MUSIC OF MY LIFE

Mostly sunny with temperatures steady or slowly rising into the low 60s. Winds light and variable.

I hope last night is the last night we have to cover the plants. It is a real pain in the neck.

My husband surprised me and stopped by my office for lunch today. We have a little cafe just off the lobby of the nursing home and the chef that cooks for the residents/patients also cooks for the cafe. I think the food her is surprisingly good and my father never had a complaint while he was here for two years. They just so happened to have my husbands favorite, mac and cheese.

My husband was on his way back from the consulting firm that he worked for last summer. He retired from the NYS Thruway Authority a few years back and now he works as a consultant in the civil engineering field for bridge and road projects. It usually means that he works every summer and has the winter off. He wanted to check on the design of the road he worked on last summer and see if they could modify the one he is working on this summer to work the same. So we had a quick lunch and off he went to either go home or back to work he had not decided yet.

We will check in later with my daughter's cat. Coco or Coco Chanel as my daughter calls her. She tells everyone that she is a designer cat. I just call her Coco Bean. She is a very shy cat and when my daughter rescued her from the animal shelter she almost passed her over because she just sat crouched way in the back of the cage. She was either abused or had a lot of different homes. But my daughter saved her and she acts a lot differently when my daughter is home, but with us she is just so fearful. Initially we thought we would bring her home to our house while my daughter was gone, but I think she would literally have a heart attack in a strange house, with strange people and two other cats. So even though we feel she may be lonely, we think she is better off. When we first arrive there she must hear us coming, either she recognizes our car or our voices as we approach the door. We find her behind the couch. The first chance she gets to bolts to the walk in closet. If she could she would run under the bed, but my daughter has brand new bedroom furniture and bedding and she doesn't want to come home to any accidents. Coco has a tendency to wet on anything new or anything new on the floor. One time my daughter was packing for a trip and she had the suitcase opened on the floor and Coco decided to pee in the suitcase on the clothes that were already packed. That was a disaster. My daughter had looked in a lot of stores before she found the suitcase she wanted and she refused to use the one the cat peed in so that meant another far and wide search for the same suitcase. There she sits in the closet until we leave. We scoop her box, give her fresh food and water and then sit on the couch just calling for her to come and play, but she won't have anything to do with us. I feel so bad for her, I don't' tell my daughter, she would be very upset.
My daughter and I recently took a cruise with family, an all girls trip. My husband went to visit Coco everyday while we were gone for 10 days. He did say that she eventually would come and sit with him and let him pet her so I am hopeful that she will get use to this routine because my daughter has work in CT for at least 3 more weeks.

The musical me comes in just a few stages.

- When I was a pre-teens and discovered 45's and had a record player. We would listen to the top ten on the AM radio and beg our parents to buy us the 45's, probably the Beatles.

- When I was in high school in the late 60's it was the Beach Boys, Herman Hermits, The Rolling Stones.

- In college it was leftovers from Woodstock.

- After I was married I listened to Kasey Kasum every weekend for the top 40, who I might mention, my husband disliked immensely.

- Then I had my daughter and music was more or less gone from my life.

- When I got back on the music wagon I was amazed at the differences in music. At least I could understand the words in the songs when I was younger, everything was rap.

- So my last and I hope final stage is Country Pop. I can understand all of the words and OMG are those country male singers good looking. They all love their mothers and their wives, according to the music they sing. The complete opposite of what those rappers are singing. I can sing along, in the privacy of my car driving alone, and I can understand the words.