For The Birds

Although I don't have any pets of my own, I've always been an animal lover. With a few exceptions such as a dog that once tried to tear my throat out, animals seem to like me too. There's no better feeling than a friendly dog greeting you with its tail wagging, wanting to kiss you, or to feel the contented purr of a cat as you stroke that soft, silky fur.

When we were kids my Mom didn't want any dogs or cats, but she did let us have aquariums full of colorful fish, and birds. From the time I was very small I remember having parakeets in the house. We had a bird named Candy that we tried to teach to talk, with a record. I can clearly remember the voice on the record going "pretty birdie, pretty birdie" - over and over and over again. Candy never said a word, and I believe one day my mother "accidentally" broke that record.

Today I have no pets either, but I still love them all, and I happened to stumble over a website for a parrot that knocked my socks off. Her name is Einstein and she lives in Texas with her human family, and she is the most vocal parrot I've ever seen. I wanted to share her website with you so you can see for yourself: http://www.einsteinparrot.com/

I think she'll put a smile on your face. I know she put one on mine. Some days it's good to remind ourselves to love all of God's creatures.

Ouchety Ouch Ouch

You can see that I've been kind of quiet on this blog for a long time. That's because besides dealing with a Dad who has Alzheimer's, and job issues, and other family issues, I've also been struggling with a very painful physical problem.

As far as I can remember my shoulder started bothering me in January. I didn't do anything to it in particular, it just started to ache. As the months passed, it got worse and worse. So as usual, I ignored it.

Finally the pain was unbearable. I went to an orthopedist yesterday and for one thing he gave me a shot of cortisone directly into the shoulder joint. This has helped tremendously as far as the pain, but I also need to ice it to bring the swelling down. And I need to do 12 weeks of physical therapy for the muscle spasms.

But also after all the X-rays I found out that I have multiple back problems including scoliosis that was undiagnosed and where there should be a space between the C5 and C6 vertabra in my neck, there's almost no space. We don't know if any of this is the cause of my problems, and we won't know until all the swelling is taken care of and after physical therapy is completed.

So, if you don't see me for a while again, say a prayer for me and send some good healing energy. I need it.

xoxoxo

The Bachelorette

Last night Jared and I watched The Bachelorette on ABC. Last season we watched The Bachelor where we watched the nice guy (or so we thought) dismiss Jillian Harris to get down to his final two. We watched him pick Melissa Rycroft (now on Dancing With the Stars) and subsequently dump her later on national television. The joke is on him - she's now more famous than he is, and a good dancer to boot!

So when they choose Jillian to be the new Bachelorette, we thought it was a good thing. She seems like a nice, down to earth girl looking for, as she puts it, her "best friend". Someone to share her life with and hopefully marry, have a home with and children, to grow old together and still be friends. To this end, ABC decided to throw in a monkey wrench.

Along with the regular 25 men who vye for a rose from her, at almost the last minute of the first show they threw in an additional 5 men, bringing her total up to 30. Unfortunately for Jillian, the viewers at home get to learn things about the contestants that she's not necessarily aware of. That brings me to Tanner P.

Tanner P. appears to be a rather nice looking guy. At the age of 30 he's a financial analyst from somewhere in Texas. Sounds nice, right? This is where the "ick" factor comes in - Tanner appears to have a foot fetish. He waxed almost poetically about how important it is for women to have nice feet, and he wanted to see Jillian's feet beneath her long gown, so he maneuvered her outside to the pool area so she could dip her feet into the pool. He said she passed muster because she had nice feet with nail polish. God forbid she have, as he put it, "toe jam or corns, or eagle claws". Gag, aaack!!

Another contestant grabbed her away from him and he practically had a stroke as THAT guy had a towel and got to dry Jillian's feet! Yet, Tanner was still happy that he had gotten to SEE her feet and confirm how nice they are.

The worst part was at the rose ceremony, where Jillian gave Tanner a rose - and failed to notice his eyes peering downwards, hoping to get a glimpse of her feet.

EEEWWWW!!!!!

But there's worse. Much, much worse.

Even worse is the knowledge that a week from now I'll be tuned in, waiting to see what happens next.

