ALZHEIMERS IS A BEOTCH.

 This is a repost from Jan. 2010 for Sunday Favorites. Check in with Chari @ Happy to Design to see all the oldies but goodies we have posted before. 
***Note that I don't know if Jen is still donating from her card sales so check with her for that information.

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I went to a funeral on December 23. It was expected but still very sad. The funeral was for my friend Anne. She was one of my coffee buddies but had been in a care home for a few years now. Anne had early onset Alzheimers disease. Anne was only 67 when she passed away.
I spoke at her funeral and would like to share some of the story of Anne here. I like that it will be written down and remembered. Anne will be remembered even though she couldn't remember any of us.

What could be more appropriate to make us think about those with Alzheimer's than these Forget Me Nots.

This beautiful art card was created by Jen @ Muddy Boot Dreams. You can have a look at her gallery by clicking on the mosaic on her site. Jen generously donates money for Alzheimer's research from every set of these Forget Me Not cards. Have a look at all of her cards though. You will find several that will be your favorites.

ANNE:

Anne’s Alzheimer’s had already started to affect her when I first met her but it wasn’t that obvious at first for if you know our coffee group we thrive on silliness and humour and we all joked about our memories being terrible.

Anne knew she had it though and as it progressed we all started seeing more evidence of its grasp on her. The one part of Anne that wasn’t fading away was her sense of humour. She kept us laughing.

Anne had some favourite sayings and due to the memory lapses we would hear them repeatedly throughout the morning.
We all knew “not to let the door hit us on the way out” and that “the door is not an a-hole, it won’t shut itself”.

She would order a plate of waffles with a mound of whipped cream on top most mornings. Then she would say she didn’t know why they brought it to her because she didn’t even like them. As she lost track of time she would start showing up to the coffee shop hours before us and then wonder why we were all so late.

Almost every day she would cross the street to pick up some things at the grocery store before going home. And every day the thing she seemed to need the most was a carton of ice cream. I don’t know what she did with it all but I suspect if she hadn’t walked so much she would have been as big as a house.

My favourite “Anne” moment came one morning while I was driving her home after coffee. We saw our coffee buddy Jim walking home with his dog. Anne asked me to put the window down so she could whistle at him which I quickly did. As we got closer Anne blew hard through her lips a couple times with only spit coming out when she turned to me and said “I forgot how to whistle” . I thought I would drive off the road I was laughing so hard.

Anne had a thing for sirens. Not an emergency vehicle could get by that coffee shop without Anne checking on which way it was going. She would go all the way out to the highway to track its direction for us and come back with a report.
But the most important thing about Anne is that no dog ever went un-petted while Anne was around. Even the ones who would bite any one else who went near them. She truly loved all the dogs and they knew it.

And we all know that dogs are the best judges of character.

I am sure you all know someone who suffers from the effects of Alzheimers. I know that there are walks and fundraisers in every community. I know it is a sad thing for families to deal with the loss of the parts of a person,  long before their eventual death. I know. I know.

FRIENDS ROCK

Many of you know of my coffee group all ready. We have been meeting for about 8 years. We have been through several coffee shops and have had group members come and go.

Our group motto is “don’t make eye contact” and it has served us well but that is another story.

We have gone on several road trips and get together for our Annual Christmas Chinese Food Dinner, this year in April. (don’t ask)

We also have a summer barbecue every year and so far we have managed to actually have it in the summer.

They are a great group of  people and I was sorry to have to miss a party last night due to my nasty cough. They were getting together for a dinner and as much as I really wanted to go I had to decline. I know the laughs would have been nonstop and I heard they were trying to come up with some music trivia, my specialty.

Well I had a party at home anyway. A pity party feeling sorry for myself for missing out. And you know what? There was a knock at my door this morning. Last night’s hostess was there with a delicious piece of carrot cake brought by one of the other members to the party. What a great surprise. This is a thoughtful group and I was a little less pitiful after that.

Now it is time to set a date for the summer barbecue…some time before December.

MY LUCK-SHE'S A GONNA CHANGE

 I am re-posting this today in hope of having the luck of the Irish rub off on me. I have left the comments from the first time I published it attached as they were pretty funny.

I am in a lotto pool with my coffee group. We buy an yearly subscription and we win squat. Okay not squat but next to squat. Squat divided by 10 is diddly squat. Woohoo. I don't know what to spend my diddly squat on. I could buy some gum or  maybe a burger.

