Many of you know that Frankie, over at Just My Opinion, is my “little” sister. Actually, she is taller (I’m the wider one), but she’s roughly nine years my junior. Like me, she doesn’t blog daily, but her entries are fascinating, and very thought-provoking.
I encourage you to visit her blog to read the entry called “Living Your Dash,” or the post entitled “The Integrity of a Battleship.” Even more, I hope you will tell your friends about her blog, and that you will add her blog to your blog roll, and that you will become a regular reader.
I don’t often suggest blogs for others to read. We all know how to find new contacts, and most of us are short on time, but I’d hate for you to miss what I consider to be such interesting issues. So, visit Frankie, and get to know her. I promise that you will find an intelligent woman, open to dialog, with a quirky sense of humor!

Hi, guys! We’re all well here at Chez Buffy. I’ve been busy working on taxes, and helping to settle Elegante Mother into her new digs. I have been working on the edges of SPRING CLEANING…..emptying out boxes of papers I didn’t need to store in the first place, and reorganizing my “stuff.”
Things are starting to green up here in the Chicago suburbs. The first of my daffodils opened yesterday, and the star magnolia is getting ready to burst into bloom. Some miserable four-footed visitor has eaten the tops off the day lilies that are growing out in the herb garden, but they’re pretty hardy. They’ll come back.
My cranky old cat, Edward Scissorhands, had his annual checkup and shots last week. He’s still hanging in there, but he’s painfully thin. He’s delighted, as we all are, that it’s warmed up a bit so he can go out. He used to stand near the door and quietly mew that he’d like to go out. Now he stomps into my office and shouts “OUT!!!”
Frankie (from Just My Opinion) (my youngest sis), is here for several days, helping me sort through some of Elegante Mother’s things, visiting with My-Sister-The-Nurse, and joining us for Easter. She’ll be taking her God-mother to visit with EM on Saturday. I wish I had her energy. I spent most of my time running to keep up with her! I’m so glad she’s come to visit.
I need to help Dear Husband with dinner. Last night we did Tortilla Soup, and tonight we are working on Chicken Fajitas. It’s odd to have Mexican food two days in a row, but I doubt anyone will complain. More sour cream, anyone???
If I don’t make it back before Easter, I hope you all have a lovely day.

Ya know, I didn’t mean to sound pompous about blogging versus Facebook. I think you should be able to do whatever floats yer boat. I simply don’t have the time right now to learn the finer points of Facebook.
I think this is going to be a lot like how I was about hand quilting versus machine quilting. I was SUCH a hand quilting snob that I felt you needed to go to your bedroom if you dared to say the “M” word. Guess who is interested in trying out long-arm quilting machines?? Yup…that would be me.
Frankie and Cop Car….thanks for the clear thoughts you posted in the comments. *S*

Well….maybe it’s not quite that bad. You see, my on-line friends have found Facebook. For all I know, some of them may Twitter or use MySpace. I spent the evening visiting the blogs linked to my blog, and I was disappointed to see that many of them are posting less, or not at all.
I should tell you that I, too, have a Facebook account, but I get to it so rarely that I can’t remember my password. Luckily, I can reset it. I am sufficiently lacking in spare time that I can’t sit and learn all the cute little gifts that can be given, or browse all the groups I could join. I’m not sure I even understand all the different ways of leaving messages or carrying on conversations.
But, most of all, I wonder WHY my friends would like to have me post how I’m feeling or what I’m doing throughout my day. “Buffy has gone down the hall to her powder room.” “Buffy has gone to the kitchen to brew a cup of tea.” “Buffy has disappeared behind a towering stack of material to be filed.” “Buffy is cleaning up cat litter.” “Buffy is working on Accounts Payable.” “…another litter run.” “…another powder room run…” “MORE LITTER!” Get the drift??
I’m glad that you are all enjoying Facebook. Please forgive me if I turn out to be your less technologically able friend.

This was what the front lawn looked like roughly five or six weeks ago:

It’s hard to believe we can change weather so fast. I generally don’t mind winter, but this winter we had exceptional snow. It snowed often and it snowed a lot. We were not the worst hit in the Chicago area. I felt we got off lightly,but you can see we had our fair share.
Bogie…..does this make you feel ANY better??? (Grins)

I have one more entry I need to post this morning. When my youngest sister heard that Dear Husband and I were going to Florida, she told me she was happy that we were going to get the chance to get away. The only thing she asked of me was a picture of my feet in the sand, with the ocean behind my toes, running on to infinity.

This shot was much more difficult to get than I expected. First, there are very few traditional beaches in the Keys. Where you find them, they are tiny, and generally a community has trucked in the sand, and created an area surrounded by a coral breakwater to keep the ocean from taking the sand out to the sea.
And, it was in the sixties in the Keys. While we were there, Tennessee, North Carolina and parts north were getting hit with a terrible snow storm. We had a lot of wind that made the temperatures feel brisk. As Northerners, we weren’t bothered, but the natives were going around in parkas.
So, my feet are technically in the sand, and you can see the ocean beyond them. I don’t think this is the picture Sis and I had in mind, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances. Next time, I’ll remember to take off the sandals! (grins)

I have three poinsettias from this past Christmas hanging on. Normally I’m a sucker for conservative, traditional, RED poinsettias, but this year we happened to be at a greenhouse that had an incredible variety of them, and these two spoke to me.

I love the mixture of pink, red, cream and green on the one on the right, and the pink one with the white edges just shouts “Girly!” We bought red poinsettias in larger sizes and filled in with these smaller plants. I really enjoyed having the variety this year, and I plan to keep them as long as they are happy here.

