Barbara's Meanderings: hypercalcemia

Happy New Year Thoughts!

hypercalcemia Monday, January 03, 2011

When I was younger, back in the days when my parents went out for New Years Eve, I wanted to be a grown up and go out for New Year's Eve. I'd watch the people on TV in big venues and see the big bands play. In night clubs people wore funny hats and drank champagne and in Times Square people stood packed like sardines to watch the ball descend. It seemed a magical holiday to me. So when I got old enough to go on dates, having a date for New Year's Eve became my top priority.

Though I was only seventeen my first year in college, I managed to get a blind date for New Year's Eve from two friends at once. I then had not one, but two dates for New Year's. I chose my roommate's date choice and told the other (the man who became my husband) I was busy babysitting my brother. After all, my roommate's choice was at Harvard and the other was in the Army. This was in the early 60's and the Ivy League won out.:) We didn't do any of the glamorous things I thought we would do, but at least I was out for New Year's. Though it was not so exciting when we ran into a snowstorm and my date had to keep stopping every five minutes to wipe off his windshield wipers.

Through the years whenever I went out on New Year's Eve I kept hoping for the glitz and glamour I had seen as a girl. One year our first New Year's as a married couple, we went out to a bar/restaurant in Binghamton. At the time we were living in Cortland, NY, so Binghamton was a big city for us. I was dieting so I didn't eat much during the day thinking I was going to have a big meal at night. I had dressed up and wore a little black chiffon dress with a plunging neckline. At twenty-one I must have looked incredible:) When we got to the restaurant after seeing a movie where I hadn't even have any popcorn, I was handed a glass of champagne. There was a buffet, but I was dieting, so I didn't eat very much. Later we sat at the bar and ordered a split of champagne for the two of us. I had two more glasses with no more food. At some point my husband left for a few minutes leaving me alone talking with this other guy. I started to think this guy sounds drunk when the next thing I know I'm on the bar room floor!!! No kidding, there I was on the floor surrounded by strangers. All I wanted to see was the familiar face of my husband and there he was. He found out how I had gotten on the floor. I had passed out on the bar and they put me on the floor. He grabbed me by the hand and after I had dusted myself off he walked me to the door. It was frigid outside and I was in this sleeveless, backless, plunging neckline black chiffon dress that was above my knees. He then opened the door and started walking me down the block. I didn't feel a thing and we continued walking until we had gone halfway around the block. I was still not cold so we walked until I felt the cold, which was when we reached the bar again. That night in the hotel room my husband got when he realized how drunk I was, I couldn't go to sleep. After that night I never drank anything on an empty stomach.:)

After our children were born we got into the habit of staying home. I bought hats and noise makers and every New Year's Eve we celebrated with our children, wore our hats and used our noisemakers. Every year before 12 midnight we had a ritual. I put the glasses in the freezer and my husband got the champagne ready and opened it exactly five minutes before midnight. We had munchies and a special dessert too. At midnight we all watched the ball drop and wished each other Happy New Year. Last year I lost the bag with those New Year novelties when we threw it out after the fire. So this year we didn't have our usual celebration. One daughter was at her own party and the other didn't really have her heart in it this year. With my husband's illness and unfortunately, my own sinus infection and the fact I was taking antibiotics, we didn't have champagne. But we did have sparkling apple cider, though that tastes delicious there is no extra kick!! I missed the champagne and the hazy feeling that it was New Year's Eve. Yet the New Year arrived and we were all here together.

My year has started with less than a bang, but I am very hopeful that this is going to be a better year. At least we are not in a hotel and we don't have to go into a smoke-filled house that was condemned due to fire and sift through years of belongings with frozen hands. And we don't have to pack up our life in two weeks. Last January at this time I was thankful to be in a warm room and have a place to live. Now I am hoping that my husband's hypercalcemia caused by his sarcoidosis is going to be controlled again as the doctor claims. He says it is temporary and my husband will be back to normal as soon as they get the right balance of drugs. It is an unknown. But there is something to look forward to in this new year, my book, If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor, is going to be published in September. It's my literary baby so I'm feeling like any pregnant woman would. I am pregnant with book and it will be delivered in nine months!!!! Meanwhile joy is bursting inside me when I think that the New Year's resolution I made six years ago is finally coming true!!!!

