Weird stuff going on

It seems I have been in a period of inactivity lately. My get up and go got up and went. I don't know why. I think I'm coming out of it now though, so I'm posting three pictures, although they could cause nightmares....

Do you remember Redd E. Fox from last year? He is the 911 mascot and makes appearances at events around the area. He showed up at the Red Cross Thursday on a tricycle, circling the desks like a vulture, rapping about 911. But he needed some internal surgery so here he is with his innards hanging out, and his body ignored. It was pathetic.

Next..... looking west.......


and looking east........

These two pictures show our road.

Or what is left of our road.

Those two guys in the upper shot are in front of our driveway in a trench that is at least eight feet deep. It's dusty and dirty and we can't open the windows when they are working.

AND,

they start with the noise and the machinery at the early hour of 6:30 AM, for heaven's sake.

It is a rude awakening from dreamland.

RAIN!

The most interesting thing happened a little while ago. REALLY!

The husband, the mother-in-law and I were sitting in the porch, just hanging out, and watching the goldfinches dining at the bird feeder. Allofasudden we HEARD this rain pouring down, but it wasn't raining at our house. Then we could SEE it down the road, just an incredible torrent, and then after a few seconds, it hit our house and it really came down.

I had never witnessed hearing rain before seeing it, then actually seeing it just a 1/10 of a mile away.

I was amazed. I loved it!

Doesn't take much to make me happy!

Now to get revved up!

Well thanks to my loyal readers for the input. I have to get in gear to start taking pictures again. They will be posted on the other blog here with a link on this blog. I will just have to find stuff that is interesting. 

OUR ROAD is in such a mess that I should be taking a picture of the new mess that occurs each day! It is so dusty some days that this truck with a water sprayer in the back comes and wets down everything. Maybe I'll find it and snap a photo.....

Lovely summer here in the Roc

Well I thinks it's lovely anyway. Some years we get awfully hot and humid weather, which I HATE. 

But this year so far, it's been in the 70's a LOT, with storms and rain and all kinds of weird things, like HAIL. So this is a Mary Ann kind of summer!

Today is going to be beautiful. Sunny and warm. Jo-Ann and I are supposed to be going to the ball game tomorrow night but the forecast calls for thunderstorms. I LOVE thunderstorms, just not at the ballpark.....

On another topic -

Since I stopped doing my "Photo a Day" blog, this blog is not as riveting and thought-provoking and stupendous as I would like. I'm not taking as many pictures, so now it's kind of blah. If I resurrect taking a picture every day, I think this blog will be better by default.

Hmmmmm.......maybe I don't need to take a picture EVERY day, which did get kind of old, but every week? Every other day? What do you, all my loyal readers think? I am open to suggestions and comments. I do love and appreciate your comments.

Let me get lost in Yankee Stadium or "I love this country!"

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Like I've said before, there are times in life that are so good, you just have to pinch yourself. Then I remember that God wants us to have joy!

We live in this wonderful, God given land. The fireworks we will hear tonight are not real bombs. This is a country like no other. I am grateful.

This is joy.

This too, is joy - Family! 

My cousin Katie and her mom Joanne at Yankee Stadium Wednesday night, with me so happy that I'm dazed.

Family!

Me with my cousin Joe between innings, wearing our Yankee jerseys. We grew up together here in Rochester. We are two of the eight grandkids that (literally,) lived within shouting distance of each other and he is 363 days older than me - Joe November 18, and me November 16 . Those days of childhood were charmed. Now as adults, we can recapture some of those dazzling days and feel like kids again!

Yankees Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter

Moonrise over Yankee Stadium

As we were leaving, I needed to get one more shot before the magic was over.

Even if you are not a baseball fan, the stadium is a sight to behold. New, bright, modern and accessible. I was enchanted.

Hail, wind, rain and a good fundraiser

Friday was quite the day. I was part of a garage sale fundraiser, so we worked setting it up and sold good stuff and talked to lots of people. Lovely weather, not too hot, no rain, just great.

We heard some thunder but it didn't get dark like it sometimes does before a storm.

Then allofasudden, the RAIN came pouring down. Then came the WIND. And then the HAIL started pelting everything and boy did we scramble!

The street turned into a river, the temperature dropped, the thunder and lightning were crashing around us so bad and the hail was BIG, some pieces the size of a nickel and even bigger. I got scared because the wind was so strong and I thought we might wind up in a tornado. We ran around to get the stuff back into the garage before it all got drenched.

What a storm. Some homes lost power. Then it was over. Crazy.

Pouring rain and hail......

This is how much rain fell in a half hour.......

And I borrowed a picture from a friend to show the hail....

