After Five Years, I still Miss you every single Day

     January is a sad month for me. It is a month of remembering those whom I have lost. It was on January 8, 1959 that my dad committed suicide. I was 7 years old, getting ready to turn 8. But if that isn't bad enough, January is the month I lost my best friend. We had not really been life-long friends, but she was and still is today the closest and bestest friend I have ever had. I have other good friends. And I have a very special friend that has been through a lot with me. But Nanne was my BEST FRIEND FOREVER. My BFF. And I miss her.

     My last conversation with Nanne took place on New Year's Eve, 2007. She called to tell me that Gary (her husband) and she had taken a spur of the moment trip from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Mississippi to see her dad. It was not a trip they put a lot of thought into. She came home from work (she was a traveling nurse) and told Gary she wanted to go see her dad and they needed to get ready and leave now. You see, Nanne had a premonition. She wondered how long her dad would be alive and she had things she needed to tell him. They had recently put him in a nursing home and he was in the early stages of dementia. She was really worried that he would not know her, if she did not get there NOW. So they packed up and left on a road trip.

     She called me to wish me a Happy New Year. We spent some length of time on the phone. Just like we always did. She told me that she didn't take her Lasix for the trip and was having some problems breathing, but that would all go away as soon as she popped a few Lasix and starting peeing and getting rid of the fluid. Nanne had a lot of health problems. She was really over-weight. She had chronic back problems like many nurses have. And she was a brittle diabetic. She was in the process of getting set up for 'stomach stapling' so that she could drop a lot of pounds and then have back surgery. She also smoked. A LOT! And so did her husband. They were staying with her twin sister Anne and she had been to see her 'daddy' and she sounded happy.

     That was the last time I ever talked to her. A few days later her sister called to tell me that Nanne had a massive heart attack and was on a ventilator in the hospital  I was devastated. I was heartbroken  I was sick to my stomach and sick in my heart. I wanted to go to Mississippi. Her son told me to wait a few days until they knew how she was going to be. I called his cell phone and recorded messages for her and he would play them for her while she lay in the ICU with all the beeping going on around her. I called several times each day. I cried. I prayed. I remembered. We planned to go to New Mexico in February to spend more time with Nanne and Gary. I waited for Josh to call and tell me it was now okay to come. I made my plans. I asked for time off work. I laid out the clothes that I would take. I waited for the call.

     The call from Josh came while I was at work on January 7, 2007. It was not the call that I was expecting. Nanne had died that afternoon. They could not save her. They tried. They coded her 5 times. The family had to decide to let her go. She was with her husband, her beloved only son and only child and her twin sister. She never woke up after the heart attack. 

      And I think of her every single day. Something will remind me of Nanne. I want to call her and tell her what is going on in my life. I want to tell her that Danny has relapsed. I want to tell her that we are raising his kids. I want her to give me advice on what to feel, how to deal with it, what to say. I want to hear her voice. I want to plan a visit. I want to get a letter. I want to send her a surprise and wait for her to call. I want to hear my phone ring out with her special ringtone' Don Williams singing You're My best Friend:

You're my bread when I'm hungry

You're my shelter from troubled winds

You're my anchor in life's ocean

But most of all, you're my best friend

When I need hope and inspiration

You're always strong when I'm tired and weak

I could search this whole world over

You'd still be everything that I need.

     I miss you Nanne. There is so much I want to talk to you about. I want to tell you about Richard, and the stroke and how I am now home full-time taking care of him. I want to cry on your shoulder and hear you say 'it's all gonna be okay, sugar'. I want to hear you say to Gary, just one more time, 'ain't that right baby' with that beautiful southern belle voice of yours. I want to hear you laugh. I want to hear you bitch. I want to see you and hug you and talk to you. I want to hear you brag about that precious grandson of yours. Oh, he was the apple of your eye. You were so happy to finally have Lane in your life. And he was spoiled rotten by his granny and his Papa. I want to swap recipes with you and hear you talk about the struggles of drug addiction and tell me that one day Danny will come to his senses and be okay. (I don't know if that is ever going to happen, but I want to hear you say it anyway) 

     I know you are in Heaven! We talked about that and I know you believed. I know you watch down over us and are cheering me on. I know I will see you again someday. But until then, I will miss you!

Rest in peace, my friend. 

What's In a Name?

     Names have always been a fascination of mine. It is true that it is just a grouping of letters, organized in a manner that will identify a person. But a name CAN identify you. Either in a good way or a not so good way. People know you by your name. And they get an idea about you because of your name.

