "liked his vehicle."  That's how he talks...like an adult....but then of course, I haven't heard him talk too much this trip...but I remember when he was little.....

I've scaled back our activities because he sleeps a lot.  We are having fun, I think.  My friend assures me that he will remember this time with me.  I hope he remembers it fondly.

I called today's blog "Zits" because he reminds me so much of this comic.  A 15 year old and his two parents trying to co-exist.  Check it out if you don't have it in your own newspaper....and think of me....five more days and counting.

La Magnifique

I had planned to blog day by day of the trip, but that won't really work out since some days we are in two locations, or in the same location over night.  So we are still in Brugge, but now on our barge, La Magnifique.  This barge will take us from Brugge to Amsterdam, but first we get another overnight in Brugge.  The barge has 17 cabins and approximately 34 bikers.The captain, Walter, is a great guy.  Ramon the chef is terrific.  We will spend 7 breakfasts and seven dinners with them and the rest of the crew:  Berber, Melissa, and Tom.  To give you an idea of what it looks like:

First deck - 

Our Room

Our Bathroom

Hallway

We arrived on La Magnifigue in the late afternoon, and immediately tried to stake out a dinner table for the nine of us.  In our previous trip on the Danube we were assigned a group table, and we just expected it was the same here.  

Unfortunately, I'm afraid we may have been seen as keeping ourselves separate from the rest of the crowd who were from Germany, Australia, the States, U.K. and New Zealand.  We just wanted to see each other and have fun with each other.  I think by the end, the rest of them understood, but it was a little weird at first.

 We spent that first afternoon unpacking, drinking beer on the aft (sailor's term for the back of the boat) and having a very good meal.  That evening Tom (the bike tour guide) explained what would go on the next morning.  To our surprise, the bike ride was assumed to be led by Tom as the tour guide.  On previous rides we were given a map and told where to meet up---and that's what we intended to do on this trip.  So, next morning we got our bikes and panier, put on our gloves and helmets and left the security of the Magnifigue with more or less directions to the next stop.

Points of Interest:
ON BARGE:
Beer - 4 Euros or $5.60
Wine - 4 Euros or $5.60
Wine (bottle) - $21.00

Gasoline (we weren't drinking this, but thought you might like to know):  $9.05/gallon (if my calculations are correct).

1 gallon = 3.78 liters
1 Euro = $1.40
1.71 euros per liter
1.71 x 3.78 x 1.40 = $9.05

Day Two: Brussels to Brugge (Train)

Try not to let the spelling get to you.  We were  in the country of Belgium where the official language is French AND Flemish or Dutch.  I'm not sure we ever figured out how to really spell the names.  Brugge, Bruges, Brussels, Bruxelles, ...... Thank god everyone here speaks English.

 We arrived in Belgium (on September 19) via the capital, Brussels, which is also the capital of the European Community.  Pam, Suzanne and I (and later Carolee and Kristin) arrived directly from Dulles Airport, Chuck and Kim flew in from California, via Seattle, Mike flew in from New Hampshire via Atlanta as did Cheryl from San Diego.  Nine good friends ready for an adventure.    Our itinerary was Brussels, Brugge, then on the barge, The Magnifique to sail/bike from Brugge to Amsterdam via Ghent, Antwerp and a number of other smaller towns, with the final days in Amsterdam (sans bikes).

Brugge is a beautiful town built on many many canals.  It is famous for the canals, and also the ancient art of bobbin lace.  Belgian chocolate, Belgian waffles, french fries and beer round out the other well-known commodities of the region.  More about these later.

After a Mike-led death march from the train station to our hotel, dragging what seemed like tons of luggage over cobblestone roads, we checked into our hotel (two flights up, no elevator---aren't these European hotels charming?---), and headed out for a look at the town and dinner.  And yes, it is this beautiful and quaint.

Brugge - Main Square

Dinner was a wonderful experience in a small restaurant off the beaten path.  However, it started what was to be an on-going discussion and quest.  The discussion at every meal remained the same---how much do you tip in Europe?  The quest was to drink and pay for beer and wine, but to drink and NOT PAY for water.  The Europeans have this quaint custom of drinking only bottled water and we learned the hard way that that water is sometimes more precious than wine.  This first evening we paid 6.60 Euros (translate to $9.00) per bottle.  We learned to swallow our pride after that and order tap water, much to the hardly disguised disapproval of our European hosts. 

Round Up?  To What?

 A short walk back to our hotel, grabbing a couple bottles of wine was all it took for a great end to our second day of adventure.

A canal at night

Pam at the scene of the crime the next morning.  I think we kept a few people awake that evening with our impromptu wine tasting in the hotel's courtyard.

Morning meant a canal tour before tasting some of the local beer.

 Culture can go only so far on an adventure, so before we boarded our barge, we headed out to sample some of the finer things....the oldest beer hall in town dating back to the 1500s (I think).

On the way, we saw examples of Brugge's artistry in lace and in chocolate.

Bobbins that are used to make the lace like you see here.  Don't ask me to explain how this works.  If you are really interested., look at this .video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTqdr38tTU

Tomorrow (if I'm feeling like it), I'll continue on with our entry onto the barge.  Oh one last thing, can't forget the artistry of the chocolatiers.

I want to make a shout out to Dorian and Paul.  Dorian, who had major surgery while we were gone, was always in our thoughts.  And still is....

Oh, forgot to show you the luggage.  We took a taxi to the barge.