My ear hurts

Last baseball game I went to? You know. The Red Wings? This girl was sitting next to me and screamed so loud she hurt my ear. It still hurts. I wondered if she damaged my eardrum. That was two weeks ago. 

Then again, maybe I have a bug. Not a REAL bug, maybe a virus?

My mood is strange today. Larry is off having lunch and driving go-carts with some of the guys from his old job. I'm glad he's gone for a few hours but it all seems, well, off somehow. Men don't DO lunch. Well maybe they do.

There is so much construction going on outside that it's noisy. Dump trucks and back hoes and all sorts of nonsense out there.

The good news is: ta da-

I'm going to a Yankee game with my cousins again!

Today

It is such a lovely day here in Rochester, one of those perfect summer days that God gives us once in a while. It's about 70 degrees, with a gentle breeze, lots of sun and all is well.

I am grateful.

I just wanted you to know.

Total Solar Eclipse

I've always wanted to see a total eclipse, but they are usually too far away, like Siberia for heaven's sake, or somewhere else VERY far away.

So one day I searched the internet to see if there was a total eclipse coming to our neck of the woods sometime before I died.

WELL.

What I found was most interesting. I'm giving you an eight year heads up.

There will be a total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, going right over the United States from northwest to southeast.

Some of you may also be interested in this following bit of information:

Totality goes right over Adam-ondi-Ahman, as well as Independence and Liberty Missouri and BYU-Idaho. 

WOW, huh?

Look HERE for maps and all sorts of information on the eclipse.

Larry singing! Larry yelling! Larry clapping!

Me too, of course.

I surprised Larry with tickets to see the Beatles tribute band RAIN today. Look here for information. OH MY GOODNESS. They were absolutely fabulous and outstanding and any other great adjective you can think of. We LOVED the whole show! We yelled and danced and clapped and sang, it was so much stinkin' FUN and we enjoyed it together!!!!

Okay I tried to like it....

Some of you may know that I was not too excited about the book Twilight. It was okay, but no great shakes for me. 

Well.

I really wanted to see the movie because I thought the story was fairly decent and maybe the movie would be good. If you promise not to send me hate mail, I will confess that I could not get through it. Oh. My. I got as far as Bella getting almost killed by the car and Edward saving her. That was it.  

I really thought it was terrible.

The acting, the direction, the sound, the MAKEUP!  What were they thinking??

Oh no. Could I be acting........OLD??????  Oh no.

Family Picture Wednesday

Back to my mother's side of the family!

This is my beautiful great-grandmother Serafina Graziano. I don't remember too much about her as she died when I was a child. I do know she was an accomplished seamstress. But.....

......I visited her hometown of Termini Imerese in Sicily and walked the street where she grew up. It was one of the best parts of my trip. Her hometown is on the northern coast of Sicily and is just lovely. This is Via Stenio, her street.....

.....and this is a picture that I took of her town  in 2006.

These folk are her parents, my great-great-grandparents. On the left is Angelina Filippello and her husband is on the right, Salvatore Graziano. See how one of his eyes is kind of droopy? My eye tends to do the same thing!

This is my great-grandfather Gaetano Metildi. He was born in Celano, Italy. The only thing I remember about him was that he gave lots of kisses!

These are his parents, my great-great grandparents, Cecilia Rosati and Luigi Metildi. Look at how tiny her waist was!  

The story I learned about Luigi is very cool. As I was researching his birth, I found that he had been abandoned in the town square as a newborn just a few days old, and was found there one morning. My great-great-great-grandparents adopted him a couple of years later. Larry likes to tease me that he was from Romanian gypsies and I'm not Italian at all! I have wondered if the couple who adopted him might have really been his birth parents. Great-greatgrandpa died when a big earthquake hit his town in 1915.

Demolition Day

SO.

This is our road in front of our house and this is our driveway. Or what used to be the driveway. The town is building us a new road (!!) and so now we are in a complete and utter mess, as Simon Cowell would say.

The mess of our driveway.

Sidewalk and driveway in shambles.

The shovel picking up the concrete sidewalk in our yard.

Actually this is pretty cool. 

He's bringing the concrete 

slab over to the pile to drop it.

And there it goes! The house shook.

So after the guy dumped all the debris into the dump truck, they put some dirt down so we can drive over it.  What a summer it will be, watching all this go on!

"I'm going to Larry's."

This is about the funniest thing I've heard in a LONG, LONG time. Get this -

Larry was outside talking to our neighbor and she had a story to tell him. Turns out she and her five year old daughter had a "disagreement." Next thing she knows, the kid has pulled out her suitcase, and packed it with her pillow, blanket and clothes. Mom asks her where she is going. 

Little girl declares, "I'm going to LARRY'S."  

