This is the official announcement that Nancy created. Since she is a professional photographer and graphic artist, it's a really neat one!I will post Jordyn's too sometime. She does such a great job.
Monday, December 10, 2007
The official announcement
This is the official announcement that Nancy created. Since she is a professional photographer and graphic artist, it's a really neat one!I will post Jordyn's too sometime. She does such a great job.
News Flash!
She is to be named Alixis. We will call her Lexi. I am glad they finally nailed it down!
Jordyn is torn between loving the little one and having to share the spotlight with her. It takes some time for the big sister to accept the little one. I know. I am a big sister. In my case, it took over 20 years for me to accept her as the way cool person she is.
Anne
Jordyn is torn between loving the little one and having to share the spotlight with her. It takes some time for the big sister to accept the little one. I know. I am a big sister. In my case, it took over 20 years for me to accept her as the way cool person she is.
Anne
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Good News!
My daughter-in-law, Nancy, is amazing. She delivered her first, Jordyn with about seven hours of labor. This time, after being sent home twice for not being far enough along, she delivered the new one (as yet unnamed) after being in the hospital for 9 minutes! She did most of the hard work at home, and was still afraid they would not admit her!
Anyway, the little girl weighed 7 lbs, 5 oz. Her Apgar score was a 9, which is excellent. I wish I knew more. I got some pictures from the hospital. Nancy says they aren't the best, but I think they are darling. She looks a lot like my babies when they were born years ago, and nothing like Jordyn!
Anyway, the little girl weighed 7 lbs, 5 oz. Her Apgar score was a 9, which is excellent. I wish I knew more. I got some pictures from the hospital. Nancy says they aren't the best, but I think they are darling. She looks a lot like my babies when they were born years ago, and nothing like Jordyn!
Last I heard, mother and baby were doing well. they are home and big sister had having a great time with the little one.
More to follow!
More to follow!
Friday, November 30, 2007
I Can't believe it!
Yesterday I got a phone call from US Airways. They offered to pay for my renting a machine for a month. They also said they would pay for a new one, if they could not find it by Monday. I made an appointment to come over today and pick up the machine.
Literally, as I was turning off the freeway to go the the supply place, the airline called and said they had it. I turned around and came right back home, and now have my CPAP machine back.
I thought I would have to fight to get a new machine if they could not find it, and they said no problem.
I am so looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight.
I also was disconnected from the internet for most of this week, but that got fixed.
I am getting airline tickets for Christmas for $60 round trip to SLC.
Now, if little Guy would just wander home, life would be great! But I have to hope he is a happy new pet in someone's life, even if I am still paying his vet bills!
Life is much better than it was even yesterday.
Literally, as I was turning off the freeway to go the the supply place, the airline called and said they had it. I turned around and came right back home, and now have my CPAP machine back.
I thought I would have to fight to get a new machine if they could not find it, and they said no problem.
I am so looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight.
I also was disconnected from the internet for most of this week, but that got fixed.
I am getting airline tickets for Christmas for $60 round trip to SLC.
Now, if little Guy would just wander home, life would be great! But I have to hope he is a happy new pet in someone's life, even if I am still paying his vet bills!
Life is much better than it was even yesterday.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
My latest Creations
Socks for my daughter in law for Christmas. She is busy due to the fact she is just past her due date, so I don't think she will be looking here for a while.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
An Alternate Universe
Many years ago, I spent several weeks (yes, weeks) in the hospital. After a while, the outside world ceased to exist. I lived within the confines of my room, eating awful food and being poked and prodded, put to sleep, cut open, looked at, repaired, and awakened. After 20 days, I started hallucinating and didn’t stop until I got home into my own bed.
I tend to overplan my life at times, trying to allow for most contingencies, but this time, there was no way to prepare for this mess, only I didn’t know it. Yesterday, I had a similar experience, only it lasted about 20 hours. It started innocently enough, I got up extra early in Portland, at my son’s home. My daughter and I had planned to return home that day, and had flights an hour apart. This meant only one trip to the airport, which is quite a distance from my son’s home. Her flight left at 7:30, which meant we had to be at the airport at 6 a.m. Figure an hour’s travel time, and that put us leaving for the airport at 5. That meant we had to get up at 4:30. There was no light at all when we got up. Since it was 30º in Portland, and 16º in Minneapolis, I dressed accordingly. Put on my wool socks, a sweat shirt and my down filled coat.
We got to the airport on time, got though security, had breakfast. Daughter was flying direct back to Salt Lake. I had a layover in Las Vegas, just long enough to change planes and then it was home to Minneapolis in time for dinner. She boarded her plane, with no problems. Piece of cake, I thought. I had an hour to kill before my flight left, and I quietly knitted my way through a sock heel. I was prepared for anything. We boarded our plane at 8, got seated, they turned on the engines and we waited. And waited. And waited.
