"Stop and Read the Pizza!"

No, I'm not losing my mind...I said "read the pizza". That's what I didn't do on October 3rd when we were visiting our daughter Michelle and her husband. Michelle arranged with her local pizza parlor to spell out "Oh Baby" in pepperoni on top of a pizza. She then made cute little stickers to go on top of those little plastic "tables" that keep the box from touching the pizza. On the sticker was written "We're expecting!" along with the due date (it read June 3, but actual due date is June 1, 2011), and in a circle around the perimeter was written Boy? Girl? in blue and pink. (The reason I'm blogging about it six weeks later is that we promised to keep it secret until Mike and Michelle were ready to "share" with the world. They did that on Wednesday, their fourth wedding anniversary. My tongue is sore from having to bite it so often over the past six weeks!)

Son-in-law Mike went to get the pizza and when he returned Michelle asked Mike's mother and I to "help" in the kitchen. Mike's Mom, Linda, picked up the lid of the pizza box and then closed it again and moved on to the next box, examining it and closing its lid as well. I went up to the table next and mimicked Linda's actions: I opened and closed all three pizza boxes. At that point, Michelle was noticeably irked and announced "Would somebody who can see without glasses, please come in here and get some pizza!" Linda and I looked at each other and then went back to box #1 and realized what we were looking at! Needless-to-say, there were hugs, tears, and laughter in abundance!

This long-prayed-for little one will be the first grandchild in the Sherack family and I must admit I'm a little envious of Linda. As a grandmother, you can only experience that "first child of your first child" once in a lifetime. It is a joy that knows no bounds. Each grandchild after is a unique blessing and inflates your heart to make more room, but even as you hold grandchild #2 and grandchild #3, the memory of that first little hand wrapped around your finger comes back. I know that when I hold "Baby S" for the first time, I will remember his or her cousin Jackson and I will know exactly what Linda is feeling.

This baby couldn't have a better world to be born into. As the "California grandparents", it is comforting to know there is no shortage of people who will be there daily to support Mike and Michelle as they journey into the wonderful world of parenthood. Along with grandparents-to-be Linda and Mike, there is Uncle Steve and Aunt Valerie and a host of extended family and friends standing by to welcome "Baby S"!

This is a good place to put Joe's three rules for grandparenting:

1. Never say "no".
2. Money's no object.
3. Always give them back!

The Day After...

This blog will be short. No gloating. No whining either. I'm just sooo glad not to hear any more character-maligning TV and radio ads. No matter where you stand on the issues, the process itself seems flawed when a candidate spends $146,000,000 to try to win an election. How much good could those millions have done?

It's time now to see what is accomplished by the next Congress. It's not enough to promise, they have to deliver. My hope is that when we are asked to vote again, the role of government in our every-day lives will have diminished considerably. If we keep accepting "bail-out" money from foreign countries to be "redistributed" because of promises made without  fiscal responsibility, we won't recognize the America our forefathers envisioned. If you want a refresher course on the Constitution and those who fashioned it, go to http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/christy/. It's a great tutorial.

In a perfect world, we would help the helpless at the local level; provide training to put the unemployed back to work; we would reward entrepreneurship with fewer regulations and taxes; we would welcome immigrants who ask permission to become part of this country just as our grandparents or great-grandparents did; and we would hold our representatives responsible for their actions. We have allowed our government to "buy" votes by creating an "entitlement generation".

There's an old adage: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." It's time we stopped giving and started teaching.

Blog/rant over! Happy Day After Election Day!

What is your "Titanic" story?

Okay, I admit the title was designed to make you "read on". But, it was prompted by remembering moments in my life that might never have taken place had it not been for some other unforeseen event I had no control over.

And, yes, there is a "Titanic" story to my life...one that I was unaware of until just a few years ago when I was told by my sister, Avril, that our grandfather...our father's father...was a pianist and was commissioned to play on the maiden voyage of the Titanic in April of 1912. But, he missed the boat train. When researching the web for a photo of that infamous ship, I was taken with the story of the photographer of this photo. It is a great story and I'll link you to it here. His story is another example of "what if"...

