Slacker

Our new employee at the office...man, is she a slacker!

Roadblock.

So Pretty....

This beautiful flower in Spring:


Turns into this horrible mess in Fall:

Photo Shoot

And While I'm At It....

This was my home for three years from 1977-80! I started out on the 4th floor, moved to the 3rd floor my second year and had this really cool suite our last year. Our rooms the last year were right above the main entrance. See the four bigger windows with the two smaller ones in between? The smaller ones were our bathroom, the bigger ones were our two bedrooms. And, no...we weren't fortunate enough to have air conditioners in our windows like in this pic! I do recall keeping our fetal pigs in between the screen and the window our freshman year. We had anatomy and physiology at Muhlenberg College and they specifically did the fetal pig during winter so we could keep them there....LOL!! There are lots of memories from my time here in nursing school! Unfortunately, the school graduated its last class in 1988. There was a push then, and continues still, for registered nurses to go to four year programs and get a bachelor's degree. This was a three year, thirty three month, year round diploma program. Many of the diploma programs throughout the country have closed....unfortunately.

I will tell you that we started working in the hospital the second week of the program, and by our second year three days out of every week was spent in the hospital. The four year degree programs didn't even get you into the hospital until your junior year!! Our program was set up that we had three months each of pediatric, maternity, psychiatric and critical care. The four year degree programs had and still have much less time in each specialty. When we graduated, and worked alongside graduates of a college prepared program, some of them had never done IV's, enemas, wound redressings, etc. We were well versed in all of those!

One final note....as a graduate, I was hired to work in the ICU at Allentown Hospital at an hourly rate of $5.92!!

Reflections

Mom and I took a road trip yesterday to visit an old friend. I don't know why, because I've been back to Tower City several times in the past few years, but for some reason yesterday all kinds of memories flooded back while driving through town. We moved there when I was starting 5th grade and I lived there til I graduated in '77. I have fond memories of my time there, but never had any desire to return there after graduating from nursing school. I really haven't kept in touch with too many people from TC other than a couple friends from high school and our former pastor and his wife. I recently managed to hook up with a couple high school classmates on Facebook, who I haven't seen since graduation!

Here's where I graduated from high school:


*All the girl's basketball games that I served as manager for the team. The championships won. The announcements made before every home game. The Star-Spangled Banner played prior to each game by holding the mike up to the 33 record speaker...LOL!!

*The enjoyment I got from serving as a library aide

*The teasing I took for the nicknames I was given over the years

*Going to the roller skating rink for gym class and failing miserably on skates

*Absolutely hating gymnastics during gym class....horse, parallel bars, ropes, rings....YUCK!!

*Having a crush on my health teacher

*Loving photography and the blackroom

*Stuffing an opossum in biology

*Being inducted into the National Honor Society my senior year

*My first embroidery project in 7th grade (a crewel in which I embroidered the saying Make Love, Not War....LOL!!!)

*Graduating class of 129

See this area where the trailer sits? Our house used to sit on this property, until it went up in flames on New Year's Eve in 1983.

*Having my step-sister and step-brother live with us at one point

*Fun with close friends: sleep-overs in their pop-up camper, having seances and bringing back George Washington (LOL!), going roller skating on Friday nights (I just watched), hiking up the mountain behind our house and having cook-outs on the old rail road tracks, throwing corn on Halloween and having rock salt shot at us, Girl Scouts, youth group events, dipping toast in hot chocolate

*Gretchen (our sweet miniature schnauzer who was lost in the fire)

*Eating mountain oysters (don't ask.)

*Getting pizza from Mione's...yum.

*Three channels on the TV, that had to be changed by hand...there were no remotes

*Getting our first microwave

*Betty falling down the steps in her high heels

*No shower

*Fishing with dad (This is the Clarks Valley Dam, we spent many a morning there and in creeks surrounding the dam)


This was our church:


*Youth group events

*Annual Birthday Party

*George and Carol, our Youth Group advisors

*Singing in the choir

*Preaching a sermon that one year (I got tons of help from Pastor Sonnenberg...LOL!)

*Being confirmed by Pastor Cloughen

*Babysitting for Linsy and Art's two little ones (who are now in their 30's I might add!)