The Wild Kingdom

Jerry and I visited friends who own a farm yesterday, and we got to talk about animals and various critters on a farm. It reminded me of how, in the years since we first moved to New Jersey, we’ve been visited by all manner of beasts, to the extent that I joked about my house being part of the wild kingdom. Remember me talking about the squirrel on the plane? Well, there are worse things than that.

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. On occasion we might have gotten a field mouse in the house, which my Dad would set traps for and the next day dispose of trap and victim of said trap. We didn’t have dogs or cats because my Mom didn’t like either, but we did have turtles, parakeets and fish tanks full of tropical fish. When I met Jerry he had a teddy bear hamster which either died or escaped, but it was long gone before we got married and moved in together. When we had our first apartment we had plenty of cockroaches, but were never able to train any of them.

Anyway, when our son Jared was four we moved to New Jersey. No roaches not even a mouse stirred in our house. Jared once or twice brought home goldfish, which generally died soon after acquisition.

One evening when Jared was around seven or eight we were in our family room watching TV. From outside on our patio steps we could hear a rustling noise. Because we live in a townhouse community we have specific nights where we’re allowed to put the trash out at the dumpsters, otherwise the bags have to stay in our yard. This was one of those nights where the bags were out there waiting till the next morning when we could move them to the dumpsters. I thought it was a cat rustling the bags in search of something, so I pulled back the blinds to tap on the glass and chase it away. I’m not sure who screamed first, Jared or myself.

Staring back at us was a creature the like of which I’d never seen before. It had red, beady eyes; a mouthful of sharp looking teeth which were bared in a feral snarl; claws, a bubble gum pink nose and a long, pink tail. We shrieked in horror as Jerry came running to see what the ruckus was. It looked like a rat – or, as Jared so aptly claimed, a giant, mutated rat! It had ripped open the garbage bag and was working at gnawing on the leftover chicken bones from our Boston Market meals. Jerry decided he wanted to be a hero and chase it away, so he grabbed a broom and a flashlight. We stopped him before he opened the patio door, as we were afraid it would make a dash into the house. This creature wasn’t scared of us at all. We tapped on the glass inches from its face. We shone the flashlight directly into its eyes. We screamed, “Shoo! Go away!” at the top of our lungs. It brazenly mocked us by refusing to budge until it ate its fill, and finally left in its own sweet time.
It took some research on the Internet the next day to find out the name of this creature was a possum. I know how funny it sounds now, but trust me – I never saw a possum when I lived in Brooklyn. After the initial fear faded, Jared was kind of happy that he’d had the experience of seeing this awesome, frightening creature. I was afraid to open my patio door for weeks to come, fearful that it was back and would somehow make a mad dash inside. The reality is, we never saw it again.

When Good Geese Go Bad

In the wake of the recent incident where a flock of geese caused an airliner to go down in the Hudson River, I just read that a vulture smashed through the windshield of another plane. The pilot managed to land safely after all.

It seems like nature is running wild! Last year I read a story about a squirrel causing havoc on a plane. It appears that the pilots on an American Airlines flight from Tokyo to Dallas heard something scurrying around in the wiring above the cockpit. This alarmed them so much that they made an emergency landing in Honolulu, where a stowaway squirrel was found to be the culprit. Fearing the squirrel would chomp its way through wires, the squirrel was removed and promptly killed.

I know, I know...right about now all you animal lovers are saying, “Why did they have to kill that poor little squirrel. It was only doing its squirrel thing, trapped in some wires and trying to get out. They didn’t have to kill it”.

Ah, but perhaps they did. Look around at what’s happening right now. You have a renegade flock of kamikaze geese taking down an entire plane. A groundhog attacked the mayor of New York. Ok, maybe he deserved it more than a little bit, but still. And now a vulture took on yet another plane. Frankly, even more so than flying into a flock of birds, I dislike the idea of some little critter running through the wiring while I’m on a plane; chewing through said wires chills me to the bone.

I’m surprised some other small critters haven’t taken down planes sooner. Small enough to infiltrate planes undetected, chewing through vital instrument panels willy-nilly, any one of various species could have caused massive death and destruction before now.

So perhaps killing the squirrel was an example, and should be a lesson to other animals out there, who appear to be banding together against planes. We’re watching you, and we have exterminators on speed dial, waiting for the next attack.

And we thought we only had to worry about terrorists!