That was the first of several "what ifs" that thread through the pattern of my life's story. The next "what if" would be: "What if my mother's father hadn't been late to pick her up at the dock when she sailed from America to England in 1943?" She wouldn't have met the young RAF airman who asked if she needed help. And later, when she had left the airman and decided it was too difficult to be a single mother, "What if her father hadn't been 'on time' in the lawyer's office while she was signing adoption papers for a childless English couple to get a 2-year-old daughter?"

I've often wondered "What if my mother hadn't moved from New Jersey when I was 15 and was just finishing high school?" I would have remained eligible for the scholarship I'd been given to attend what was then Ryder State Teachers College.

"What if my best friend Marcia in Florida hadn't become a Delta flight attendant in 1964?" I would never have been encouraged to try it myself. And "What if my foot hadn't fallen asleep and I practically fell over when my interviewer asked me to walk across the room?" Did my humor at my own awkwardness help? (I guess it did.)

I think I may have already written about how Joe and I met, but that certainly is another: "What if Vicki D's roommate hadn't stayed so long at the San Diego Zoo on February 3, 1967?" (She would have gone on the blind date instead of me.)

That leads to another "what if" moment that our daughter Michelle experienced. As a Delta flight attendant, she occasionally meets former Naval aviators who knew her Dad. On one occasion the Captain called Michelle into the cockpit and asked, "Are you related to Joe Sarnecky?" When she said she was his daughter, he said, "Well you probably want to come over here and shake my hand. I was the helicopter pilot that picked him up out of the water off the coast of North Vietnam in 1968." If he hadn't been there, Joe might have ended up in Hanoi. She gave him a hug!

I know you've all read the stories about the people who would have been at "ground zero" if it hadn't been for something that caused them to change their routine that morning. We have one of those stories in our family too. Michelle was in California with her boyfriend, Mike, to attend a Chargers/Redskins game. Because our son-in-law, Neal, and Mike were both Redskins fans, Joe had purchased tickets for the six of us to attend the game on September 9, 2001. Had Mike not come out for that California vacation, he would have been arriving at the subway station at the Twin Towers to go to work at the building across the street. Happily, he was here instead and is now our son-in-law.

I had some other topics in mind for today, but I have been thinking about this topic since our cruise to Halifax where many victims of the Titanic are buried. The alternative might have been a "rant" on television ads that precede election day (I didn't want to put you through that).

I hope this post has sparked that part of your memory where you keep the "what ifs" of your life. If it did, consider doing what I have done this morning...I said a heartfelt "thank you, God" for all those moments and all those people who were His instruments and brought me to this wonderful place in my life.

Updates and corrections...

Like every endeavor in life, every now and then you need a "do over". I'm using this blog to correct and/or clarify some things I've written in the past couple of weeks.

First - I am not a "true reality TV junkie"...I have to qualify that statement. I DO watch Survivor, Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and, yes even Big Brother. On cable, I enjoy Top Chef and many of the Food Network reality shows...they are more like travelogues.

I DO NOT watch: [fill in the blank with name of city] Housewives. I do not watch any show exploiting people who have an inordinate number of children or young people living together and letting TV cameras follow their every boring move. I absolutely NEVER watch a show with a very strange-looking man wearing a giant watch around his neck (I accidentally caught a glimpse of that one and it made me think of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland). If I offended any "15-minutes-of-fame" cable reality show, I apologize, but given their content I doubt they'll ever read this blog (the operative word being "read").

Next, I realized after my last post that I did have some photos from our Canadian cruise. Before Joe bought a new chip for his camera when we reached Halifax, he used my camera and got quite a few photos. This is a favorite and will probably appear on this year's Christmas card.

Real time update now...on Friday evening our daughter and her family arrived to spend the weekend. Saturday was an all day adventure to Julian for apple-picking. The lovely town of Julian is about a 90-minute drive on winding mountain roads and during September and October their peaceful community is "invaded" by all the city-dwellers seeking mountain air and home-made pies. As a result, we were shoulder-to-shoulder with a few thousand other "apple-seekers". When we finally got seated at a restaurant, the waitress said we had picked the busiest Saturday of the year. After lunch we decided not to wait in line at Pie Shop" for a famous Julian apple pie since the line waiting to get inside the shop was about an hour long. Off we went to the Raven Hill Orchard where we picked three bags full of apples and Jackie got many photos to choose from for their annual Christmas card. On the way home, we discovered another "Mom's" and stopped and got pies. It was a wonderful day that ended with three happy children enjoying cherry-apple-crumb pie with vanilla ice cream (yum!).