You can't invest diddly squat because it isn't enough. Won't even pay the broker's fees. I could save it for a rainy day but it isn't enough to buy an umbrella

Obviously I am going to have to do something about our lack of winning prowess. We are going to have to change our numbers and I know just how to do it.

We are going to South Africa and we are going to catch us a vulture. Then we are going to kill it and take out it's brain and smoke it. No, no, stay with me here. This will work I tell you it will. The healers say so.

First you dry it and then you mix it with mud and smoke it like a cigarette or inhale the vapors. Then you get the visions. Visions of the future. We will get the vision like the vultures have that allows them to swoop out of the sky and down on a carcass. You will see things. Things that you need to see like horse races, exams or business outcomes. AND LOTTO NUMBERS.

Now I know you will say this is bad and that the vultures are becoming extinct but when I win my mega millions I will open a refuge to rebuild the vulture population. I promise.

If this doesn't work I have a line on a field filled with multi leaf clovers in Lingdale, Teesside, Ireland.

Photo from Telegraph.co.uk Photo:NNP

SO VERY, VERY SAD

http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/

It was not a good day. When I left to go to the coffee shop and then to work I was stopped by a traffic tie up due to an accident the night before that took all night to clear. 
I managed to get past most of it by taking back roads to get into the parking lot at work. I left my car there and walked past the traffic to the coffee shop. I spent about 25 minutes with my coffee buddies and walked back to work for my shift. 
I had a message to call the owner of the coffee shop when I got home. Sadly there were two young people killed when another vehicle went out of control and landed on top of them. 
The young girl killed works at the coffee shop. I am stunned. She was scheduled to work tonight. I just saw her Saturday afternoon.
I am also freaked out because a few years ago when we used to go to a different coffee shop one of the young women working there, the same age as this one, was killed in another freak accident that I wrote about here. 
I am so sad and I can not tell you enough to hug your kids and your friends and your family members.

COFFEE GROUP CLIPS

TABLESCAPE THURSDAY

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American blog friends. And thanks to Susan @ Between Naps on the Porch for hosting us again.

Today I went to a Christmas store with my coffee buddy Frank. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take photos in the store. So sad because it is amazing. 

From there we stopped at a Bombay Co. where they were very happy to let me take some photos. I must say everyone in the store was so friendly. So of course I took pictures of their tables and now will post them here to share with you. Gets me off the hook doesn't it.  

Okay I have tried 6 times to get this picture to stay rotated. I give up.

There is my tablescape cheat. Have a great holiday. 

SUNDAY FAVORITES - COFFEE GROUP DINNER ON THE RIVER

Sunday Favorites is hosted by Chari @ Happy to Design. It is a great way to see some older posts that you may have missed before. And also a good way to post something with no work involved.

I first posted this back in May of 2009

What better place to have a meal with friends than at the Kingfisher Pub on the Fraser River. We are right beside the little ferry dock and if you look across the water you can see the ferry dock on the other side. IZ didn't make it for dinner due to the fact that he was on the other side in the line up and there he sat for two hours.
I am happy to say that there is a new bridge opening in a couple of weeks and although we will have to pay a toll to cross there will be no more waits like these.
Many people are sad to see the ferries stop running but not me. I would drive around many miles to get across rather than sit in that lineup. Soon it will be a 2 minute crossing.
As the evening progressed the sun was setting and I couldn't think of a better place to be to have dinner with my coffee group.

SLEEP-ELUSIVE-SLEEP

I didn't go to my coffee group this morning. That is unlike me. I am always there unless I am out of town. I will have to produce a note explaining my absence. The last one was written by my BB guy and I really don't want to share what he said was my reason for not being at coffee was. The man is just rude. Of course I was the one that shared it with the group. Lol.
I have had sleep trouble off and on for several years. I know a lot of it was hormonal but all that is behind me now. I don't know why it has flared up again so severely.

I go to bed about 10 pm every night. Usually I fall asleep pretty quickly. On a good night I will sleep for 3-4 hours and then get up to go to the bathroom. I turn on no lights so as not to disturb the production of melatonin/seratonin that our bodies make while we sleep. In fact I barely open my eyes and have yet to pee in the closet.