Groundhog's Revenge

Every year on February 2nd there’s all kinds of hoopla concerning groundhogs, and yesterday was no exception. I really hate Groundhog Day.

I wonder where the Human Society or PETA is while various poor groundhogs are being thrust into the limelight. Every year a groundhog is taken from wherever he calls home, shoved into a hollow log like a Keebler Elf, then some top hat wearing goon grabs him by the ruff of the neck and holds him aloft to be photographed like Paris Hilton outside of Nobu. All this pomp and circumstance just to see his shadow where they declare, “There’s six more weeks of winter”.

Well, I know I’m not a whiz at math, but I CAN read a calendar. And when I look at how many weeks there are between February 2nd and the first day of Spring, I count six. As of February 2nd THERE ARE ALWAYS SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER.

In the meanwhile, I get very stressed worrying about a poor groundhog being traumatized by all the media attention. But, perhaps I shouldn’t worry as much. I just read a story that the groundhog in New York, called Charles G. Hogg, took a bite out of Mayor Bloomberg’s hand. According to the story, the Mayor was trying to lure it out of its warm wooden cage with an ear of corn, and kept snatching the corn away from it. Clearly annoyed at the whole thing, Charles G. Hogg took his revenge, in the way of a hearty nip out of the mayor’s hand. I say “Good for YOU Charles C. Hogg”. And let this be a lesson to Punxsatawney Phil and the other groundhogs that receive similar treatment.

Next year, all the goofballs that rip a poor, defenseless groundhog from its lair had better beware. Because word travels, and you never know what can happen now that groundhogs have tasted blood. They have an entire year to sharpen their claws and their teeth, and they may decide next February 2nd to take their revenge. Some have already started to rebel; if you don’t believe me, ask Mayor Bloomberg.

What Quality is Your Life?

There’s nothing more painful than watching a parent’s ability to function deteriorate right in front of your eyes. A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or dementia is devastating for the person and his loved ones. The disease destroys brain cells. The person, who raised you, taught you how to walk and talk, fed you, wiped your tears and bandaged your knees, now cannot remember your name or your place in their life. Frustration grows each day as this disease slowly steals their minds, changing the essence of who they are in an insidious way.

What is it that constitutes quality of life for a dementia sufferer? Is it living life to its fullest despite physical ailments? Is it the ability to be who you always were, just in an older body? Is it feeling secure and safe? Everyone should have a life in which they feel loved and valued. Everyone wants a life in which there are stimulating things to do, activities that give pleasure, and the ability to have some control over what we do. The list of what makes life worth living varies from person to person. But when a person loses the ability to remember who loves them and what love is, when they lose the ability to have control over what they do and to remember activities that give them pleasure, then where is the quality of their life?

I read a story about a man whose grandfather was rather stern and gruff. This man thought his grandfather didn’t care deeply about anything and had no sensitivity. Then one day while the grandfather was dying from a deadly illness, this man discovered that every day his grandfather watched the sun setting. When he was ill, he would watch it from his hospital room window. Watching the sunset was something that was very important to him; it mattered and made his life worth living each day.

I don’t pretend to have all, or even any, answers. All I can say is that I think quantity of life is meaningless without quality. We tend to focus on quantity because it can be measured, but I think quality of our days is more important. I’d trade days off the end of my life if it meant that the days I did have were fulfilling, worthwhile and meaningful.

Take the time, while you still have all your faculties, to decide what kind of things are meaningful to you, what you consider to be important for the quality of your life, and let your loved ones know what makes life worth living for you. What may just be the end of a day to some might be a beautiful sunset to someone else.

Remember that you matter, because you are you, and you matter to the very last day of your life.

WHY I SPENT THE NIGHT IN A DEMENTIA WARD

My mother just died this past November and my Dad was placed in the Alzheimer’s wing of their Assisted Living facility. Mom had been his caregiver and the hider of how deeply into his dementia he was. She hid it well, with staff and with family because she gave Dad his clues. When we would visit she would prompt him with “Oh look! It’s Sharon and Jerry!” So he knew who we were. We never suspected that he didn’t know who we were until she was no longer here to prompt him.