At 9:00, the captain’s voice came over the intercom.
“We are having trouble with an indicator light and are waiting for maintenance to come and look at it.”
Now Portland, while being a good-sized city, does not have a huge airport. How long would it take for a mechanic to arrive and look at the plane? The answer was half an hour. He got there, looked at it, took a coffee break, decided what was wrong. Still no fix, and departure time for us.
Getting it fixed took another 15 minutes, and then half an hour was spent filling out the paperwork to show that he had fixed it.
Now it’s 10: 30. That’s the time I should have been setting down in the desert and scurrying to catch my Minnesota bound flight.
No such luck.
We took off without incident. Our captain announced that since most of us had connecting flights to somewhere else, the airline had rerouted all of us and when we arrived in Sin City, there would be people waiting for us, to tell us where to go and we would all be on our way soon.
Do they have a special class that all pilots take titled, “How To Lie To Frustrated Passengers To Keep Them Happy While Flying?” After we landed, he announced that EVERYONE had to get off the plane, even those who were supposed to be flying on to Orlando. They were going to get on another plane and continue their flight. Now, just wait a cotton pickin minute here. If the plane was OK to fly to Vegas, why wasn’t it OK to fly to Orlando? That’s one of life’s great unanswered questions.
As we trooped up the walkway, there was NO ONE at the US Airways counters. In fact, there was no one from the airline that we could see in that whole part of the concourse. So we waited, and waited and waited again (catch a theme here?). After 20 minutes, some guy showed up, and wandered over to the desk. He was immediately assailed by some 60 people who had missed their connections. Ten minutes later, he was joined by two other women. We were asked to stand in line, and they would get to us, but we would all be taken care of, we were reassured. The line did not move for 5 minutes. Finally, it dawned on us that they had not made new reservations for us, and were frantically scrambling to find space for us on other flights. After half an hour, the guy just walked away from the desk, leaving several of us stranded people to move over to the other line and continue to wait.
The guy in front of me was trying to get to National Airport in DC. That’s where his car was. They were trying to route him through Baltimore and then have him drive to our nation’s capital. Bad idea on several counts. First of all, traffic between Washington and Baltimore at best is a mess, but the Middle East peace conference was in Annapolis (nearest airport being Baltimore) the next day, and between delegates arriving and security details, the whole place would be in total gridlock.
Finally, it was my turn. How hard would it be to get me on a flight to Minneapolis?
“Gee, if we had gotten to you half an hour ago, we could have put you on a flight that is leaving now.”
Now wait again. I was here half an hour ago, YOU were the ones who were NOT here half an hour ago, not me, lady.
So I had a choice to make: I could catch a flight leaving at 7:05 pm and arrive at 12:15 in the morning. Or I could stay in Vegas overnight and catch the 11 am flight that I missed that morning. People who know me, and that’s probably anyone reading this, know that Vegas is not my kind of town. I just don’t dig that scene. Never have. No one is going to just take my money away and not give me anything for it. One eyed bandits are so unappealing, and I have yet to see someone be gleeful just sitting there hour after hour feeding money into them. But I digress, I pulled a minor fit here. I asked for a voucher for lunch and one for dinner. I am a diabetic, I told them. I had not eaten for six hours and since they were not serving any food on any of these flight, I need to eat. They decided not to risk my passing out on them an issued me a $5 voucher for lunch and a $10 one for dinner. Good grief, this is an airport. You can’t even get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, (if you could find one) for under $7. I also demanded a voucher for a cab ride home, since I was not about to have friends come and pick me up at the ungodly hour I would arrive in the Cities.
So then, I spent the next six hours hanging around one of the most dull places in the world, trying to find a place to be comfortable, but there was no place to rest my head. I just had to sit there, knitting and be tired. Finally, I, along with some other disgruntled passengers, were on the plane heading home. We made it to Minneapolis with no problems. Well, there was one. I had to find the US Airways person to get my voucher and pick up my two bags. I found her, showed her the confirmation message, and she filled out the paper for me, telling me that the cab drivers all knew what to do with it and they would pay him.
One last hurdle was left. I needed to pick up my bag and find a cab. After a 15 minute delay, (two flights arriving at the same time were fighting for the one baggage carousel that was open) our bags arrived. I got my large suitcase with my clothes. Now all I had to do was pick up my CPAP machine and I was on my way home.
Yep, you guessed it; no CPAP machine appeared. All the bags from both flights were now reunited with their owners and mine was not in the mix. So it was off to file a report on my missing bag. It would probably be on the noon flight tomorrow morning, they said. Ha! Another graduate of the “Tell them anything to keep them happy” class was talking here.
I headed for a cab, and got the one cab driver who had no idea what to do with voucher. Trust me, I said and talk to the airline in the morning. By this time, it was past my bedtime. It was almost my getting up time. I had been awake and trying to get home for 17 hours. I was tired.
