Dad — Page 18

Chatty on Tuesday

October 13, 2015 at 9:11 am by Claudia

10-13 anniversary

• Self-portrait, shot on the porch at Cracker Barrel yesterday. Or should it be Selves-portrait? I’m trying to avoid the use of the word ‘selfie’ if at all possible.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know we went for the big bucks and celebrated at Cracker Barrel. I know, you’re thinking that we really went all out for this anniversary.

Actually, we love Cracker Barrel but go there rarely. We’re low key about celebrations, so when Don suggested CB, I was in. As it was it took us forever to get there because of all the traffic. Thousands and thousands of people head up to our neck of the woods on fall weekends and, inevitably, they have to head back home, causing traffic back-ups for miles. It’s a pain in the you-know-what. But we got there and, of course, had to wait for a table. By the time we sat down, we were starved!

Then we watched the Mets play the Dodgers. (I love the Red Sox, but I also love the Mets.) They won.

10-13 quilt on chair

• The nights are getting very cold. Quilts and throws are making an appearance.

10-13 quilt on bed

This bed cover is very heavy, so I usually stash it on the chair in the summer months. But it’s back on the bed, keeping us snug and warm as we transition to cooler nights.

• Here’s a random thought:

10-13 imperialstormtrooper

Every time I look at my vacuum, I think of the Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

Is it just me? I’ve thought that since the day it arrived in the mail.

It’s a Shark Navigator, by the way, and it’s fabulous. And far less expensive than the over-priced Dyson. Just as in the theater or film, we Americans seem to be taken in by a British accent.

This vacuum is a especially great with dog hair and we have a lot of it around here.

• My dad is still in the hospital. They’ve found a fracture in his spine which needs to be treated with either injections that might be dangerous for a 92 year old man, or physical therapy. The doctor says he cannot be on his own right now and has recommended physical therapy, so that means he has to move to rehab facility after they’ve finished running tests. We thought he would go to the same rehab facility that both of my parents have spent time in, which is right next to the hospital and just a few miles from my sister.

But no. Medicaid has managed to screw everything up. Their ‘rules’ about things sometimes drive me up the wall. When my dad was admitted to the hospital, it was coded as ‘under observation.’ For some ridiculous reason, that particular code means my father will now be forced to go to one of two facilities, both of which are about 45 minutes to an hour away from home. Don’t ask me why. My sister works long hours at her job and has a four year old to take care of when she’s not at work. Driving that far will make it impossible for her to see dad more than once – maybe twice – a week. I can’t get down there right now. Needless to say, we’re very frustrated. The rehab facility where we thought he would go would have been perfect for him. Everyone knows him there – their presence would make it all so much easier for him.

• For those of you who have found that Don’s CD is temporarily out-of-stock, hang in there. CD Baby only keeps a small amount on hand because, as you can imagine, they stock CDs for thousands of musicians. We’ll be sending them more today and they should be available shortly. I’ll let you know when they’re back in stock.

Okay. Long post.

Thank you so much for the anniversary wishes yesterday. We loved reading them. You are all wonderful, a true blessing in my life.

Happy Tuesday.

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Snow, Austen & A Little Sleuthing

March 5, 2015 at 9:45 am by Claudia

I’m going to take a little break from the Playlist. We’ll do another edition next week. I’ve noticed my page views (the way Google Analytics measures visits to the blog) are down, so I’m thinking that not everyone is interested in the Playlist. I am, of course, and many of you have left comments saying you love the lists. I never tailor the subject matter of my posts to analytics, but it did make me think that perhaps I shouldn’t do several of them in a row, but instead, throw them in once a week or so. So that’s what we’ll do.

Let’s get back to harsh reality:

3-5 what the heck?

What the heck? If you walk up to the back of the corral, the fence posts are thoroughly covered with snow. We must have about three feet of the white stuff on the ground and it just keeps coming. Thank the heavens for the snow blower. Yesterday’s snow was heavy and wet and would have been a giant pain in the tush to shovel. Fortunately for me, Mr. Sparks took over and, aside from shoveling the mini-corral, I watched the action from inside.

We are more than ready for Spring.

3-5 beauty

This girl won’t know what to do with herself when she gets to use the big corral again. She’s been confined to the mini-corral (the best decision we made this winter) and she’s been a trooper, but she needs more space. I told Don yesterday that I yearn to see her loping from the back of the corral all the way to the kitchen door. She’s tries to lope now, but it just doesn’t work, bless her heart.

It’s March. That means a new edition to my Penguin Classics Jane Austen collection. And look what arrived on my doorstep yesterday:

3-5 mansfield park

Hello, pretty little Coralie Bickford-Smith designed cover!

Yes, I’m going for one a month. Yet to come are Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. I’m also going to add Bickford-Smith’s edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot – another dearly loved favorite of mine.

Each of the books has a pretty satin bookmark, as well.

3-5 mansfield park on the shelf

There they are, right next to the two volumes of Shakespeare that dear Judy gave me. I’d say this is a “Favorites” section of our bookshelves, wouldn’t you?

A funny little story – yesterday morning I was sitting in my chair in the den and the phone rang. Just one ring. I got up to get it and nothing showed. No number. Nothing. Okay, I thought, and went back to whatever it was I was doing.

A short time later, one ring. Then nothing. Hmmmm.

Then about ten minutes later, one ring.

In the meantime, I was planning to call my dad to check on him, so I did. In the course of our conversation, he said that he had tried to call three times and got a busy signal each time. I mentioned what had been happening with the phone. We couldn’t figure it out.