Alzheimer’s and dementia is a horrible illness. It robs you of the person you’ve known your entire life, and it robs them of everything they’re known and experienced. There are behaviors that go with this disease that weren’t present in their “normal” lives, such as paranoia and anger. We thought Dad was in the best possible place he could be to deal with this. Over the past weeks he’s been “acting out” and they started to give him medications to try to keep him on an even keel – we thought.

When my husband and I got to Dad’s place for our weekly visit on Saturday there were fire trucks there. We didn’t see flames or smell smoke, but when we entered the girl at the front desk said, “Oh, you’re going into the Heritage wing? That’s where the problem is! It’s flooded.” We didn’t know if it was flooded from the fire hoses, or if anyone was hurt, but when we got into his wing we could see about an inch of water in the hallway going to the bedrooms, their living room area and their activity room. Apparently due to the cold weather a pipe in their sprinkler system burst. The residents were situated back in their TV room, and when we went in there we saw most of them, including Dad, sleeping. We decided not to wake him until we assessed the situation.

They asked us to leave so they could deal with the flood, but I didn’t want to leave until I learned if Dad’s room was affected. They TOLD me it wasn’t, and could we please leave, and they brushed us off. We left and when I got home I called my sister to fill her in. As we were hanging up I could hear that she was being beeped. Two minutes later she called me back. That call had been from his assisted living facility. Dad was freaking out, had supposedly gotten violent, hit other residents with his cane and threw a chair, and they were sending him to the psych ward in the hospital. My sister was going to meet us there.

I got there before she did, just as the EMT’s had transported him. The EMT said to me “Gee, they said he was freaking out, but when we got there he was gentle as a lamb. We asked him if we could take him to the hospital and he said yes, climbed onto the gurney himself and thanked us. Then he went to sleep. They told us they have given him Ativan before we got there.” So now we had this calm, frail 91-year old man who was drugged to the hilt and just wanted to sleep, lying in a bed in what I can only describe as a concrete cell, waiting for a psych evaluation. What’s wrong with this picture?

The hospital staff told us that they’re required by law to run a CAT scan, do blood work and a urine analysis, and a psych evaluation. When they took him for the CAT scan my sister and I went with him. He was NOT happy about being disturbed because at this point he just wanted to sleep. He wasn’t happy about being moved from the gurney into the CAT scan bed, when asked if he could scoot over himself he said, “Too complicated”. For a man who was drugged, it probably was. The three of us, which included the tech, got him moved over. He didn’t want to stay still so he had to be restrained in the machine. He kept saying “Good NIGHT already! Turn out the lights!” By the time the CAT scan was over our husbands were there so they helped the tech get him back on the gurney and the orderly wheeled him back to his cement cell.

A nurse came in to drawn blood. Already angered and confused by the CAT scan, he didn’t want to cooperate with her so she got another nurse to help her. He kept saying, “Leave me alone” and “You’re fired!” to them, but they drew blood. Now they wanted to catheterize him to take a urine sample. That’s when he really fought. We could hear him screaming from the other room “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me! Get your hands off of me! I don’t want this!” My sister and I were in tears; we didn’t know what to do. One of the nurses, who he had tried to bite, got three big orderlies and now there were five people trying to hold him down and put in a catheter. They gave him a shot of Ativan on top of the Ativan he’d been given at the assisted living. We’d were at our wit’s end at this point.

A social worker came to talk to my sister and I. We went to her office and she had us call his assisted living facility while she left us alone. They told us that they had their hands full dealing with the flood, and said that the other residents had been transported to a different facility for the night, and that my Dad needed to have his medications regulated so they wanted him admitted to the hospital for a few days before they would let him back. That he couldn’t come back anyway because the flood had affected his room so he couldn’t use it. That originally they’d had a room available for him in the other place they shipped the residents to for the night, but after they sent him to the hospital they didn’t keep a room for him so they weren’t sure one would be available for him there, but it would be “better for him” to stay in the hospital since he was already there. In other words, they wanted the hospital to do the work for them, so that when Dad went back to assisted living he would be all calm and happy. We were floored to hear this, and told them we’d call back and let them know what we were doing. The social worker, when told about this call, said “No, that’s not how it works. They’re responsible for adjusting his meds, not us.”

