Throwback Thursday - July 19 or July 20

Welcome to another Throwback Thursday on my blog. It's the day when I look back over this day in my blog history and some clips from this date in years past. Last week there weren't many entries from that day so I skipped it. I'm hoping this week will hold a little more meat, metaphorically speaking. Remember you can click on the underlined link for each day to see the original post.

Not EXACTLY on this day but on July 20, 2015, I posted about how much I was loving my iPhone 6. For those of you who sort of glazed over when I listed the apps I use on my current phone, the iPhone 7, this review of my favorite things on my iPhone 6 might be helpful for you! Most of what I know about how to use my phone I learned either off a YouTube video, from my sons or from Marvin. But Marvin doesn't use an iPhone so he's basically just shared some cool apps with me. I'm so attached to my phone that I fell asleep holding it last week. Marvin took this picture... and oddly enough, I took a picture of my own around the same time. Basically... you can have my phone when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers. I'm even attempting to swipe something...

Well, apparently I wasn't feeling bloggy on this date in 2014 either but I have a pretty fun question and answer blog on the 20th.  You can check it out here.... and answer any of the questions you'd like to answer yourself down in the comments below or on my Facebook blog post link. The questions were: 1. What's your favorite thing to watch on YouTube 2. Who taught you how to drive 3. What's your favorite thing to cook 4. Are you a hugger or non-hugger 5. Where do you pray best and 6. When's the last time you talked to your grandparents? I think I'm still about the same on all of these. My favorite thing to cook may have slightly changed to this roasted salmon/green beans/tomatoes ... just because it's easier/faster to cook. Just put it all on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season how you like and bake it at 425 for about 20-30 minutes. I like for the green beans to sort of crisp.

Would you believe that there also was no post for this date in 2013? Once again I'm going with a post from the next day, July 20th, which turned out to be an eventful day with a lot of photos. On that day we were moving some things into the mountain house and I took a lot of pictures of how things looked at that time. It makes me homesick for .... well, for the way my basement looked before the water damage and for my mom's presence in the house. It's just not the same without her. I miss our adventures that we had during the first year living up here while Pop was still in Riverdale and mom and I would have to sort things out on our own. We did a pretty good job and managed not to kill ourselves or each other. I didn't know then that we only had a few more Summers together. We were merging stuff from my house with stuff from Grandma's house after we moved her to Assisted Living and of course, things were trickling in from mom and dad's house in Riverdale. It was such a hodgepodge of stuff.

Also no blog post on this day in 2012 so for that year I'm pulling from July 18 to throw back to... at that time I had settled in with my parents in Riverdale (temporarily before we bought the house back up here in Cleveland) and was sort of getting into a routine. I talk about what Austin is doing/not-doing at that point... whew!... I am so glad that season of life with him is over. We still have challenges, almost every day but he's grown to be so much more dependable, stable, cooperative, grateful... many things... that he wasn't at that time. You can click this link right here to see the entire blog post.

Let's see what was happening in 2011... ONCE AGAIN there was no post for July 19th but again... on the 20th... I was talking about my move to the apartment after our duplex got struck by lightning. For three years in a row - 2011, 2012 and 2013 I was dealing with moving on July 20th. So no matter what else is happening on this day this year I am just happy to be settled. I miss my basement for sure, but I'm really, truly, very happy in my Ivory Tower in the guest room on the top floor. It's been a positive change for me and gives me a little more privacy which is an absolute necessity for an introvert.

HEYYYYY! Finally a blog post from July 19th.. this one was in 2010. It was sort of a whiny, "depression session" post talking about how lonely I felt in church as a single woman. It was only about six months later when my back problem reared it's ugly head and I stopped being able to sit for long enough to get through church, especially while I was still working full time. It took every second of my time off to get the inflammation down enough for me to function and... I still hurt constantly.

One last post for this Throwback Thursday and once again, it's not from this date but from the 20th. It had been a really sweet day because Sarabeth had gone forward and joined the church. It was a huge thing because SB was such a shy little girl! She's grown into quite the confident young woman since then and is active in lots of things that bring her joy, such as playing the drums for her high school band. She is still a quiet girl but she is a quiet leader and I know a lot of folks admire her grace and spirituality.

