Saturday, December 5, 2015

Happy Chanukah Everyone!

Tomorrow brings us to the annual Festival of Light, Chanukah. This festival has so much significance in these trying times. Our civilized world seems to be crashing around us, maybe, just maybe God is telling us something. Do we need to bring our families closer to  God and His most Holy Son my Lord and Savior?

https://youtu.be/3a2__RZh0ZU

And I wonder how Jesus would have celebrated this most holy festival? Since this is a happy high holiday for the Peoples of Israel and people around the world, I will wish you ALL a Happy Chanukah.

https://youtu.be/bFawsZK9MGw

And to all of my friends and relatives Happy Chanukah!

https://youtu.be/9JHKDMzJgYc


Saturday, July 25, 2015

Mom to the rescue...

Okay funny for the day...I heard Twinkle Toes playing in a box at the end of my bed.



She started to make a real ruckus and I thought she was trapped in the box. So good Mom that I am I opened the box with my grabber

Only to turn around and see her staring at me with a funny look in her pretty golden eyes.
I was glad she was okay and could not stop laughing at the circumstance!!

MOM to the rescue...

Okay funny for the day...Twinkle Toes was playing 

in a box and was making a real ruckus. 


I the concerned Mom opened the flaps and pulled 

the box closer and called her name...



I turn around and she is sitting there watching me 

go through her rescue with a silly look in her little 

golden eyes!

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Utter and Profoundly Stupid...

U.P.S. yes the company that ships items around the world. They cannot get a package to my FRONT DOOR!!! Twice this week $142.00 yes that is $284.00 worth of meat from Omaha Steaks has thawed out because I do not use my back door (my oxygen hose does not reach).

Saturday, May 9, 2015

First Born Girl...


Now I would like you to take a breath, sit down and read this story...
A mother of 4 boys 3 brothers and an older half-brother found out she was pregnant once again. She was a bit alarmed at first, she had already had 2 miscarriages (both girls and the last one almost killed her). But everything was going great, though the April hail storm the size of soft balls turning the roof into Swiss cheese was a financial set back. The home owners association that her husband was president of came through and the neighborhood helped each other through this tough time. Mother’s Day came and went; it was very nice, the boys were on best behavior. Within 2 weeks she went into labor, took a bus to the hospital and contacted her husband at the office.

A baby girl, oh my gosh a full term baby girl, her husband was ecstatic and seeing his wife had named their last baby after him, he figured turnabout was fair play and named this little wisp of a girl after her mother, yes a little girl junior! Everything was going as planned when her mother went to her 6 week check-up and brought her little girl, the apple of her eye with her to the appointment.


The doctor said you are doing fine now let’s see this little “junior”, after listening to the babies chest, then her back, he closed the door and listened again. He asked her to come back to the office with her husband later that week. She did not understand but when her husband got home she expressed the doctor’s request. When they got to the office they came in, sat down the doctor put his head in his hands and started to cry. When he had composed himself he told her parents their little girl would not see her 3rd birthday. She was born with a congenital heart defect, the term he used was Eisemenger Syndrome, and it was fatal.
Both were in total shock this is not happening, God was not a cruel God, why? Well, her parents would not take this as a final answer and took their little girl to the local Women’s Hospital. They were given the same answer, take her home and make her life as comfortable as possible. Treat her as you would any little girl and let her live out her final days happy. HAPPY thought the parents, HAPPY? NO, this was not going to happen.
Her father sat down with pen in hand and started to contact his Army superiors that happened to be doctors, dentists actually but none the less doctors. And doctors always know other doctors, right?  This thought crossed his mind as he penned the pleadings for help or advice.
Months later he received a Christmas card from his direct superior from the Army, his office was in Buffalo. It was grim. Eisemenger Syndrome, he called it was fatal; an experimental surgery was in the works so experimental it had not even been attempted by the major surgeons in Buffalo yet. His words were “So sorry Mac, so very sorry.” As they read the letter they thought, not our little girl she was only 7 months old, yet she was showing signs of deterioration, no not my little “junior.” But looking at her they could see the blue pallor creeping over her face. This was a reality check.
That month they had again heard about the experimental surgery for Eisemenger Syndrome from a friend. Doctors in Minnesota had been successful and a team at University of Michigan was experimenting on dogs.
           
  

So her parents started checking out their options a doctor at a leading hospital right around the corner was just starting a protocol to help “Blue Baby Syndrome”. The most telling symptom is cyanosis a bluish pallor of the face. After writing a letter to the hospital they waited. A letter arrived from a member of the cardiac team and the answer was sorry, we cannot help. Her parents were dogged and went to see the cardiologists and after a meeting with the head doctor, he called his team together and said it was a no-brainer there could only be two outcomes she would make it or not, the later was a condition they did not want to discuss at length.
The hospital sent a telegram for another examination with the whole team after a meeting they were given the go ahead. The next few months were to be a whirlwind of doctor appointments her birth doctor came to the house weekly for her penicillin shots. No walking, no crying, no exercise in fact nothing except putting on weight. Her parents took her in shortly after her first birthday and told she was not making any headway no growth nor weight gain. The team gave a surgery date for the following month.

I think of life, as if tossing a pebble into a pool of still water and watch as the ripples go to a shore then continue back crossing each other making new ripples as the pool becomes still again.