Back to bed I go and then it starts. Or stops. I don't know which it is but I can't get back to sleep. I roll over more times than a dog working for treats does. After about an hour of this (now 2 or 3 a.m.) I give up on my bed and head to the guest room. I like the air flow better in there but some nights that doesn't help so then it is off the the loveseat in front of the living room window. There I sometimes fall back to sleep sitting up sideways on the loveseat all scrunched up wrapped in a blanket.

Sometimes I heat up a heating pad in the microwave and use it on my lower back which is often twitchy. Now we are looking at 4 or 5 am. We get up at 6:00. I don't have to get up other than to go meet my coffee group but up I get most days. Then I go to coffee and can barely speak a full sentence. The simplest of words evade me. I try not to drive anywhere else on those days and i force myself to concentrate on the short drive home.

Well when my BB guy got up at 6:00 I was on the loveseat. I had been up at 4 and then at 5 tried my sitting sleep position and got in an hour. I gave up on the idea of coffee because I have some things I have to do later in the day and getting a bit more sleep was very important. I slept until 8:30 and I feel like...a new...bag of crap.
At least I can blame all my weight gain on the fact I don't sleep. They said so on the news and on many web sites.

Women Who Sleep Less, Eat Less...and Still Gain

The researchers looked at exercise habits to determine if they could account, in part, for the findings. But they didn't discover any differences in exercise levels or physical activity that would explain why the women who slept less weighed more.

Were the women who were getting less sleep also eating more?

The answer was no. In fact, the opposite was true.

"Prior studies have shown that after just a few days of sleep restriction, the hormones that control appetite cause people to become hungrier, so we thought that women who slept less might eat more," Patel says. "But, in fact, they ate less. That suggests that appetite and diet are not accounting for the weight gain in women who sleep less."

Now which one of you can write me a note for missing coffee group. I will take any and all notes with me in the morning.

WHY I LAUGH EVERY DAY

Most of you know that I meet with a group of whackos for coffee every morning. Don't worry they won't be offended that I call them that. Really. We regularly abuse each other in this way. All with love and laughs.

We honestly do laugh out loud every day and not just the snicker, snicker kind of laugh but the kind that often ends up with tears in our eyes and coffee coming out our noses.

This morning we were commenting on transition lenses in eyeglasses. You know the kind that change from clear to tinted glass depending on the amount of light. L's were much darker and E. said that it can be a problem because when you come in on a sunny day into a room it is often really hard to see anyways but with these lenses it would be a real problem. Without skipping a beat L. said "so now I will stumble when I go into the bar instead of when I come out".

A little later we got into a conversation about bumping off someone in the group. He was right there so we were really not plotting anything untoward. The price I think started at $20,000 and I offered to do it for $15,000 when the person in question, G said "hell give me $10,000 and I'll kill myself".

Now these things may not translate as funny as they are when they happen spontaneously but I have to tell you that the quick wits of my coffee friends keeps me getting up at 6:00 a.m. every morning when I don't have to get up at all. I love you guys. Now where are my freaking presents?

TABLESCAPE THURSDAY- COFFEE GROUP BARBECUE

Visiting with Susan @ Between Naps on the Porch for Tablescape Thursday is always the highlight of the week.

This past weekend we had the coffee group and their spouses over for our yearly barbecue. Oh I love my coffee group. They are so much fun. They are rude and crude and we make each other funnier by our rebuttals and quips.
As I always say it the funny isn't done until someone has liquids coming out of their noses. I don't care if it is coffee or wine or water.

We started off with 3 tables. Expecting 15 for dinner. Now I am no superstar in the Tablescape realm so don't expect them all to match perfectly but they did turn out pretty good and our guests always feel so relaxed at our house. The plywood top on the left side table was cut out by my BB to replace the glass center that blew out 2 years ago in a storm. I love the newly stained deck but oh do the pine needles ever show up on it. I am sweeping all the time. Grrr.
Here the plywood is covered with a vinyl tablecloth to keep it dry until Saturday.

Now I moved the vinyl cloth to the bar table and covered the plywood with a white sheet to hide the wood.

A red and white tablecloth over the white sheet.

Some white plates with red napkins. The wine glasses are turned upside down to keep the pine needles out of them. What a pain.

The second table is set the same way but with a tan table cloth.

The final 3 seats were set at the tall bar table.

Here is the view from our upper deck off the dining room. Apparently one table managed to clear the dishes better than the other table. Shame on you guys. Look at the mess you left for my BB to clean up. Lol.