So that's my throwback to the days around this day in my blog history. Why is this day special for you? Share in the comments below! Thanks for stopping by!

Throwback Thursday - July 4th and 5th

This week I'm going to look at what happened on this day, July 5, and the day before July 4th in my blog history. These have been two very memorable days in my life. Last year on July 4th, my dad went to the hospital to see my mom who had been in the hospital for the past few days. She had been very sick but mentally fine. That morning, July 4th, changed everything. From that point on we only had brief glimpses of who my mom used to be. I can remember one day when she seemed particularly clear and I tried to hurry and talk to her about everything, knowing it could be my last real conversation with her. It was.

In July of 2015, I was enjoying tiny baby Cosy and looking forward to Oliver's arrival. This year the highlight of the month will almost surely be Oliver's birthday party on the 21st. It will be Cosy's first ever visit to Oliver's house and her longest road trip. I'm so excited to be there for his party this year. Last year my mom was so unwell that it was impossible for me to travel that far away. Instead I gave him a little party at my house for the family up here. It will be nice to go to his party (and also to not have to give  a party!) this year.

The post summarizing my 4th of July in 2014, didn't go up until a few days later. Cody and Marquee and their friends had come up for a visit. They had a nice swim in the lake and we did fireworks and sparklers and it was just a nice time with friends and family and friends that feel like family.

On the 4th of July and 5th of July in 2013, we were growing mushrooms in our front yard. It was a very wet Summer, our first full Summer up here. The basement flooded frequently. My level of frustration was pretty high but at the same time... life was much easier since I had recently stopped working.

On these days in 2012, I was at Grandma's house in Hayesville, North Carolina, staying with her until it was time to move her to Assisted Living. She went through a lot of emotions that week and it was... rough. The whole process went much more quickly that I had thought it would but I feel proud that I was able to spend those days with her at the end of her time of independence and help her say goodbye to the people and places that were so important to her. It was hard.

Probably the hardest 5th of July I ever faced was the one in 2011. I was at work and I received a call from Austin letting me know that the house was on fire. Our little duplex had been struck by lightning and caught fire. The next two weeks were hard... some of the hardest days I had ever lived through at that point but in the end, we were ok. A lot of special treasures survived the fire. We survived the fire. The cats survived. I had renters insurance (it's so important! If you're renting you really NEED it!) that paid to pack up all our stuff, clean it, salvage what was salvageable and move it to our new apartment. I felt very, very blessed throughout that whole process. It was not easy but having renters insurance made it bearable. The fire is covered in blog posts that you can access by clicking here and here.

Looking back at 2010, I was talking about losing weight and what was different for me in that weight loss effort than previously. You can read my posts here and here and here is a fabulous recipe for this really yummy frittata. Now I need to make a frittata this week!

AND... the oldest blog post I have for this day is from 2009 when I had just had my wisdom teeth removed. It's short and sweet but if you'd like to read it (and your fabulous comments!) you can click here. 

Hope your 4th of July was amazing and I'd love to hear how you spent it this year... and what was your most memorable 4th of July?

Throwback Thursday - June 14

That awkward moment when Throwback Thursday becomes Flashback Friday... Wednesday night into Thursday became the worst headache I've had in a long time and I could not bear to even do something as simple as post a blog post that was already written. Boyfriend Brag Time: my guy gave me the most relaxing, amazing week(end) (which is actually most people's midweek but it's our weekend. It's complicated.) and took such wonderful care of me. If you've never been a single woman... or a woman married to a man who just doesn't give a rip what you're feeling like... which describes my entire adult life... you cannot imagine how lovely it feels just to have something as basic as, "can I bring you a cool compress for your head?" or to hear "I'm sorry you don't feel well" from someone who means it. He watched over me and let me sleep and made a superhuman effort to keep a quiet, cool space for me to be in so that I could be comfortable. It just melts my stone cold heart into a little babbling brook when he does these sweet things for me. He also fed me so that I didn't have to leave the house until time to go home. And I had to go home because there was this med that I've been missing, as described in my last blog post. I got home... called the pharmacy, they got it ready quickly and Austin hurried over to pick it up for me and although I have bit of a residual headache today, I'm so much better than yesterday!

So let's pick up where you were supposed to be yesterday with a review of blogs from YESTERDAY in blog history. I hope you enjoy!