Since Dad was not ill, so there was no medical reason for them to admit him to the hospital. He was drugged so he couldn’t be evaluated, but even if he could be he as dementia so what would they find out? That he’s confused?? She said if they wouldn’t take him back at assisted living, we were left with two choices. The choices were either voluntary commitment – obviously out of the question in his condition – or enforced commitment in a mental health facility. She explained that meant he lost all his rights once he was committed, that would be a one-way ticket, and he could be placed in any mental institution in the entire state; alongside people with real mental illnesses, and alongside the criminally insane. She was adamant that was NOT the place for him, and we agreed. We were devastated. If he was committed he would lose any rights he had, and so would we - our power of attorney would be rendered meaningless.

In the meanwhile, after the failed catheterization Dad was freaking out. He was angry, furious, and wanted to leave. He ripped off the hospital gown. In the fracas with the nurses he had cut his arm and was bleeding, and wouldn’t let anyone look at it. He kept screaming that he wanted everyone to leave him alone; he didn’t want anyone’s help, and would rather just die. That he wanted to kill himself, so it would all be over with. He tried to get off the gurney and would have fallen if my husband and son weren’t there to help sit him in a chair. Once he got in the chair he seemed to calm down a bit. My sister and I, our heads reeling with what we’d been told, were now back out with Dad. We covered him with blankets and he looked at my sister and me and apologized. “I’m sorry for acting out”, he said, “I’m just frustrated and angry”. We said, “Dad, we understand. We just want you to be calm. Your arm is bleeding, can we get someone to bandage that for you?” He agreed, and the nurse came and bandaged his arm. My husband asked if my father felt like he could give a urine sample, and he was agreeable. Between my husband and the nurse they were able to get a urine sample – voluntarily – from Dad. Ironically through all of this, he had been the most vocally lucid he’s been.

During this time the social worker had been talking to the facility administrator and head nurse at the assisted living facility. Obviously she tore them a new asshole, because when we called them back a short while later, they now said that the flood had NOT affected his room, and that he could come back if a family member agreed to spend the night with him, because they didn’t have staff available to stay with him. Both my sister and I agreed to stay with him together, since we knew it would take more than one person to handle him.

While all this was going on, the hospital had brought a tray of food to Dad. He did manage to eat some of it, but by this time the shot of Ativan was kicking in and he was becoming incoherent and sleepy. He went back onto the gurney and fell asleep but it was a drugged sleep, which he kept waking from, sort of. He was talking in his sleep, calling out and from what we could tell it appeared that he was hallucinating when he wasn’t asleep.

Dad was transported back to his room at 10:45 that night. My sister and I spent the night, not sleeping, in his room. Every few minutes he would call out in his sleep, or claw at the air, or do something that would make us spring up out of our chairs and run over to the bed. Even if he’d been quiet I wouldn’t have been able to sleep – the fans they had running in the hallway to dry the carpeting sounded like 747’s to me.

In the morning when they woke him for breakfast, we could see he was still under the influence of the drugs. We helped him with breakfast, or he wouldn’t have been able to get food into his mouth or drink his coffee. When my sister and I finally left he was sitting on a sofa in their living room area, was fast asleep, but was with a staff member who said she would look out for him.

It was funny how the assisted living place changed their tune over night. The nurse yesterday morning told us that when Dad had been acting up he was waving his cane around and they were afraid he would hurt himself, but he hadn’t hurt anyone else. We asked about him throwing a chair and she said he had pushed a chair but hadn’t thrown it. When we heard that my sister and I were sure of what we had suspected – Dad had acted out and they had their hands full with the flood, and they sent him to the hospital just to get him out of their hair. My sister made sure to find out that it’s NOT normal protocol to do this, and she also made sure she told the nurse just how devastated we felt when we thought commitment was looming, and how unacceptable an option that was. She also made sure that this will not happen again, their routinely sending him to the hospital; that it was pointless and accomplished nothing except create an untenable, stress filled seven hour ordeal for him. I told the nurse that since this was all new to us, we were going to ask a lot of questions because, really, we want everything clarified. Hopefully, we got our points across.

My head is kind of fried now, from lack of sleep and I’m sure a little posttraumatic stress. I hope I’m never diagnosed with dementia; I never want my son to have to deal with this.

But that was how I spent the night in a dementia ward.

