The Weight of My Weight

Amiyah, our granddaughter……. ……..loves our dogs. Who wouldn’t, right? She spent lots of time playing with them and calling out their names on Christmas Eve. She seems to remember their names, but is constantly asking me MY name. We have a lot of Grandparents in the family, so it’s understandable. The other Grandparents like to be called “Grandma (insert first name here)”. I prefer Gigi. Not Grandma Gigi. Just Gigi. They usually call me Grandma Gigi anyways. It’s cute. I have adapted and accepted my role as “Grandma”. Amiyah has reached the age where she likes to talk a lot, and everything she says is cute. Now she looks at me, cocks her head just a bit, her eyebrows scrunch up, and she says “What’s you name?” To which I reply…..”Gigi, just Gigi”, to which she replies….”Okay Grandma Gigi.” I love that kid. I like to mess with the Grandkids […]

Christmas Eve was a scheduled day full of things to do and places to go, yet a somewhat spontaneous day too. Tess and I always say we are very laid back, organized people, when truthfully, we’re both a little high strung and anything but organized when we’re together. Neither one of us can seem to keep up with our schedules or routines, and we get a little short tempered. We get a little side tracked. We had a few short errands to run on Christmas Eve Day, but before we could get out of the house, we decided to dress alike for our errands. Flannel pj shirts (mine red and black, hers white and black), Uggs (mine are FUggs), Santa hats and leggings. I’m not kidding. Tess wanted a Christmas Photo of her and her child, Tuckerman!(Now we are running late.) After all of our errands, and a spontaneous stop […]

My schedule for the last couple of weeks has been anything but regular. Wait. What did you think I meant by irregular, silly? I like a schedule, and I like a routine, but sometimes life takes you down an unexpected path, and since I like variety, this irregularity in my schedule is fine, but it seems to have gotten in the way with the blogging part of my life. Blogging takes a little more time than I realize. I did make it to Fridays Weight Watchers meeting, and here are the facts. I have been between 165-168 for a few months now. I have managed to stay out of the 170’s for quite sometime. Until now. Fridays weight was 170.8. A little discouraging, but not surprising, due to the fact that I have been celebrating anything and everything that has been happening over the last few weeks, (and there has […]

After graduating on Friday…………. …….Tess came home Sunday for our family Christmas. We have a few family members spending Christmas out of town this year, so we celebrated early. The gifts are all opened, the stockings are empty, the Pumpkin bread has been devoured. I had some mixed feelings about celebrating so early, and I ran around like crazy for 10 days straight shopping and preparing, but a part of me is enjoying the fact that these next few days are simply attending parties and enjoying all the festivities, family and traditions. Tess decided to jump right in and continue applying for jobs. She has been applying for a variety of positions for several weeks now, some local, some not. Monday afternoon she had a phone interview with Southwest Airlines in Dallas, Texas for a three month, paid internship. Later in the afternoon, she had a second interview, and by […]

I am really having a hard time sitting down to write a blog post. I have sat down everyday since my last post and the words just won’t come to me. I wrote my last blog post on Friday, about my incredible daughter and her graduating from college. It’s so hard to enjoy all the wonderful things in your life, when you know so many people are experiencing such a great loss. I feel like I should be grieving, so then I grieve for a while and I think about all of them. I want to smile at my kid, no matter how old she is, about her success, but all I can think about are the parents that will never have the chance to experience what I got to experience this weekend. Each time I sit down to blog, all I can think about are the lost lives in […]

If I did anything right in this crazy, unexpected life of mine…….it was raising this kid. When I was pregnant, I refuse to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl, and I insisted on having a drug free birth (call me old fashioned). I hated being pregnant though. When she moved inside me, all I could think about was the movie “Aliens”. My boobs were bigger than the rest of my body…….except maybe my ankles. I didn’t like anything about the whole “being pregnant” experience. Except that I KNEW in my heart I was having a girl, and I knew she would be amazing, and I knew one day, she would be my best friend. I didn’t go to college for many reasons. Sometimes I regret that decision, other times I remind myself that the decisions we have made in our lives, are the decisions that […]

You just never know who you might meet on any given day. Today I met Arthur. Arthur is walking from British Columbia to Key West, Florida. Arthur is walking for those who can not walk for themselves. He is walking in honor of many family members and friends who have suffered an illness throughout their life. Arthur has a son. His son was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes at a very early age and it has been a large part of their lives for the last thirty years. Arthur is the type of person who likes to stop and smell the roses. I met him while I was closing up the Food Truck today at 199th and Metcalf. I was outside as he was walking by. I could tell by his “outfit”, he might possibly be on a walking mission. Turns out, he was. We chatted for quite a while, and […]

I always have been. Every list you see lying there….well, all of that info is also on my iPad Notes app, but I have to have it right in front of me, on paper, or I freak out thinking I am going to forget something. I get a total high from crossing things OFF the list too. It’s not quite so exciting to delete a chore from my ipad Notes App. Then it’s just blank…..empty…….bare…….nothing, like nothing was ever there to begin with. Nope. I gotta see it! I gotta see all the crap I did that day all crossed off on my list so when Mike gets home, I have lots to share. Sometimes…..and don’t tell anybody…….I do something that wasn’t on the list, then I write it down real quick, then cross it off! “Look at all the crap I got done today honey!” Then I make a […]

I spent my morning listening to my traditional Nat King Cole Christmas music…..over and over and over again while wrapping Christmas presents. Music can be tied to so many memories. Every year, when I was a kid, my parents would host a Christmas Eve Open House. Neighbors, Co-Workers, friends and relatives would stop by the house on their way out for the evening, or on their way home from wherever the night had taken them. My mom would spend days baking and decorating and cleaning. The entire time, listening to Christmas music. Andy Williams, Bing Crosby, Elvis and Nat King Cole are some of the ones I remember the most. I bought this Nat King Cole CD when Tess was fairly young so I could carry on the tradition. Tess wasn’t there while I was wrapping presents on Sunday, but I couldn’t do a Christmas activity without good old Nat! […]

I ate peanut butter and jelly on toast while laying out every single thing I have purchased…..then making a list of what I still needed to buy……. 4 PPV 4 kids, 3 grandkids, parents, odds and ends……….. (I’m big on the Stocking Stuffer’s. I don’t mean to brag, but I do a pretty darn good job at it too! Stocking Stuffer shopping for the entire family takes me two days! This is not a joke, people.) Then, I was too tired to think, so I ate the exact same thing all over again. Do you like the Turkey Paper Plate from Thanksgiving I am feasting on?? You gotta use those leftovers sometime! 4 PPV I packed my snack…..grabbed my list……and headed out the door. 2 apples, sliced up, and a big cup of water…0 PPV Then I went to Target….I know, SURPRISE!!! You guys, they have EVERYTHING at Target!!! Okay, […]