It's that time of week where I look back to this day in past years on my blog and share a few clips and updates. Since 2017 and 2016 were a bit crazy... I'm going to start with this day in 2015. We had just returned from Connecticut (where we attended my brother's wedding, see Wedding Wednesday from last week if you missed the flashback). Cosy was here and melting my heart but Oliver was not yet here. I was looking forward to holding both babies at once and I have so many times since then... but what I wasn't prepared for, that has been the bigger joy for me, was their sweet interactions (and sometimes not so sweet) with each other. I never, ever, ever talk to Oliver that he doesn't ask me where Cosy is. Any time I say, "guess who is coming to play with you this week?" she immediately guesses Oliver. They might... possibly... who knows... be my only grandchildren and they might very likely be only children. I so very much want them to have each other to lean on! That's another thing about grandparenting... you find yourself focusing on helping your grandchildren foster relationships with other people who will be in their lives long after you are gone. Cosy is really attached to Austin's girlfriend, Jessie. I would be jealous every time Cosy asks me to let Jessie push the shopping cart instead of me... but then I think, if Jessie is involved in Cosy's life long term, I want Cosy to WANT to be around Jessie. I want her to be surrounded by people who love her and make her feel loved. This perspective helps me a lot in dealing with the fact that Oliver is so far away... he sees his other grandma and her mother and sister more than once a week and me just once a month, usually. As much as I wish I could see him more, I'm so glad that there are three other ladies loving him to pieces when I am not around!

In my blog post on this day in 2013, I talked about my thoughts about boys and girls (men and women) and their different perspectives in relationships. This was while I was in sort of an "I'm not ever doing that again" stage of life when it came to relationships but I still stand by what I said. If anything is different with this whole "later in life love" this time around, I'd say that it's taking my own advice of not trying to change him...

Girls fall in love with boys hoping they can change them.... boys fall in love with girls hoping they don't change a bit. And what happens? Guys do what they've always done and if they want to play video games from dark til dawn, they do. And girls get lazy, feeling unappreciated and... let themselves go. I've done it in every single relationship of my life. I've seen a guy as a rough draft that I can improve on... a fixer up, so to speak. And they see me as "move in ready" and expect things to stay perfect, with no attention from them. Relationships fail because we love people for who we want them to be, not for who they are.

If anything is different with this whole "later in life love" this time around, I'd say that it's taking my own advice of not trying to change him... just appreciating who he already is. I don't mean that we never have anything to gain, no opportunities to grow. I hope that I'm always going to learn new things throughout my life and I know he feels the same way. I'm talking about someone's fundamental personality and character traits not their knowledge and abilities.

On this day in 2012, I was getting ready to move back to Riverdale for (what I wasn't sure then would be) a short time and looking for gainful employment / trying to decide if I should go ahead and file for disability. When I look back to that period in time there was so much uncertainty in my life. I'm really glad that things are so much more stable now. Obviously, life can change in the blink of an eye but wow! that was a time of really big decisions. I moved to Riverdale in June and my parents bought a house in Cleveland in August. In the meantime I found a job in Fayetteville (near Riverdale for those who aren't local) and it was exactly what I needed to end my career with a little bit of self-esteem but also with the documentation that was crucial in getting my disability approved. Being able to attempt to work as little as an hour or two a day and not being able to do even that small amount of time consistently was key.

I really focused on finding humor in the situation back in  2011 as we were sort of figuring out that things were not going to get better. I read these posts in 2011 KNOWING that my house is about to get struck by lightning (literally) and I'm about to have to move and what little rest and comfort I had at the time (my home base) was going to be ripped out from under me. Of course, I also didn't know that I was going to find a cheaper, quieter place closer to work... and because of Renter's Insurance the move was going to be done by someone  other than me, including the packing. Yes, it was a real stressful situation at the time but it ended up ok. That's the important thing. It always ends up ok.

In 2010, I was getting back into Weight Watchers and did lose a good bit of weight before my back problems started and I had to get on meds that really don't allow me to lose weight. Even when I eat practically nothing for an extended period of time I don't lose. It would be great to have less weight to carry around but I'm not too stressed over it. I'm ok with me.

And that's all I have for this week! I hope you enjoyed this look back on today in my blog history. Happy Flag Day!