The Travolta Family

Recently there has been a lot of death in the news. Not just due to the war, but celebrities have been touched by the hand of death as well. This past fall, singer Jennifer Hudson’s mother, brother and nephew were brutally murdered; I’m sure it’s been horrible for her and she has my deepest sympathies. The last week, John Travolta and Kelly Preston lost their beloved son Jett.

My heart truly goes out to John Travolta and his wife on the loss of their child. I know from personal experience how difficult that is to deal with. Sixteen years ago, my sister’s youngest son died as the result of a car accident, and it was a horrible experience for the entire family. When a spouse dies you’re called a widow or widower; when your parents die you’re referred to as an orphan. But, there’s no name for a parent or family in which a child has died. That fact alone suggests how unnatural and unacceptable the nature of a child’s death is. It remains unnamed because the very thought of it is incomprehensible. Yet when it occurs, each minute is filled with the deepest pain. The pain is physical; it’s as if your heart has been torn out of your chest and you have a gaping, open wound. Nothing makes sense, and the feeling of loss, loneliness and bewilderment is overwhelming.

Grief becomes integrated into your lives. It makes you question everything you think or feel. You don’t understand why this horrific thing has happened, and you know you’ll never been the same because you’ve been touched by this nightmare. While they’re grieving, families learn a new “normal” along the way. Despite the pain, the human spirit allows us to grieve and move forward into the sunlight, given enough time. It’s not an immediate thing, but something that happens slowly as each day goes by. While we can never fully recover from the loss of a child, we manage somehow to get through one day and then the next, and then the next; but we never, ever forget. When memories are all a family have to hold on to, you cherish them with a fervency that you never thought possible. They say time is a great healer. In many ways it is, in terms of the fact that over the course of years, the rawness of it fades. You still hurt, but you hurt in a different way than when it’s fresh and new.

I hope the Travolta’s hold on to the precious memories of their son, and eventually can find some comfort in the joy he brought to their lives for the short time he was here. That will, I hope, someday bring them to a place where acceptance of their loss will carry them through their pain. It won’t be quick and it won’t be easy, but it will eventually happen. In the meanwhile, as someone who understands what they’re going through at this time, I send peace and love their way, and I’ll remember them in my prayers.

A Belated Welcome to 2009

Welcome to 2009! What a LONG freaking year we just came through; I wish I could say unscathed, but unfortunately that’s not the case. A great deal happened, and much of it was not what I would call positive. Between the election and all the controversy surrounding it, natural disasters, death and the economy, it’s been pretty dismal for most of us.

Lao-Tzu, a Chinese philosopher who lived 2600 years ago said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This has been one of my favorite quotes for many years. If you stop to consider the meaning, it’s very profound, and if you really think about it deeply, you’ll find ways we can apply it to our lives today.

All of us struggle through each day, despite our boasts about the modern trends and giant steps we’ve made in science and technology. We’ve found that all this fantastic technology hasn’t made our lives any better than they were in the past. Even though the general opinion has always been that bigger is better, we have to question if it is. We also have to question at what cost does this way of thinking prove itself to be true? Take a good look around you and tell me if you see the joy in people or a world in harmony, improved by iPods or text messaging?

Rather, we see more unhappiness and distress than there’s ever been, and much of it is our own fault. We don’t seem to understand what we do to ourselves.We bought into the idea that we “needed” to have all this “stuff”. It was easy when the economy was good. We had the attitude that we just had to buy into things that even though they were beyond our means, and suddenly two incomes were required to support our desires to have bigger and better, we thought we wanted. People bought big, expensive houses, we call them McMansions here, and when money was good and jobs were secure, this wasn’t a problem; but now that way of thinking has come back to bite people on their collective asses. When you turn on the TV, the news if filled with how the housing market is in crisis, jobs are being eliminated, businesses are closing, homes are being foreclosed on, and people are not able to maintain what they thought they wanted in accordance with what they actually have to support themselves.

I think that we got into trouble because we no longer listened to the voice of common sense within us due to our lust for “things” and “stuff”. We grasped at the image of promised goodies, ignoring the loss of our freedom along the way. Because when you really look at it, all this stuff, and the focus on the almighty dollar, has hindered our freedom. People have had to work longer and harder to maintain their newly gained treasure trove, and in doing so they lost the freedom to relax, and the freedom to do what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. The glitter has faded away as reality hit us squarely between the eyes. We’ve lost ourselves as individuals, while focusing on false promises, and our lust for shiny new things.