Tonight things are not much better. My bag has not shown up. There is no trace of it, according to the information on the website. The airline guy I called was in India and he had not seen my bag, either. I found out that I could rent a machine for $200 a month, pay $2100 for a new one, or wait for it to show up. None of these alternatives sounds promising.
I am tired and crabby. I am going to wash my hair and head for bed. And try to sleep, which is a challenge without my funny machine.
Maybe when I wake up, I will be in the real world, and not this alternate universe. I can hope, can’t I?
I tend to overplan my life at times, trying to allow for most contingencies, but this time, there was no way to prepare for this mess, only I didn’t know it. Yesterday, I had a similar experience, only it lasted about 20 hours. It started innocently enough, I got up extra early in Portland, at my son’s home. My daughter and I had planned to return home that day, and had flights an hour apart. This meant only one trip to the airport, which is quite a distance from my son’s home. Her flight left at 7:30, which meant we had to be at the airport at 6 a.m. Figure an hour’s travel time, and that put us leaving for the airport at 5. That meant we had to get up at 4:30. There was no light at all when we got up. Since it was 30º in Portland, and 16º in Minneapolis, I dressed accordingly. Put on my wool socks, a sweat shirt and my down filled coat.
We got to the airport on time, got though security, had breakfast. Daughter was flying direct back to Salt Lake. I had a layover in Las Vegas, just long enough to change planes and then it was home to Minneapolis in time for dinner. She boarded her plane, with no problems. Piece of cake, I thought. I had an hour to kill before my flight left, and I quietly knitted my way through a sock heel. I was prepared for anything. We boarded our plane at 8, got seated, they turned on the engines and we waited. And waited. And waited.
At 9:00, the captain’s voice came over the intercom.
“We are having trouble with an indicator light and are waiting for maintenance to come and look at it.”
Now Portland, while being a good-sized city, does not have a huge airport. How long would it take for a mechanic to arrive and look at the plane? The answer was half an hour. He got there, looked at it, took a coffee break, decided what was wrong. Still no fix, and departure time for us.
Getting it fixed took another 15 minutes, and then half an hour was spent filling out the paperwork to show that he had fixed it.
Now it’s 10: 30. That’s the time I should have been setting down in the desert and scurrying to catch my Minnesota bound flight.
No such luck.
We took off without incident. Our captain announced that since most of us had connecting flights to somewhere else, the airline had rerouted all of us and when we arrived in Sin City, there would be people waiting for us, to tell us where to go and we would all be on our way soon.
Do they have a special class that all pilots take titled, “How To Lie To Frustrated Passengers To Keep Them Happy While Flying?” After we landed, he announced that EVERYONE had to get off the plane, even those who were supposed to be flying on to Orlando. They were going to get on another plane and continue their flight. Now, just wait a cotton pickin minute here. If the plane was OK to fly to Vegas, why wasn’t it OK to fly to Orlando? That’s one of life’s great unanswered questions.
As we trooped up the walkway, there was NO ONE at the US Airways counters. In fact, there was no one from the airline that we could see in that whole part of the concourse. So we waited, and waited and waited again (catch a theme here?). After 20 minutes, some guy showed up, and wandered over to the desk. He was immediately assailed by some 60 people who had missed their connections. Ten minutes later, he was joined by two other women. We were asked to stand in line, and they would get to us, but we would all be taken care of, we were reassured. The line did not move for 5 minutes. Finally, it dawned on us that they had not made new reservations for us, and were frantically scrambling to find space for us on other flights. After half an hour, the guy just walked away from the desk, leaving several of us stranded people to move over to the other line and continue to wait.
The guy in front of me was trying to get to National Airport in DC. That’s where his car was. They were trying to route him through Baltimore and then have him drive to our nation’s capital. Bad idea on several counts. First of all, traffic between Washington and Baltimore at best is a mess, but the Middle East peace conference was in Annapolis (nearest airport being Baltimore) the next day, and between delegates arriving and security details, the whole place would be in total gridlock.
Finally, it was my turn. How hard would it be to get me on a flight to Minneapolis?
“Gee, if we had gotten to you half an hour ago, we could have put you on a flight that is leaving now.”
Now wait again. I was here half an hour ago, YOU were the ones who were NOT here half an hour ago, not me, lady.