Unfortunately, one more part of me needs tending. When I went to the orthopedic doctor he said I had a gastric tear in my calf muscle and I need to go to physical therapy. I need to have my insurance company approve it, and when they do I have to call the rehab place and make appointments. With my tutoring schedule I am going to have to make them during the day. That cuts into my time for writing and there has been too little of that lately:) But I need it, because I am limping on that leg if I don't use it for awhile. So I have to go to rehab.:)

I did make some literary resolutions and here they are:

1. Submit my second novel, When My Life Changed, to publishers.

2. Work on my third YA novel, Footsteps on the Sand, which I wrote for last year's NaNo.

3. Work on my romance/suspense/adventure novel, Tall Poison, in my critique group.

4. Really try to read and critique all subs for my critique group.

5. Write a new blog post more frequently than once a week.

6. Go back to writing at least a poem a week and post on Poetic Asides comment page.

7. Write another short story. Either work on an old one or write a new one. Maybe fill out the story I started last week. (That's another whole blog post.):)

8. Write my articles for Examiner.com.

That's all for now. Until the next time thank you to my new readers and to the loyal followers who continue to read my meanderings. I hope all of you had a good New Year's Eve and I wish all of you a Happy, Healthy, Peaceful and Prosperous New Year. This is our year, can't you feel it????

For some excellent reading please check out MuseItUp Publishing's Book Store where you will find ebooks for everyone at reasonable prices. I didn't get an e-reader, but I am hoping to buy one soon. These books are very high quality and I'm not just saying this because this is my publisher. You know I would never steer you to anything that was not the best! You can click on the banner on the side or click on the link.

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Attack on Gaza Bound Ship and Memorial Day Thoughts

capri beach club Monday, May 31, 2010

An Israeli soldier trains his gun on the aid ship

Before I give you my thoughts I want to address what happened Memorial Day in the waters outside of Israel. The ambush of the head ship of the aid flotilla has made me very sad. I have always been a friend of Israel and only when they started to cause hardships to the people of Gaza did I rethink this whole thing. I have to protest the actions of the Israelis in attacking the aid ship. There are too many versions of this story out there so I am holding my judgement on what actually happened. But according to many people in the know the Israeli's started the whole thing by dropping commandos from helicopters. They say they only had paintball guns and collected knives, scissors, etc. from the people on the ship. They say they were met with activists who attacked them as they got onto the ship. This ship also contained aid workers and dignitaries from lots of countries including Turkey, the country from which it originated, and a nobel prize laureate as well. I have followed the attempts of this group to try to get through the blockade of Gaza and also on the ship they had all kinds of aid including playground equipment and pre fab houses for the people who lost theirs. As a result of this heinous act people are demonstrating here in the US and the ambassador of Turkey was called back to his country. Many people in the US have sent emails and phone calls to President Obama to keep him from seeing the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama has decided to cancel the visit. I am sad that the peace process is tabled again, though the UN is discussing the incident.and I am hoping that there will be sanctions voted against Israel. Israel needs to stop its blockade of Gaza and open up the borders there. Hamas has said they are willing to begin talks, but Israel is ignoring them.

Today was Memorial Day here in the US and because of my husband's illness we celebrated in a different way. Usually we either have a barbecue of go to one. Or sometimes we go out to barbecue place. Or maybe we go to a movie and then out to dinner. We did none of this. We watched people around our apartment house pool enjoy themselves from our own apartment, he took a brief walk and then we went out to dinner with my brother. We ate seafood, and actually it was a great dinner.:)

Anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile remembers my post about Lundy's and the revival of this incredible restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY. If you haven't you should read this so you understand our conversation. My brother and I shared steamed clams at a seafood place close to where I live in Stamford, CT and we talked about our experience as children with the old Lundy's. It's funny that both of us thought of the same thing at the same time.:) I always remember that place when I have steamed clams, because they had the hugest amount and they were always delicious. Before this we all pigged out on huge amounts of gorgonzola salad. This place has the most humungous salads. We ordered a medium and with five people there after we all had at least two helpings we still had salad to bring home.:) The steamers came afterward and we were still eating our salad. As I put the succulent little morsels into my mouth after washing them in the clam broth and dipping them in melted butter I closed my eyes and I was the nine year old kid again with melted butter smeared on her chin sitting in Lundy's with my parents.

Then I had a one and a half pound steamed lobster that was sooo sweet!!