     For instance, my name, Paula. It is the feminine form of Paul. However, I was name after my mother, whose name was Pauline. The name Paula is Latin in origin and the meaning is "small". Ha! Ha! I laugh everything I read that. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not small. My mother was not small and neither was HER mother. We are big women! The name Paula has been around since early Christian times. It is thought to be in honor of St. Paul. But it wasn't a widely used name until the 20th century. Mostly used my Germans. The name Paula appears as number 95 out of 4,276 names on the chart of popular names, with it's greatest year of popularity being in the 1960's. Funny thing is, I hardly know of anyone else names Paula. I have run into a few in my lifetime. But not nearly as many as I have Mary's or Susan's or etc. What I have heard mostly associated with my name over the years is the popular song "Hey, Hey Paula" sang by Paul & Paula and the number one song in 1963. There were times in my life that I secretly thought of choking the next person that sang that song to me. And did I like my name when I was growing up? NOT so much. For some reason unknown to even me, I wanted to be named Connie. But, I am okay with it now.
     Now as far as my last name goes, that is a 'whole nuther story'. I have done some research on the RINEY name over the years. I have read that it could be a Scottish name. And I have read that it could be a German name. And I am not sure at all which it is. My mother told me one time many years ago that at one time it was Von Rhine which was changed when the ancerstors came to America and dropped the Von and changed the spelling to Riney. I have no idea what the truth of the matter is. I do know that the name was a souce of discontent to me as a child. In fact, I used to dream of changing it to ANYTHING as soon as I could. You want to know why? Because the pronunciation of the name is rye-knee (long I). And unfortunately that rhymes with hiney. Isn't that an interesting word. It refers to one's 'hind-end'. Their butt. And what I heard, while growing up (A LOT) was Paula Riney, with the big-fat hiney. And I hated it! HATED it! Can I say that often enough? I HATED it! Now as an adult, I know that kids will take any name and figure out how they can torture a child with it. For instance, my son's often heard the term 'maxi-pads' associated with their last name. But because kids can be so cruel, I grew up hating my last name and couldn't wait to change it. I never ever gave any consideration to keeping my maiden name when I became married the first time. Yep, I know. It is my idenity. And I happily and willingly gave it away. Now, when I got married the second time, I kept my first husband's name. Does that even make any sense to any of you? It makes sense to me. Cause it is the name that I have had since I was 18 years old. It is the name I went to business school and used. It is the name my boys have. It is the name I graduated from college with and obtained my nursing license with. It is the name on all my identifying records that I carry in my billfold. It is MY name. I don't see it as the name of my FIRST husband. Took awhile to convince my second husband of that, but he came around. And he is okay with it.
     Enough about MY name. Now we can get down to why I wanted to write this post. I have run into some funny names in my life time. Like the name of the mortuary in a town that I lived in as a young child. LIVINGSTON'S Mortuary. Do you see the humor there? I always thought it was funny. Or the doctor at the clinic whose name was Dr PAINE...who wants to go to a doctor with that kind of name? I would be afraid of the pain he might cause me. Or what about Dr. SWEET....a dentist here in the town where I currently live. I am sure you all have heard plenty of those kinds of names. And I hope you will share them with me here in the comments section.
     A couple of the funniest name I ran into in my years as a nurse...........a guy named HARRY WHACKER.....are you kidding me. (I am not breaching patient confidentiality here cause I did a Google search and there are plenty of HARRY WHACKERS out there. No pun intended). But this particular HARRY WHACKER  was an old man who came to the hospital for prostate surgery. Another name that sticks in my mind over the years is the name DIMPLE. Who on earth would ever name their baby girl DIMPLE? And that being bad enough she grew up and married a gentleman by the name of Mr. Slimp. I am sure she heard plenty of comments about that one. But I would still rather have her name than Paula Kaye Riney (with the big fat hiney).

Menu Plan for January 21-February 3

Monday

January 21, 2013

Ham and Beans

Cornbread

Tuesday

January 22, 2013

Pasta Tuesday

Wednesday

January 23, 2013

Wednesday's at our house are quick eat for the kids

either eat at church or on the run.

Papa and I grab something fast food.

Thursday 

January 24, 2013

Mexican Thursday

Friday

January 25, 2013

Casserole Friday

Baked Cream Cheese Spaghetti casserole*

Garlic Bread

Saturday

January 26, 2013

Clean Up Saturdays

eat the leftovers from the week

Sunday

January 27, 2013

Crock Pot Sundays

Pork loin

cheesy potatoes

peas

Monday January 28, 2013

Mexican Monday

Baked Tacos*

Tuesday

January 29, 2013

Pasta Tuesday

Garlic penne pasta*

garlic bread

Wednesday

January 30, 2013

Quick eat and to church night

Thursday

January 31, 2013

Darian's 15th Birthday

Shepard's Pie

Birthday Cake

Friday

February 1, 2013

Lasagna Soup*

Saturday

February 2, 2013

Soup and Sandwiches

Clean up leftovers from the week

Sunday

February 3, 2013

Cheesy Crock-pot Meatloaf

Mashed potatoes and gravy

broccoli

* click on links for recipes

Just Dreamin'

I want one of these little travel trailers.