This is the rear of the sportswear factory that mom and dad owned....Pridia Blouse:


*The rickety old elevator I rode up and down in many, many times

*Feeling like I lived there some days

*All the wonderful women that worked there

*The air-conditioner in the office (and lack of it in the rest of the building!)

*Gloria

*Working in the finishing department, attaching the tags with those pellet guns, piece-rate

*The soda machine and snack box (see below...I can't believe this company still exists...I don't believe I have seen these since I left TC in 1977. I found these at the grocery store mom and I stopped at yesterday on our way home. They were $0.69 per piece...if I recall correctly they used to be $0.25 each.)

And finally, the personality that came from Tower City (enlarge it to read it better):

Ahhh...memories.....I'm sure there's many I missed, but this is a good start!

It's My Birfday!

Easter Day!

We had an early start to the day. Here we are at the Easter breakfast at church at about 7 am:

Dinner was at Chris and Fiona's house; here's a pic of the table that Alyssa and Chris set:

Kieran made the place cards (Great Job!)
Donnalee made the fruit salad

Me cooking (candid, unplanned shot, BTW!!)

All of us (minus Grandma, Jim & Donnalee....more on that later...)

Dessert:

Colm on his daddy's lap

Adorable shot of Colm with Adam and Erika

Conor and Kieran at the computer

Playing Wii (Adam finally found a hat that fits...LOL)

Alyssa and Colm playing

All three kids at the computer

Our Easter didn't turn out quite as it had been planned. I offered to make dinner at Chris and Fiona's as Fiona was away on business (we missed you, btw!). We no sooner got there when we had to call 911 for Grandma. She wasn't feeling well, had a fever of 104 degrees and was eventually diagnosed with pneumonia and bacteremia. Jim and Donnalee left shortly after the ambulance left to meet her in the ER, and then followed her to her room once they had one assigned to her. So unfortunately, we had three less attendees at Easter Dinner. Donnalee kept us updated as the day wore on, but were unable to return for dinner. We missed them all and send our prayers to Grandma for a speedy recovery!

In The Garden

Song by Michael Card, sung by Kurt on Maundy Thursday

Easter Eve

While I was slicing tomorrow's ham:


There was a mean game of Monopoly going on:

On Clouds and Flowers

Cutie Pies

Jamie's newest purchase...soy nut butter. We all tasted it, it's very similar to peanut butter. It's a bit of a different color, and the consistency is a teeny bit different, but other than that, I don't think, for the most part that one would notice the difference.

Soy nut butter cookies, here we come....LOL!!

Donate Life!

I attended a transplant conference at Lehigh Valley Hospital on Friday. They had very informative topics, all of which had something that applied to my practice in the office. Our transplant patients are the most favorite part of my job. The majority of them are very appreciative of the gift they have been given, be it from a deceased or living donor. The topics presented yesterday included pregnancy in transplant, tissue typing, disease transmission in transplant, gastric bypass in the chronic kidney disease patient preparing for transplant, and my most favorite....a panel of patients who received transplants talked about their experiences. I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the crowd after they were done.

I don't know the story about this quilt, other than I heard one of the staff of the transplant team mention that it was opened to any of the patients to make their own block. One of them was made by one of our office patients! I think it is just beautiful and a wonderful tribute to both the patients and transplant team staff.

Prankster!

I should have known I was in for trouble! I heard Adam at the computer on April Fools' Eve looking up different pranks to play for April Fools' Day....shoulda' known....but didn't.....

I couldn't squeeze any toothpaste out of my toothpaste container OR get anything out of my body wash yesterday morning when I got in the shower. I fought and fought to get toothpaste out of the container, I had both hands on it squeezing the might out of it. I ran hot water over the opening figuring there was toothpaste clogged in it....I stuck one of my toothbrush bristles in the opening, it seemed like all was fine, but.......nothing worked. Fortunately, I had an unopened container of toothpaste that I turned to...and had no problems!

Then I get in the shower, try to squeeze my Pomegranate Soft Soap out of the bottle......nothing. I'm like, 'What the heck?!?!?' How could this be? What are the chances?!?!!?

ADAM!!!!!!!!!

(He fessed up to me last night that he had put saran wrap in both the toothpaste and the body soap which prevented anything from coming out. In addition, had he not overslept yesterday morning, he had planned on switching all the drawers around in the kitchen! Gotta love 'im!!)