Actually we were pretty well behaved this night. Really we were.
Oh yes, this is how much prime rib we cook for this bash. This is rubbed with a mixture of crushed garlic, rosemary, thyme, pepper, salt and olive oil.

MEETING WITH A FRIEND

Image via Wikipedia

Today I got to meet my blogging friend Joanne from Joanne Moving Forward Half Speed. We met at my usual coffee shop which coincidentally is owned by a friend of her son's. We of course had the small world conversation but then when two of my coffee buddies came in and chatted it turns out their friend and neighbor works with Joanne. If this world was any smaller we would all be living in the same house. I can tell you right now I am not doing the laundry.

We had a great visit and chatted for 2 1/2 hours. You get a feeling about the people you blog with and you know what. She is just how she seemed on her site. Funny, friendly and fabulous. And even better...she wasn't scared off by my crazy friends.

MY EVERYDAY GETAWAY

Welcome to my coffee group. Many of you have heard me talk about my weekday morning ritual. 7:00 a.m. Monday to Friday.

See that corner seat on the bench? That is my seat. No body sits in my seat. Nobody, do you hear me. We take up half the coffee shop some mornings.

The other thing they serve here besides baked goods like cranberry muffins, lemon loaf etc. is a tangy, non fat frozen yogurt. They have so many healthy fruit topping but you can also get Oreo cookie crumbs, gummy bears, M & Ms. They have a vanilla yogurt and a cappuccino one too. This yogurt fruit mix can also be mixed up into a smoothy.

I think I will have the cappuccino one for breakfast today. It is non fat remember. At about 100 calories it is better for you than a muffin or a bagel. Besides I have a sore throat from my allergies remember. I need to soothe my throat. Add to that my large, dark roast, black coffee and I just might make it today.

COFFEE GROUP: Dinner On The River

What better place to have a meal with friends than at the Kingfisher Pub on the Fraser River. We are right beside the little ferry dock and if you look across the water you can see the ferry dock on the other side. IZ didn't make it for dinner due to the fact that he was on the other side in the line up and there he sat for two hours.
I am happy to say that there is a new bridge opening in a couple of weeks and although we will have to pay a toll to cross there will be no more waits like these.
Many people are sad to see the ferries stop running but not me. I would drive around many miles to get across rather than sit in that lineup. Soon it will be a 2 minute crossing.
As the evening progressed the sun was setting and I couldn't think of a better place to be to have dinner with my coffee group.

SUNDAY FAVORITES: Cause That's How He Rolls

Sunday Favorites is great for taking a break on one of our busiest days of the week. It is hosted by Chari @ Happy To Design I for one am very happy to have this chance to re-post an earlier item because I will be out of town this Sunday. All I will have to do is add my post to Mr. Linky from my hotel and it will be done. Thanks Chari. I will visit lots of you when I get back on Monday. I really don't want to miss any of your posts.

Now here is mine from back in early March.
There is not much I can do to explain the crazy dynamic that we have in our coffee group but this post below will give you some idea of the silliness that we crack up over on a daily basis.

As it is with all groups eventually the discussion comes around to underwear. No really, it does. I'm not kidding. Meet with a group of people long enough and it will.

This morning however we learned something very interesting.

Did you know there is a brand of men's underwear , boxer-briefs style to be exact, imported to Canada that are made in Madagascar? We had no idea.

I know that is where my green peppercorns for my peppercorn steak comes from but boxer-briefs? Who knew?

The best part is that SP would tell us he wears boxer-briefs. And in his own words it is because "that is how he rolls".

Not like we would ever bring it up again to torment him. We are not like that are we. My next question would be if you are wearing boxer-briefs wouldn't they actually keep you from rolling?
I'm just asking.

COFFEE GROUP: You Can't Please Everyone

GOLDEN EARS BRIDGE

This beautiful bridge is going in not far from where I live.

It will take about 45 minutes to perhaps 1 1/2 hours off the drive to the other side via a different bridge depending on the traffic on any given day. You will have to pay a toll but it will be so worth it.
This morning at coffee while talking with RR, the person who runs the toll end of things good ol' IZ grumbled that this is a 6 lane bridge that ends up down to 2 lanes at either end when you come off the bridge.
I quickly informed him that he was more than welcome to get off in the middle if this was going to be a problem.
Point taken.