It's now Monday morning and the house is very, very quiet. I always forget in between visits how much energy exists in the bodies of three children! The giggles, shrieks (Ava is best but she's been doing it longer), shouting, laughing, and occasional crying (not very often) echoes in this empty house today. Joe is off fishing so it is accentuated. We usually go up to visit them rather than them packing up for five people plus the cocker spaniel so it was a real treat to have everyone here.

Another cruise...another story...but first a 50th Reunion

We returned yesterday from a two-week vacation that began with Joe's 50th high school reunion in Pennsylvania. If you are the spouse at a 50th (or any other "th") reunion, it's kind of like being a third thumb...no one needs one. But...it was great watching him interact with all the people who had been such a big part of his "youth". He had a terrific time and everyone was very nice to me. I found a couple of other spouses to talk to and thanks to the annual convention of Volunteer Firefighters for the entire state of Pennsylvania, we had some additional entertainment (their first and second-place winners of the marching band competition played for us). A local trio played and sang a lot of the "oldies-and-goodies" we both danced to in high school. It brought back lots of memories. Of course, I remembered my classmates I danced with...Joe remembered his...but his were all there!

I found myself wishing more than once that I had lost the 30+ pounds that is my goal. It seems most of his male friends from high school had either passed away or decided not to attend. But...every girl he dated in high school was there...and none of them brought male companions. I took several pictures for him with all the former girlfriends, but none will be posted here. This vacation will be remembered as "The Vacation of Everything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong" with regard to Joe's camera.

First, while taking the aforementioned pictures, I got a message stating "Internal Memory Full". When Joe investigated, he found he had left the chip in his computer back in California! Since I knew I'd be taking pictures for him since I didn't need to be in any of them, I left my camera back at the hotel. So, we got just a few shots at the reunion.

But the saga doesn't end there. We left on our 7-night cruise to Canada with stops down the New England coast the day after the reunion. Got some great shots of The Intrepid aircraft carrier and Lady Liberty as we sailed out of Manhattan. We were at sea for a day and when we docked at Halifax, Canada it was easy to see how the Titanic ran into an iceberg...the fog was so thick we couldn't see the shore until the boat docked. It rained the whole day so there weren't any picture-taking opportunities. Joe went ashore because by then I was in the throes of a terrible cold. He found a drugstore and came back with enough remedies to last the week.

The next day St. John didn't offer much better weather but by early afternoon I was feeling well enough to go ashore. We spotted a restaurant that boasted steamed clams and lobster and ordered a bucket of clams apiece. I can't describe how disappointed we were when the first clam offered enough sand to fill half a teaspoon! The others were the same so after a brief souvenir shopping for a Christmas ornament (that's all I ever buy on cruises...no need for trinkets...and this way we relive our travels as we trim the tree), we returned to the ship to find something "sand-less" to eat.

At Bar Harbor, Maine it was raining hard and I was coughing harder so I stayed on board and slept while Joe saw the sights and returned with an ornament to make me smile. (I have to add that later that night I felt better and went to the casino and won almost $900...that's a great "tonic".)

In Boston the weather still didn't cooperate so once again I slept and Joe went ashore. The next day the sun finally found us and I was almost feeling human so we went ashore in search of a restaurant recommended by a friend. It turned out to be over a mile from the dock and when we got there we were greeted by a "Closed" sign on the door. Turns out they only open for dinner after summer season. :-( We found another restaurant recommended for their clam chowder and this time it was as advertised. The day couldn't have been prettier and Joe got some great photos.

Not to make the cruise sound like our worst ever...I have to say that if you're going to feel sick on board, the Norwegian Dawn is one of the nicest places to do it. First, they have "Freestyle Dining" so you don't have to eat at a certain time with the same 4 to 6 other people at every evening meal. If we had been assigned dining room seating, I probably wouldn't have gone to the dining room at all with my cough, which persists still. (Doctor assured me yesterday that I am not and was not contagious after the first three days; cold triggered bronchial asthma which I've had twice this year.) So, we didn't meet a lot of new people this time, but the food at our table for two was delicious. In addition, the entertainment on board was so good there were times we had to miss the main showroom to see one of the acts in the lounges. We're booked on another NCL in the near future and I can't wait (I'm going to get well and get a flu shot before then).