But Memorial Day is way more than food. It is about remembering the men and women who fought and died for our country. When I was a little girl we used to go and watch the parade as it went down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn where I used to live. I would watch as the old veterans from World War I, barely able to walk, would march by in their old uniforms. Afterward that night we would probably take a ride with my father in our old blue DeSoto to Coney Island and Nathan's for a dinner of a hot dog and maybe a chow mein sandwich. :) This was the beginning of the summer season for me. When we moved to Queens my mother joined Capri beach club and we would go there to welcome in the summer season. We had a cabana along with a lot of other families' cabanas that were set up in rows all over the beach club. Each one had two rooms. One of them was a changing room with a shower and the other was fitted with kitchen stuff and a counter.There was a separate shower room and bathroom area at the club. Each family brought it's own furniture to individualize them and in each aisle there was a sandy middle. There were two chaise lounges for each cabana and in the sand some people like my mother and her friends sat at folding bridge tables on folding beach chairs to play mahjhong and canasta. The club had a real beach, but they almost never went there. It also had two or three giant pools and a couple just for children. My mother and her friends almost never went in the water except if the temperature went up to unbearable limits. Then they would wade into the pool in the skirted bathing suits with a flowered rubber bathing cap that fastened under the chin. Sometimes she would go in without a bathing cap and swim without getting her hair wet. Women in those days had their hair done once a week and saved the style with hairspray. You didn't want to get it wet at all!

One year when my children were small we rented a bungalow in the Catskills and celebrated Memorial Day up there with a barbecue. Then my husband left to go back to his law practice and I was left in the country with a one and half year old toddler and a four year old.:) I used to bathe them in this big tin wash tub outside of our place. When we had decided I needed to get away for the summer it seemed like a good idea. But that night alone with my two children knowing no one I realized that most of the time I would be alone.

To be honest, we did have our Newfoundland, Flash, with us so I wasn't completely alone, but I still had to watch him. He was wonderful with the kids, but he had an awful problem later in the summer. We had a skunk that was interested in the trash cans outside each bungalow. Flash would like to taunt this skunk and he would chase it away. But one night the skunk got Flash and he got skunked. Yeeeeowwww!!!!!! If you have never been near a Newfoundland who was skunked you are very fortunate. With all of their hair this is a giant problem. It required a generous amount of tomato juice poured over him and then rinsed and baby shampoo. Finally after several applications of both the tomato juice and shampoo we deemed him cleaned. However I didn't let him into the bungalow for nights until all of that awful combination of skunk, tomato juice and shampoo had dissipated. Poor Flash was always so sad to be outside and I missed him terribly, but no one could breathe around him.:)

Also, Flash loved water and he would go for a swim in the pool anytime he could. The owners were worried that his hair would clog the pump and I tried to keep him out, but he would jump in anyway any chance he got.:) In fact, any time there was any kind of deep water around he would jump into it. We took him to a state park where there was a natural pool and he jumped in. We were kicked out because of that.:)

How did you spend your Memorial Day? Please leave a comment here and let me know.:)

One more thing before this post ends. On my last post I had these cute pictures of a mother swan and her babies. I wrote a poem about this and wanted to share it with all of you:

Ways to Keep Sane

Take a walk alone along the shoreline
Admire the tall spires of sailboats
nestled in their berths waiting for the
wind for their glide onto the smooth water

Walk leisurely down the boardwalk hearing
the faint calls of birds
Feel the sun warm your bare arms and the
breeze moving your curls over your forehead

Stop at the railing to wonder why a woman
peers down at the mud flats to examine
what she is observing and see the scene
that in one moment melts your heart and heals you.

See their fluffy brown feathered bodies tiny as pebbles
as they stay close to their mother, a pristine white long
necked black billed swan. Watch as they waddle onto the mud
Mother never looking back, but aware of the two balls of fluff behind her

Watch their journey as they march in line toward the
wide expanse of this finger of Long Island Sound
As proud mother swan moves them ever so slow
looking straight ahead, yet always aware of her two babies

Continue watching as she reaches the water and they tumble into it,
Their tiny bodies already able to glide along with their mother
Seeing at one point they feel more confident and duck under
splashing with the abandon of the innocent.
copyright 2010 by Barbara Ehrentreu

Until the next time thank you to my readers and to any new readers. We are getting closer to finding out the cause of my husband's hypercalcemia and will see the doctor tomorrow.

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