Thursday Thoughts & Musings

The day ended with a beautiful sky! (Pictured above). Bitterly cold all day though despite abundant sunshine but the calendar has turned another page and the days are noticeably longer. A Forsythia bush down the road is in full bloom, defying the cold and basking in the strong light of day. Tiny, pale green leaves have begun to grow from the branches of the Butterfly Bushes and red buds have appeared on the Rose bushes. I do miss the snow. There's not much left here on the coast, a random, dirty pile protected by shade. When we were at our place up north last week, there was roughly 8"s on the ground; beautiful! But at least as the last of the snow fades, blooms will begin to emerge and carry me through.

This evening I learned that at the end of February 2011, the President officially designated the month of March as Irish-American Heritage Month and I have to say I'm quite happy about it! Here's the link to the Proclamation: http://irishamericanheritage.com/Proclamations/Proclamation_March2011a.htm. I'm Irish & English on my Mother's side and German on my Father's side. I've always felt a strong connection to my Irish heritage as my Nana helped my Mother raise me; Nana immigrated from Ireland to the US in 1929. In recent years, as a way of honoring my Nana's memory (she passed in 2000), I started making St. Patrick's Day an actual holiday again; while cooking a big meal of corned beef, cabbage & potato's with horseradish and soda bread, I watch the St. Patrick's Day Parade in NYC live on tv which is 3 or 4 hours long and, truth be told, shed many tears because I love & miss my Nana so much. We have Mom over for dinner and she's told me how much she enjoys it which makes it all the more worth while since I honestly had no idea that she loved corned beef & cabbage until a year or two ago! The evening is usually spent watching Irish movies set in Ireland on TCM, especially The Quiet Man.

Also in recent years, I started focusing on Irish authors and books about the country, something I really enjoy and has begun carrying throughout the rest of my year's. This year I've got the following lined up so far: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (this month's morning bookclub selection), Pack Up The Moon by Anna McPartlin, The True Story Of Grace O'Malley Ireland's Pirate Queen by Anne Chambers and Reader's Digest Illustrated Guide To Ireland.

Our local PBS stations also have some great programs on Irish heritage and music at this time of year which I'll be sure to catch as well.

If you click on my "Currently Creating/Reading" tab just below my header, you'll see the scarf I'm currently knitting; its colors are perfect for this time of year as without snow, the main colors of Nature now are shades of green & brown. (Plus the colors are great for St. Pat's and you'll see I need to update the photo since I finished Alice Hoffman's Blackbird House already!)

I've got a couple of gardening articles in the works, one to post here and one will be posted elsewhere. I'm quite excited about them! Mum's the word for now :-)

Hubbs returned to his full time job this week. Having had doctors appointments and other errands to do, it's been a fairly busy week so I haven't had to adjust to his not being here all day yet. We'll see how next week goes!

I've been having some (left) kidney and now have to drink 10 glasses of water or water & Vitamin Water (Multi-V) a day. Might as well set up camp by the potty, LOL! After another nasty reaction to a new arthritis med (which required another epi-pen!) Doc and I decided I would go back on an oral med he put me on after I first started seeing him in late 2005. We know I'm not allergic, it doesn't have short/long term negative affects on the kidneys, liver or in other aspects. Hopefully it will be enough to prevent further regression and progression while my left kidney continues to heal, until I can return to my iv med. I feel much better about my arthritis meds now.

Tomorrow a tech will be here to replace the internet modem and a cable box both taken out by a power blip early this week. Dealing with this cable company is a maddening experience and we'll both be very relieved once it's over. And that's all I've got to say about that :-)

And with that, I'm off to do a little reading. Happy March to all!
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