August 31 marks the 59th year of the surgery performed in 1956. Oh yeah, this is my story, my life as a “junior”. I would like to say Thank You God and to my Mom for not giving up on me, and to all the friends and relatives that I have rippled through, on this journey my life. Happy Mother’s Day to all of my friends that are Mother’s out there!
Kathy McQuillen
 


Sunday, March 22, 2015

Chuckle of the day...

Okay my chuckle for the day...it is my ex-Kyle's birthday today (he passed away from pancreatic cancer 2-8-15) so I put my phone on "Do not disturb" and decided to sew a zipper in my McQuillen Gathering bag the one my cousin Tracy designed.

Well I do not have a zipper foot for my sewing machine...ARGH!


Hand sewing it is, first the threading of the needle. Every time I miss the needle with the little wire threader I say crap, Twink heads for her bedroom. I finally got the little wire through the eye and put the thread through the wire and pull, right.



HA the wire breaks off instead, as I sat looking at my cat Twink it reminded me of a Fawlty Towers episode for some funny reason!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

https://youtu.be/BKaQLYPf5hM



Then I finally get he needle threaded and start stabbing myself at every stitch first the finger then my leg. Light bulb goes off...










I have an embroidery hoop somewhere. YEAH, not so much, the fabric is too thick at the beginning, back to stabbing myself until I can get to a nice thin bit on the gathering bag. Enough for now I got a whole 3 inches of a 17" zipper done.


Maybe tomorrow...

Friday, March 13, 2015

Love of My Life...God Speed Kyle Bradley Wiehr!!

I think I have stopped crying for now so here goes. It has been a little while since I have even wanted to write anything, though it may be very cathartic. In early February the man that I accepted as the love of my life passed away. I have some of the details and could get more if I wanted...but I gave him to God 15 years ago. He was an alcoholic and died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 55, he was born in 1959, I was 59 when he died and I was born in 1955.


Enough for now...

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Electoral College, Guns and Illegals...

You know it just came to mind...yes I do have a mind...a brain well that is another story!

What if "We the People" put as much emphasis, on straightening out "Politics" as we do bickering about gun control or illegal aliens. I think our country would be in a better place!

Really have any of you out there noticed how skewed we have made the Electoral College? I am pretty darned sure our "Founding Fathers" did not think of America being as large as it is and if they even had an inkling we would be as far northwest as Alaska and Americans live there...year round! The same as they NEVER would have imagined an assault rifle, or that other countries would flood our boarders!

I introduce my educational platform,

www.diffen.com/difference/Electoral_Vote_vs_Popular_Vote

Some things just need tweaking now and then, if the abolishment of the Electoral College does not help us, revert it back. Lets see I think we did that with PROHIBITION from 1920 to 1933, though I personally...never mind not part of my rant today. I will add it to the brain thingy! Phew I am glad to get this off my chest...head...shoulders?

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Elementary my Dear Student. Elementary...

Memories light the corners of my mind...Harrison Elementary School Livonia, Michigan





Miss Kenyen

I remember Kindergarten...Miss Kenyen, I was scared to death of her she looked like a nurse in white shirt, big black fluffy skirt. I would not even stay five minutes I screamed bloody murder even thought my neighborhood friends were all there, my Mom and Dad took me home, they calmed me down and they succeeded the next morning. I really thought I was going back to a hospital.














First Grade...Mrs. Mackie SHE would lay on the lipstick and give you a big red kiss for your birthday and NO washing it off.

Second Grade...Mrs. Runyan, I remember her getting so mad at one of the boys she tied him to a school chair with a jump rope!!

Third Grade...Mrs. Riddle, I only remember her having parties for all of the holidays. Though I could have had Mrs. Crunker which means there were NO parties!

Fourth Grade...Miss Stoppenhagen (got married during school break and was Mrs. Schultz) I remember she could not stand the sound of squeaking chalk one squeak she would put the chalk down and go to her desk and sit for a moment! Once Bruce Belfield, a classmate jumped on her back, the principal Mr. Granger had to come down and get him off of her.


















Fifth Grade...Miss Hitchcock (again got married on school break Mrs. Denison) best teacher ever!!! I

remember so many things she taught us, like the 23 helping verbs rhyme...Did, Do, Does, Am, Is, Are, Was, Were, Be, Being, Been, Has, Have, Had, Can, Could, Shall, Should, Will, Would, May, Might, and Must.

I must say though I always felt bad for David Lassilla, I am not sure he ever did figure out the difference of THEN and THAN. (She wrote it in big green magic marker on his desktop)


I was not allowed out during the winter recesses but I do remember watching the snow ball fights with her out in the side yard building fortress walls and stockpiling snowballs. So Miss Hitchcock taught me different things like a potters wheel and how to throw clay and make sculptures.Though it was lonely.







 


















And last but not least Sixth Grade...Mr. Dunn, he would have us put our head down for "Meditation." And I remember Mary Birdsall had some kind of reaction to the fertilizer the school used, her face blew up and was so distorted I was SO happy she was her pretty self when she came back to school, PHEW.

































Who remembers the fall out shelter under the stage in the lunch room? Or the dooms day drills??? I also remember the fluoride and polio treatments?

I remember other teachers like Mr. Davison, Miss Jaffee, Miss Collins, Mrs. Crunker, Mrs. Eddy the lunch lady...umm Mrs Beaman? and of course the principal Mr. Granger. We had a school nurse that did weekly check ups on me I did not think much of it thinking all the students had weekly check-ups.

AND THEN CAME RILEY JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL...AHHHHHHHHH
                     ( Please excuse me if I butchered your name :-O )