So the mom, with a straight face, says okay, she figures we're only next door and she knows where the kid would be. 

That's when the little one says, "Well, I'll give you another chance, mom."  

Is that funny or what? 

Larry went nuts laughing! He is a good grandpa-type guy and plays with the little girls on their swing set and all, and now she wants to run away next door and live with us. Or live with just Larry apparently.

THEN,

a few days ago, the same little kiddo and her baby sister show up at their house with tulips. 

"Here mom," they say. "These are for you!"  

The mom asks the girls where they got the tulips because they don't have any in their yard. 

They say, "We got them at LARRY"S!"  

So the mom is thankful, yet all mad because they picked someone's flowers and tells them they should never do that. 

Then the older one, looking confused says, "Well, Larry wouldn't mind!"

I love it. He's like Captain Kangaroo or something.

Reflecting on Mother's Day

The Lord has blessed me with good women in my life, in particular my grandmothers and aunts.


This sweet picture is of my father's baptism day in 1921.  On the left is my Great-Aunt Rose. She didn't bear children but she mothered us all. She took care of me when my mother couldn't. On the right is my grandmother Melina. She was the best woman I ever knew.  She is so beautiful in this picture. The baby of course, is my dad. 

This is my Aunt Nickie. I loved this woman. She is my father's sister. She died a couple of years ago, in her 80's. She was my great example of a lady and an extraordinary mother.

And my Grandma Ceal (Cecilia) - you've read about her in past blogs. She was my pal.

And this is my mother, when she was young and beautiful and still fairly okay. I love this picture.

Someday, in the eternities, I'll have my own kiddos. Will I be ready???  Yikes.

Borrrrring.....

There is nothing going on. The census work is done for now, my diverticulitis is acting up (at least I think that's what it is,) we need a new furnace and I'm TIRED. If this isn't the most boring blog post ever, I don't know what is. I'll post a picture  just for kicks.

This is the Pike Place Market in Seattle. We went there after the Alaska trip. The flowers were gorgeous and plentiful!

Family Picture Monday

Now for my father's side of the family -

This picture I love. It's my dad (Nicholas Cardella) as a little kid looking very dapper in his uncle's grocery store. This had to have been 1927 or '28. On the top shelf is all kinds of cereal, like Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Puffed Rice and Rice Krispies. I think my dad is standing in front of the candy bins. I love his socks!

Then this is my dad's father, my grandfather Giuseppe Cardella. He was born in Agrigento Sicily in 1884. This may be the picture taken on his wedding day.  He was a shoemaker and shoe repairman and opened his own shoe store here in Rochester. He arrived in the USA in the early 1900's. 

My mother said that he was so sick with cancer and was in bed a lot when I was born, but was SO happy that I had come along. He wanted me near him, so she would plop me down in the bed beside him so we could get to know each other. He died in 1953 when I was exactly three months old. 

These next folks are his parents, my great-grandparents. You will love their names - Nicholena D'Amato and Gerlando Cardella! My father was named after this grandmother. It's a funny story. Traditionally, the first born child was always named after the paternal grandfather. The next child was named after the maternal grandfather. Baby number three was named after the paternal grandmother. My father was third in line so he was named Nicholas, which is the masculine form of Nicholena. Well then baby number four comes along and it's a girl, so they named her after the paternal grandmother as well. So there was a Nicholas AND a Nicholena! My father and my aunt were both Nickie's!  

I love it.

But isn't this such a classic photo? When my dad got older, he looked almost exactly like this grandfather of his. They had the same smile. He was a shoeman, too. So was my father.

My dad - doesn't he look like his grandpa above?

AND, here is me. That dog is just the coolest thing in the world.

Everything hurts

even my toes.

This walking so much I know is good for me but good grief.

I dream about the census.  It's taking over my life!!!!

One guy today told me he didn't believe that I was from the census bureau. He said that nobody told HIM we would be going door to door this year. And he reads the paper EVERY DAY. Well, excuuuuuuse me! 

I had to laugh.

Walking my feet off

Well. my U.S. Census training this week was good. I haven't walked this much since I was in Italy!!! 

My feet are sore. 

It's fun though. I'm meeting nice people and making some money and having the government pay me for exercising. 

I won't need to use the treadmill for weeks!

Larry, the baby dog, and snow

It snowed. 

On April 7. 

I was mad but guess who had a GOOD time?  That's right, Larry and Harley!!

Larry put him on his shoulder like a pirate with his little parrot. How cute is that?

THEN, Larry made snowballs out of the pink water dish I keep outside for the dog. His own little arsenal. Larry throws them, Harley races for them. Unfortunately, the wind blew them over the railing. Bummer.