A while later, I was telling Don about it. Since I was able to make an outgoing call, I was thinking there was maybe something wrong with the circuit or the line or whatever. So I decided to use the cell phone to call our landline to see if it was still happening. It was. One ring on our landline.

But the cellphone I was holding kept ringing in my ear and to my shock, my dad answered.

What the heck?

Was something screwed up? Were the lines crossed?

I tried again. Same thing.

Finally, after some sleuthing on my part, I deduced that somehow our phone number was being forwarded to my dad’s number in Florida. Since we have a landline phone that is made by AT&T, I googled something or other that took me to an AT&T page where there were instructions on how to forward your phone calls and how to cancel forwarding. I tried several methods and finally hit on one that worked. We tested it. Our landline rang several times. Bingo.

Here’s what happened. I think. Our number shows up as Private when we make outgoing calls. When I call my dad I always hit *82 before I dial his number so he knows it’s me calling. According the chart I consulted, you can forward your calls by hitting *72 and then dialing the number you want to forward to.

So, I must have hit *72 by mistake. That’s a first.

It was the strangest thing. Thank goodness we discovered it rather quickly, or my dad would have been getting our calls all day!

Happy Thursday.

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An Edgar Guest Treasure

January 12, 2015 at 9:24 am by Claudia

You already know I’ve been slowly collecting the poems of Edgar Guest, who was my dad’s godfather. He was a very popular poet, known as the People’s Poet, was a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, had a long-running radio show and was, from everything I hear about him, a great guy.

I wrote about him recently when I found another volume of his poems. The other day, a package arrived in the mail from my cousin Eileen. Eileen’s mother was my Aunt Lettie, my dad’s sister. Aunt Lettie was my favorite aunt (my vintage dress form, Letitia, is named after her) and was the member of my dad’s immediate family who kept all the family records and memorabilia. She knew all the stories. Thank goodness she did. When Aunt Lettie died, Eileen inherited a lot of that memorabilia.

Back to the package. I opened it up and inside was a note from Eileen saying that my posts about Edgar Guest reminded her of something that was in Grandma Hill’s things. She wanted me to have it.

It’s a booklet. Let me show it to you.

Pelletiers1

It’s about 8 x 10 inches. As far as Eileen and my cousin Mike can remember, the Pelletiers were friends of my grandparents. I asked my dad and he concurs, but as the youngest kid in a family of six kids, he doesn’t remember much more than that. It sounds like the Pelletiers, the Guests and the Hills were all friends.

I don’t know whether this sweet booklet was sent out as a Christmas greeting or for some other reason, but let’s look inside:

Pelletiers2

Each page has a photo of the Pelletier’s home in the country, which was clearly a place that Edgar Guest loved to visit. We’re not sure where it was, and my dad reminds me that what was considered the ‘country’ in those days could have been on the outskirts of Detroit.

The little booklet is full of poems that Guest wrote about the Pelletiers. (Pronounced, according the rhymes in the poems – PEL a TEARS. Or maybe PEL TEARS?) I’ve done a bit of research and some of these poems were published. All of them may have been published, I just haven’t got that far.

Pelletiers -at pelletiers

Pelletiers4

It’s full of photos of their house, their horses…

Pelletiers5

Their prize cow, which Mr. Pelletier purchased for a rather exorbitant sum.

Pelletiers6

Their rather elegant dogs.

Pelletiers7

The living room of their home, which reminds me an awful lot of the living room in the Craftsman-style house we rented in San Diego. The photo caption on this one is “Caught Napping.” There’s another photo with a Mission-style rocker, so we’re talking early 1900’s (maybe 1910-20 at the latest?) which is also evident by the hair styles of the women and their dresses. I’ll have to take a picture of that photo and share it with you at a later date.

I’m still researching the Pelletiers. Their names come up as residents of Detroit and certainly in Guest’s poem titles. Interestingly, the announcer for Guest’s radio show was Vincent Pelletier, a well-known announcer in the days of radio. Whether he was some sort of relation to these Pelletiers, I don’t know.

Isn’t this amazing?

Imagine how flattered the Pelletiers must have been to have their pal, Edgar Guest, write poems about them!

I don’t know how many of these booklets the Pelletiers sent out, but I can’t imagine there are many of them around. One library has a copy of it in their archives, but that’s the only mention of the actual booklet I’ve found.

I am so thrilled to have this in my Edgar Guest collection. Thank you, Eileen.

My dad’s parents both died before I was born, so the only way I ‘know’ them is through the stories of my dad and aunt. I have a lot of things that were my maternal grandmother’s, but nothing from the Hill side of the family. That is, until last year, when Eileen sent me this:

Pelletiers-grandmahill

A tiny little china dog, marked Germany, that was my Grandma Hill’s. She was of German descent. When I opened that package (not long after my mother’s death) and read Eileen’s note, I started crying. Funny how that happens. It meant more to me than I had ever realized it would to have something from the grandmother I never knew. I don’t know how old this little guy is, but Eileen tells me he sat on their hutch for as long as she can remember.

Neither Eileen or I knew Grandma Hill. Neither did my sisters. I’m not sure about my brother; if he knew her at all, he was just a baby. So this little guy means a great deal and I was so touched that Eileen shared him with me.

New post up on Just Let Me Finish This Page.

Happy Monday.

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Chatty on Tuesday

Snow, Austen & A Little Sleuthing

An Edgar Guest Treasure

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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