This year we’ve listened to political promises for change, but at what cost does change occur in a land of people who are so out of balance, looking to gratify their need for MORE? You would think that we would learn, but we seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. Just like our hunger and greed for the dollar and possessions, our hunger and greed for change for the betterment of our lives has replaced our common sense, that small voice within us all, even though we should realize that the bigger and better idea has failed us dismally in the recent past. What’s wrong with this picture? We’re grasping at straws, looking for one person to lead us out of the desert of our economy and hard times, rather than taking that one step for ourselves. Are we just to blind or too incredibly stupid to see that these changes can’t be a temporary thing, but a new way of life for everyone?

Change begins within each of us, with a single step in the way we think, act and live. Some people find change under the leadership of a Priest or Rabbi in their houses of worship. Some people find change under a starry desert sky, or gazing at the sunlight glistening off of ocean waves. Some find it in the words of their political leaders. Whatever it takes to bring our hearts and souls into balance once again is a much better goal to strive for than wishing we could afford a new car or a bigger house. A major change in the way we've lived, not by our own choosing by any means, has been foisted on us this past year. And although the path has been harsh at times, and the reality of life hit us like a ton of bricks, the lessons along the way have been a blessing for some of us.

I learned very quickly that sometimes it takes a hard blow for people to realize how good their lives have been, and that losing all their precious “things” suddenly doesn’t hold a candle to what life is really meant to be about.

In keeping with this mindset, I wish all of us a Happy New Year, filled with the things that really count; friends, family, and health. None of which can be bought or sold on the stock market, and are more precious than the almighty dollar. If you don’t realize how important any of this is, maybe it’s time for you to take that single step on your journey back to the things that are really significant. Let’s make a resolution for 2009, for change, real change in our lives, to be more than just a buzzword.

Kran's Crackers

My name is Sharon. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a middle-aged working wife and mother from Central New Jersey. Are you still with me? Good!

When I decided that to write my own blog, I wondered about what to name it. I know there are some people who pick witty, funny names, but I wanted something that had significance to me. If it turned out to be witty and funny that would have just been an added bonus. So the mission was to come up with a name that I'm fairly sure nobody else is using.

Now, as to where Kran's Crackers come from - there IS an actual story behind it. When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, my maiden name was Kran. Four letters, no fuss - such a simple name. You would not believe the amount of misspellings and mispronunciations associated with that simple, four letter name. It's pronounced just like it looks - it's the same "cran" sound as in cranberries. Yet, it's been mangled to cron, crown, crawn and crane more times than I can tell you. And I give credit to the post office every time they managed to deliver a letter addressed to Krane, Kraw and Krin.

But then, one day, Ocean Spray came out with a drink called CranApple juice. That was not a good day for this Kran. Yes, I was called KranApple as a nickname, and I didn't like it very much at all. My cousin Barry had it much worse, though. Imagine being in school and when the teacher called out last name then first - Kran, Barry - I'm sure he cringed each and every time. He's an optometrist today and I sincerely hope that if one of his old classmates who used to tease him comes to see him, he dilates their pupils just for the hell of it. Lord knows I would.

Anyway, after being called KranApple one too many times (i.e. being tormented by bullies) one day I snapped. "I HATE that name! STOP CALLING ME KRANAPPLE!" My tormentor smiled and said, "Okay - KranCracker". How or why he came up with that moniker, I'll never know. But somehow, it stuck with me (in my brain) for the rest of my life. The ironic part is that I can't remember the face or the name of the person who originally called me Kran Cracker. Their identity has faded into obscurity. But Kran Cracker has stuck.

And, since most of us are a little bit crackers at some time or another, and I’m sure I am many times, I thought that calling this Kran's Crackers would be appropriate. As I continue to blog, I just may prove that I am crackers after all. There you have it.

As I blog, I'll share my thoughts on many different topics. You might agree with me, you might not, and that's all right. I welcome all opinions, as long as you voice them with respect. If you’re a troll or a troublemaker, take a hike now. Otherwise, if you just have a differing opinion about something I say, who knows - I might actually learn from you. So don't be afraid to respond to me. Have fun, and enjoy.