So I had a choice to make: I could catch a flight leaving at 7:05 pm and arrive at 12:15 in the morning. Or I could stay in Vegas overnight and catch the 11 am flight that I missed that morning. People who know me, and that’s probably anyone reading this, know that Vegas is not my kind of town. I just don’t dig that scene. Never have. No one is going to just take my money away and not give me anything for it. One eyed bandits are so unappealing, and I have yet to see someone be gleeful just sitting there hour after hour feeding money into them. But I digress, I pulled a minor fit here. I asked for a voucher for lunch and one for dinner. I am a diabetic, I told them. I had not eaten for six hours and since they were not serving any food on any of these flight, I need to eat. They decided not to risk my passing out on them an issued me a $5 voucher for lunch and a $10 one for dinner. Good grief, this is an airport. You can’t even get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, (if you could find one) for under $7. I also demanded a voucher for a cab ride home, since I was not about to have friends come and pick me up at the ungodly hour I would arrive in the Cities.
So then, I spent the next six hours hanging around one of the most dull places in the world, trying to find a place to be comfortable, but there was no place to rest my head. I just had to sit there, knitting and be tired. Finally, I, along with some other disgruntled passengers, were on the plane heading home. We made it to Minneapolis with no problems. Well, there was one. I had to find the US Airways person to get my voucher and pick up my two bags. I found her, showed her the confirmation message, and she filled out the paper for me, telling me that the cab drivers all knew what to do with it and they would pay him.
One last hurdle was left. I needed to pick up my bag and find a cab. After a 15 minute delay, (two flights arriving at the same time were fighting for the one baggage carousel that was open) our bags arrived. I got my large suitcase with my clothes. Now all I had to do was pick up my CPAP machine and I was on my way home.
Yep, you guessed it; no CPAP machine appeared. All the bags from both flights were now reunited with their owners and mine was not in the mix. So it was off to file a report on my missing bag. It would probably be on the noon flight tomorrow morning, they said. Ha! Another graduate of the “Tell them anything to keep them happy” class was talking here.
I headed for a cab, and got the one cab driver who had no idea what to do with voucher. Trust me, I said and talk to the airline in the morning. By this time, it was past my bedtime. It was almost my getting up time. I had been awake and trying to get home for 17 hours. I was tired.
Tonight things are not much better. My bag has not shown up. There is no trace of it, according to the information on the website. The airline guy I called was in India and he had not seen my bag, either. I found out that I could rent a machine for $200 a month, pay $2100 for a new one, or wait for it to show up. None of these alternatives sounds promising.
I am tired and crabby. I am going to wash my hair and head for bed. And try to sleep, which is a challenge without my funny machine.
Maybe when I wake up, I will be in the real world, and not this alternate universe. I can hope, can’t I?
Friday, November 16, 2007
It’s not been a good week!
This is a double for my kittyActually it all started a week ago today. It did not start out well and went downhill from there. First of all, coming on the heels of the identity theft mess (more about that later), I spent the whole of Friday night preparing for a demonstration on using powdered milk and making yogurt for the Relief Society group in Red Wing, some 50 miles away. It had been a week and half since I talked to their leader and just assumed that everything was a go.
Well, it wasn’t. The leader had canceled the meeting and left town with her husband, but she hadn’t called ME (it’s all about me!). I talked to the other counselor when I was in the chapel at Red Wing, and she knew that it had been canceled, but didn’t know anything more.
Then on Tuesday, I had to go and close out my bank account, and open a new one. I also had to contact the police department, all the creditors who were taking money out of my account on a regular basis (including the IRS), and the credit reporting bureaus. I think I have everyone accounted for. What a mess. I also had to order new checks and got the management company to pay for them.
I did this because I wanted to be sure that no one could mess with that account. The police have searched the rental agent’s apartment and no trace of the check has been found anywhere. It could mean that she destroyed the check (hasn’t said she has done that), has an accomplice who has all the checks, or it’s sitting around somewhere the police haven’t gotten to yet. All I know is that I could not take the chance that someone could use the information to open accounts in my name and start charging things. I am also worried that I might not be aware of them. That means I have to monitor my credit reports more than once a year. I put a fraud alert on my reports, hoping that will help.
Meanwhile I have a new bank account that I can’t really use yet. I have some starter checks, but since they don’t have my name on them, many people do not want to accept them. I have a check card coming, but it won’t be here for another week at least, and my checks with my name on them won’t be coming for several weeks.
I also had to buy a new paper shredder, since my old one had given up the ghost a while back. And I have to go through all the trash coming out of my house to make sure there isn’t anything with my name and other information on it. I had been doing that before, but I wore out my shredder last year.
But the worst thing happened on Wednesday night. Little Guy Noir slipped out of my door when I was getting something from a friend and I didn’t realize it until later that evening. He hasn’t been seen since. I left some food out for him at the back door last night. Emme is frantic, she is so distraught about her buddy being gone. My hope is that he hasn’t left the complex and someone will see him and return him or that if he gets picked up by animal control they will scan him. He has been microchipped. I really miss him, too and hope he shows up. It’s been pretty cold these last few nights, but I hope he found someplace warm to hole up. I have left the garage door open a bit in the hopes he might figure out that it was a safe place.
Darn!
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