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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

My personal snap thoughts of 2011

There are four months I literally live for...May, June, July and August...the rest are just filler months...kind of like eating a lettuce before your big steak dinner...yes, salad is nice, but it's really just there to give the chef a chance to grill the steak--which in my case--is seriously just a couple of minutes. Now, back to my true love...my "next year's garden..." Named "next year garden" because maybe next year...I'll get it right...however, this year...

I ignored my garden for one week, and the mint plants took over! Who wants mojitos?

This was a really challenging year as far as gardens went...hot, cold, rainy, dry, early frost, it seemed like I was forever heading outdoors to lay blankets on my plants, but since I only had so many blankets...I started to feel a little like "Sophie's Choice..." which plants do I save and which do I let freeze?

I have an 86 year old neighbor I adore; one Sunday morning in August as she was walking her dog (and I was attempting to make sense of my yard) she shared that her nieces accused her of criticizing their yard to which she replied "you know I wouldn't do that unless I was asked for my opinion...for instance, you (me) need to weed your garden, but I would never tell you unless you asked." (My neighbor Violet is 86, and she can say whatever she wants to me...but that was so damn funny I had to share that with you!!!)



A few year's ago I had a cable show with a friend of mine called Rockin' The Cable Show on West Allis Cable channel 14...this year it was renamed Brew City Bands and it's a show that honors the hardworking Milwaukee area bands that maybe, you don't really hear too much about but their out there busting their behinds bringing you great music, and they deserve to be recognized. This is the Tony Memmel band with Tony's beautiful wife Lesleigh, Tony, myself, and Brian Favour. I was also blessed to have my beautiful friend (since 1988!!!) and incredibly talented singer Ronnie Nyles with Tallulah Who, Brian Smith and his (Johnny Cash) tribute band God's Outlaw, Craig Omick who just blew the roof off of our 72nd and Greenfield studio in West Allis with GROOVE NATION; The pride of William's Bay, Wisconsin, and international singer who now lives in Chicago, Martha Berner...and the band Genuine Drive who just blew me away this summer at the Wisconsin State Fair, they're just incredible so I begged and stalked them and finally got them on the show. Paul Kuhn was another delight, and he has a song that should be Milwaukee's official theme--Springtime in Milwaukee;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKWLX-H6_Qc
...Brew City Bands is aired every Thursday at 5p and then again at 9p, and then again Friday morning at 3am and 2p. Starting next week (after January 1st) you'll be able to get the show in New Berlin.


This was a picture my friend Brian McNary posted on his facebook page a couple of months before he passed away from pancreatic cancer on May 21, 2011. He was a friend I had known since high school, and one who, thanks to facebook, got back in touch with me a year before he passed, and for that I'm grateful. When I was laid off over a year ago, he sent me funny jokes, and could always put a smile on my face. What a blessing, and what a loss his death was, to his friends, family, and kitty.

A dear friend of mine from Green Bay, Hal Greene fought two different cancers and passed away July 26, 2011. The problem with following your dreams in radio is in order to stay employed you have to move far away from family with no one to help you when you work overnight shifts and have young children. Hal and his angel wife Lori, stepped in and were family to us--there is no way I would've survived Green Bay with children without them. And I'm glad Hal lived long enough to see his garden again...like me, he lived for the summer.

Rocky McGrorty...close family friend who fearlessly battled stage four melanoma for years...shortly before he started to lose his battle (August 15), he insisted on running in the Sampson Stomp race at the Zoo this past winter...I can't type anymore about him, I'm just too sad.

There was another graduation party this year...



My baby girl grew up and I dropped her off for her first day of college, and I was thinking about the first time she went to kindergarten and just how much I cried, because it meant she was growing up. And I cried today...because I just saw the bill!

I had another birthday and I'm another year older and not ashamed to admit my age...29! And I have no trouble believing this lie as long as I don't look in a mirror, or step on a scale, or stand in the same room as my grandson when he's looking at me and yelling "GRANDMA!"

I really discovered that I have so much to be thankful for...friends, family, great job, and I have no right to complain or gripe about anything...I don't know if I could've handled what my sister-in-law's sisters went through this past year in Japan. Joyce is a Baptist missionary in Japan and June and her family live in Fukushima, Japan, where the damaged nuclear power plant was...after the earthquake there was no food to buy, and the only water they had was what they put in their bathtub right after the earthquake...they were not affected by the tsunami but the power plant, well, that was another story.

Earlier this year Bristol Palin, the daughter of Sarah, wrote her autobiography at age 20!!! I'll tell you what my autobiography at age 20 would've said..."overslept this morning, again!...gas just went up to 45 cents a gallon...who can afford to drive anymore?"....um, I was 20 a LONG time ago...If I wrote it today it would read simply, blessed.

God bless you,

Love,

Cindy