I think it would be the coolest thing to park in my back yard.

And when I needed to get away, I could go out and sit in my room.

Of course, I would have to have it ready for electricity.

And it would have to have a heater.

And air-conditioning in the summertime.

A little refrigerator to keep my beer and wine cold.

A comfortable chair for me to curl up in and read a good book.

A cabinet to hold my snacks.

And most important of all.....................

A lock on the door to keep the family out.

Decluttering my life and my home in 2013

A good thing about a new year is you can turn over a new leaf and start all over again.

That is what I am going to TRY to do this year.

I want to become more organized and quit wasting so much time.

It is unbelievable how much time I waste.

How many hours there are in a day that I don't get anything accomplished.

And how this leaves me feeling like crap.

I am tired of feeling like I am suffocating under piles of things.

I am tired of feeling like I am so disorganized.

I am just tired of feeling TIRED.

Here is one of my biggest time wasters.

Can you believe that?

I love to read other people's blogs.

Up until this morning, my Google Reader held 215 blogs.

Most of them I just skipped through and didn't really read.

Some of them, I didn't even like reading.

So this morning, I trimmed that down to 65 blogs.

Good start on being organized, huh?

And a really good start on not wasting anymore time.

And another thing that I started the first of this year.....

(I have to admit that I started this last year too.)

Maybe I can complete it this year.

Sometimes life gets in the way of completing things, if you know what I mean.

But I have joined up with a challenge called

The 52 week organized Home Challenge

You don't have to start on January 1. You just have to start.

And every Monday she puts up a new challenge that we can work on that week.

And she will send you emails too so that you can keep up.

So far I have decluttered my kitchen counter-tops.

And they look nice not having so much stuff sitting on them.

The kitchen can be a hard place because we have so much kitchen stuff usually.

(this is not my kitchen, by the way)

So I hope to work my way through the whole house by following along with this challenge.

The other big clutter problem at my house is clothes.

Lots and Lots and Lots of clothes.

And never a thing to wear.

And with two teenage (well one is almost a teen and one already is)

and one husband ( who in the past was a fashion horse), we have too many clothes.

I already went through Paige and Harley's clothes.

But I need to do that again.

Cause we didn't get rid of nearly enough. Harley still has enough tee shirts

to wear one a year without repeating.

So big blacks bags of clothes will be finding their way out of our house.

We will donate to Heather.

We will send some to the consignment store.

And lots will makes it's was to Goodwill.

But worse than clothes is the piles and piles of paper.

I think you know what I mean.

I have to become brutal with this problem.

I will overcome it.

I know that I will.

Now while I am at it I think I will do some decluttering at another big time-waster for me.

Wow!

Do I ever need to quit wasting so much time here.

It is so easy to get lost in looking, lurking, commenting, and just plain wasting time.

Tonight I plan to delete people that I don't interact with.

People who I don't really care what they are doing.

And I am sure they don't care what I am up to either.

I need to cull out the 'likes' to things I really do like.

Sometimes I just liked things cause that is what I had to do to enter a contest.

And you know how many of those contests I won?

NONE.

Need to clean out the friends, the 'likes' the photos, and the statuses!

If I am not at home, I am in my car.

No, thank the good Lord, that is not a picture of my car.

But it is close.

So I need to clean it out. 

And organize it.

And KILL the next kid that leaves a half-eaten box of chicken McNuggets in the center console.

The last thing that I want to work on this year is pictures.

I have lots of photos just sitting in boxes. 

I would love to be a scrapbooker!

But I just don't have the time for that.

I would like to at least get them organized to look like this.

And then I have found the coolest and neatest blog

Becky's Blog.

She sells one of the easiest ever scrapbooking/photo systems that I have 

ever seen.

And I want to do it.

But first I want to organize all these photos into boxes before I start buying some of those 

cool products.

So what do you think?

Have my work cut out for me?

This is the first step.

I have written it down.

Now on to the hard work of

DECLUTTERING

Today Richard is 80 years old.

Damn that sounds old.

That must mean I am getting old.

He had a pretty good day in the picture above so this 

will be his birthday picture.

Happy Birthday to my husband.

I have loved you for a long, long time