The morning after Newport, we docked in New York and Michelle and Mike picked us up. We went to their house to spend the rest of the day watching football with all the Sheracks. It was great to see Mike's parents along with his brother, sister, and cousin. We wanted to get a picture with everyone there so Joe went to his bag to get his camera. This is where the saga gets sad: the camera wasn't in his luggage! We've sent e-mails, posted on the Cruise Director's facebook page, Joe made numerous phone calls, and I've been wearing out St. Anthony with pleas to find the camera.

I probably don't have to put it in writing, but here's my rule for travelers: ALWAYS go back one last time to check the room/stateroom before leaving!

"A house is not a home...and a door is still a door..."

Remember that song? Dionne Warwick and Luther Vandross both sang it...written by Burt Bacharach. I'm using a little poetic license as the line was actually, "a chair is still a chair...even when there's no one sitting there." But, this short blog is about us getting a new front door.

I am sentimental (I cry over Hallmark commercials)...I think that's been evident in past blogs, but I have been experiencing a melancholy moment or two over replacing our front doors. Don't get me wrong...they really needed replacing. We moved into this house when our daughters were in preschool and first grade. The poor old doors showed their age. After 30+ years of hanging Christmas wreaths and taping an occasional note to delivery people, the scars were many and deep. They had been revarnished, but they definitely didn't add to our "curb appeal".

So Joe and I started looking at other people's doors. You don't realize how many styles of front doors there are until you start looking. Then, when we found a style we liked, we couldn't believe how expensive doors are (did I say it was 30+ years since we'd bought doors?). So we went to a small hardware store on Coast Highway in Encinitas and started looking through books. We settled on a pair we liked and then contacted people to give us bids on staining and installing.

That began an odyssey of "ooops"...the first contractor pointed out that Joe had ordered two 3' doors and our opening is only 5'....that was 12 inches too much door!! Luckily, the order hadn't been placed, but it required another trip to Encinitas to find a different design. It was a happy mistake since the 30" doors are even nicer than the original 36" ones. We made arrangements for the installation with one contractor and staining by another after they were hung.

That's when the melancholy set in. Joe put the old doors out at the curb to be picked up by the trash. Too late, I realized I hadn't taken a "last picture" of them. Then I thought about all of the guests we greeted at that portal; the back to school photographs taken there; the prom night photos; greeting the girls and their husbands when they came to visit (one particular visit when Jackie and Neal walked in the door stating they had to check some video Neal had shot and then put in a video of their first ultrasound....Joe thought there was something wrong with the picture...I just cried!). More recently, I pictured three bundles of energy running through the front doors, through the house and into the backyard to check out the frogs in our pond.

Anyway, it seemed very unceremonial to just toss those doors at the curb. They protected us from the elements and kept us safe from harm for three decades and I am grateful to them. So this blog is my way of acknowledging their participation in the story of "us" and of welcoming the new guardians of our gate. It is likely that someday these doors will protect another family...I'll print this out and put it with the title so they will know how important they are. 

5 Days Later...I get to retire my broom...

Just a quick update. Doctor said the prednisone would make me grouchy, jumpy, and irritable for about 5 days. Well, the five days is up and I can't discern a difference yet, but it's early. Guess I can park my broom and go back to regular forms of transportation.

I forgot one important aspect of the rule I posted in the earlier blog this week: if you're going to give husband a hint about upcoming storms on the horizon in the text of your blog, be sure you insist he reads it first before you make reference to it hoping for a smile in response.

Yup, when I snapped about something, I said, "I warned you about this. I'm going to be more than usually cranky for a few days. Didn't you read my blog?"

Husband's reply: "So now we have to communicate through your blog?" Ooops! Guess I need to go back to the drawing board.

End of saga: seeing my feelings had been hurt, penitent husband read the blog and came in and gave me a hug. He complimented the blog and all is forgiven.

May take a break from the norm for the next post and give my opinion on the new "Survivor". I am a reality tv junkie and particularly like "Survivor". With the "geezers" against the "gorgeous" it has the possibility of creating a polarized fan base...age discrimination anyone? Comments on the main blog are leaning that way for sure. (I've unsubscribed.)