I’m between a rock and a hard place, as my mother used to say. Elegante Mother has been living with us for close to twenty years. We built a home big enough to provide some privacy for us all. EM had the suite of rooms across the front of the house. She was able to live her own life, but was close, so that we could help her when needed. Over the twenty years, we have gone from seeing her be totally independent, to needing assisted living. We saw her through surgery for colon cancer, and a year of chemotherapy. About five years ago, I became her chauffeur and social secretary and her chief cook and bottle washer, and last year I had to pick up the job of handling her finances. It has been a full-time job.
Last June, my mother had a seizure. She was hospitalized for five days, and then went to a nursing home for therapy. She returned to us in good physical shape, but her memory was failing. January 2, we’re pretty sure she had another seizure, and she was in the hospital, again, for five days, and then she went to a nursing home. She’s been in the nursing home close to two months, and she is desperate to get out. Again, she has come back physically, but her memory is worse than before.
There comes a time when you are caring for an aging parent, when you have to accept the fact that you can no longer be responsible for their care twenty-four hours a day. I’ve finally reached that point.
My siblings and I met Saturday to discuss what we could do for EM. My oldest sister, whom I affectionately refer to as “My Sister The Nurse” has final say in Mother’s care, but she has included us in the decision making process. She researched the options for care outside the home and brought the best of those choices to us. We visited the site, and agreed to go forward. Essentially, we are renting a lovely condo for Elegante Mother and installing her with a person who will be with her around the clock..
I’m sure you wonder what the difference is, whether she stays with me, or stays with a care giver, and it boils down to the fact that I have to work. All but one of my siblings are still working, and the one who has retired provides day care for her grandchildren, so none of us have the ability to be with EM every moment of the day. In fact, we contemplated the idea of bringing her home to us, and hiring a live in caregiver to help with EM, but my siblings voted down this idea.
Elegante Mother will now be living much closer to my two oldest sisters and brother, and it will be my turn to make the trips to see her. In a way, I’m relieved that we have made this decision, because I have come to hate the nursing home she is in. The financial bottom line for this place leads to under-staffing, and staff indifference. The food is absolutely disgusting, and the facility frequently smells bad. I don’t want this for my mother.
We have put a deposit on the condo. MSTN is going to confirm whether the caregiver we interviewed will take the job, and then I can arrange to have EM’s furniture moved Dear Husband spent the morning working out a scale model of the condo and her furniture and has a schematic for the movers ready to go! I’ll have to do some shopping to outfit the kitchen and we can make this happen.
It’s going to be a busy week. I think it’s also going to be a tough week. As I write, the tears are threatening to spill. I’m still not adjusted to Elegante Mother’s absence. I hope we have made the right decision, and this is the best we can do for her.

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I’m yet livin….sorta. I have a ton of news to share with you all and pictures, too!
I spent the first three weeks in February trying to organize information for our personal taxes, and for Elegante Mother’s taxes. I spent a lot of time driving to the nursing home to visit with her, and see to her needs. I also tried to get all the bookkeeping done, so that at the end of the month I could go to Florida with Dear Husband.
Of course, I didn’t want to blurt out to the world that I was going to be away, even though Son #2 was going to be here. He kindly took on the duties of caring for Edward Scissorhands, watering the (indoor) plants and feeding the (outdoor) birds.
I’ve got to get some dinner pulled together, and then I’ll be back to share what’s been going on.
I hope you’ve all been well while I’ve been away.
Spring….can it be far away??

I am a subscriber to “Cook’s Illustrated,” a magazine. The editor, Christopher Kimball, writes an opening page on life in Vermont. It has the feel of an east coast version of Lake Woebegone, and frequently has nothing to do with cooking. This month, he provides his version of the Vermont Creed: “Seen worse.” There are fourteen steps based on familiar sayings such as “Make Hay While the Sun Shines,” “Check the Weather,” and “Waste Not, Want Not.” The one which is resonating through me is “When You Don’t Know What To Do, Do the Work in Front of You,” which is apparently something President Calvin Coolidge was heard to say.
Every so often I feel so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things which need to be done, that I don’t know where to start. I’ll stare at my desk, knowing that I could enter bills, or pay them, or file, or fill out applications for credit. I could balance checkbooks, or respond to requests for information. In the rest of the house I could clean, do the dishes, make my bed, dust, reorganize the bookshelves, feed the birds, go out to weed or water, or God forbid! CLEAN THE BASEMENT!!
Sometimes it just seems difficult to decide where to start. I hate indecision. I know from past efforts that if I simply choose one activity and get started, that the rest will fall into place. I won’t get it all done in one day, but that’s the nature of being a homeowner, or a bookkeeper, or a housekeeper.
I like Nike’s logo: “Just Do It!” That’s amazing advice for everyone, not just those facing exercise. You start with one small step and the rest will fall into place. Think of it as “One small step for man..”
I’ve come to understand that clutter saps my attention. I accomplish more during the day if I start by making my bed and cleaning the kitchen. I’ve created a morning ritual designed to clear the decks and get me out the doors in time for exercise three mornings a week. It’s so satisfying, that I find myself waking early on the weekend, when I could sleep in, and those days when I ignore that routine, I’m likely to waste my time.
So, I guess I must have some Vermont in me, or perhaps I’m related to Calvin Coolidge. As Kimball points out, the upside to “Do the Work in Front of You,” is that even if things don’t turn out, you’ll have your chores done! *G*.
So, everyone say it with me: “When You Don’t Know What to Do, Do the Work in Front of You!”