Ladies ready to go out!

Some of our figures standing in the hall outside the paint room, waiting to head out to a show!

License Plates again!

 I'm sort of a Dr. Who fan, so enjoyed  this Tardis plate.  Especially when located on one of those boxy Scion cars!  Also my pleasure was enhanced by the Ray Gun decal on the window with it's design take off on the Christian Fish symbol --- below.  I also love the unintended self portrait!

 On a sort of science fiction related theme, the Solar EV plate below - on a Chevy Volt!

 And - below - unrelated, but still fun!

More to come.

Spring!

Spelling Police

Really?

Paper Ladies

We make and sell a lot of 3" tall paper ladies.
Those who ask what they are for usually don't buy any!

I just really liked these two pictures. Top - a few that didn't quite fall out after the laser went by. Bottom - a pile of paper ladies in the bottom of the laser box.

Top Spinning on the Titanic

Don't know if this GIF animation of a boy spinning a top on the deck of the Titanic will work or not?

I guess not!

66 years!

Today is the 66th anniversary of my parents first wedding - April 8th 1945 ----- April 8th 2012!

To shorten the story, there were a few hard years along the way, and they separated for a while, and led different lives, married other people, and did good things. Somehow, when their separate lives each independently changed direction, they found each other again, and in November of 1972, they were married again!

Long and interesting lives that I have been blessed to be a part of!

Today, with any luck, I will be getting Mom and Dad together to celebrate quietly. Mom is living in Kirkhaven nursing home because Dad can't handle caring for her at home any more. Dad is in re-hab at different local nursing home recovering from another bout of his congestive heart failure. I'm looking forward to the day! The later afternoon will be spent with our son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren and other extended family.
Life is good.
Life is an adventure.
Life is a learning experience.

A day at Genesee Country Village and Museum

A step back in time! Come join us for some battery free games in the Thompson Barn. Meet Topman Don Olney, and learn to spin a top. Also lots of other games with Beth, Kevin, and Judy and some maple syrupy goodness across town!To be truthful, I had to crop out a speed limit sign on the one above because I didn't get my camera out of the holster fast enough!

Above - Don spins a big Watt's Top to show off. But lots of folks young and old have learned to spin tops over these two weekends. Since I'm posting this Sunday morning, you may still have time to join us at Genesee Country Village and Museum

First Daffodils!

March 18, 2012 - our first three daffodils unfolded today! Strange warm and early spring after an almost non-existent winter... about 1/3 the usual snow! Previous daffodil pictures seem to be mostly from early to mid April! Also, while I did not get any pictures today, Dad and I saw several willows all decked out in their first spring gold. Previous years, my pictures of this annual spring treat were also from mid April. More frost and snow may hit this year, but spring seems to be almost a month early! I even heard spring peepers on my way home last night! A friend posted today that her first spring lettuce has come up in the garden!

Am I feeling blessed or worried?

Another new design

New African Dancer figure!

Available as a pin (simpler figure) as 15" tall figures - as shown, and as 29" tall figures.

I'm not sure why, but pressure - like getting ready for the Kennedy Center show - often brings out new designs. This time we got two... this African Dancer, and our revision of Lena ....
Lena 2012

Telemedicine

Dad posing with his new HomMed system.

Some really cool medicine that looks like a life saver, and a cost saver!

Dad's home nursing folks have installed a telemedicine system that monitors his vitals on a daily basis. Weight, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and oxygen level between 8 and 8:30 AM 7 days a week. The machine prompts him when to step on the scales, put on the blood pressure cuff, etc. He also has to answer a few questions about shortness of breath, swelling in legs, etc. by pushing YES or NO buttons! The info is transmitted via phone line to a central monitoring station. He gets a call from the nurse if his numbers are outside the limits considered OK. We know it works, because on his first morning, the nurse called him because his oxygen level was low. She did not know that Dad had a bad time earlier that morning, and a nurse had already been to the house, and adjusted his meds in consultation with his heart doctor! The monitoring nurse said OK, but to call her if there were any further problems!

New Design

This is a new 2012 version of our original Lena figure. She originally had a straight dress, but now she has more movement!

Lena used to look like the picture below.

Believe it or not, the above picture was a drawing for a large Lena figure we mounted on a door for a customer's guest room! Below - the piece laid out on the door before we painted her.

Why do we destroy beauty?

In 1965, we (Rochester, NY) tore down this New York Central Train Station.- Postcard above, and photo below.

It was replaced with the building below!

Why do we do these things?

Mom and Dad

Where to start? My plan was that beginning with the new year I was going to try to get back to daily blogging. I really enjoy blogging, and was looking forward to trying for another run of over 100 daily blogs? As the old adage goes, life is what happens while we make other plans? Or something like that?

January 1st, I took my Dad to the hospital. Our neighborhood hospital is right up the street ... my Dad likes to comment that "we can see Highland Hospital from our kitchen window". He had been complaining for a couple of days about a minor cold, but mostly about just feeling weak and out of breath with the slightest effort. We had decided to call his doctor after the holiday, but when Cheryl came over to their place that afternoon, she said - "Call the doctor NOW!" The ER at Highland was wonderful, and within about 50 minutes we had our diagnosis, and treatment was underway..... pneumonia and congestive heart failure. A subsequent visit to his heart doctor a week later added that his long standing atrial fibrillation was probably the main factor. To make a long story short, Dad spent a week in the hospital, followed by two weeks of rehab at the Episcopal Church Home - also right down the street, and he is now home, and doing quite well thank you.

The "rest of the story" is that for almost three years, Dad has been the primary care giver for my Mom who has been dealing with slowly advancing dementia of unknown origin. Recently her memory problems have been getting worse. With Dad in the hospital, I (with a lot of help from Cheryl) spent full time with Mom because she is totally unable to cope alone. Bless her, she so badly wanted to help take care of Dad, but had no idea of what to do or how to proceed! The above picture is of them holding hands during one of Mom's daily visits to his room on the heart care unit.

On January 6th, Mom went into "transitional care". She is in a special unit with 24 hour a day care, and is on the waiting list for the "memory care" unit of another neighborhood institution - Kirkhaven nursing home. Also on January 6th, Dad was transferred to the rehab unit mentioned above, and worked very hard at regaining his strength and stamina. His best prognosis however is that while he can probably function fine on his own at home, he will never have the ability to handle the amount of care and constant attention that would be required to continue to have Mom at home with him.

We had been asked to not visit Mom for a while because it would make it harder for her to adjust to the change in her life, and while it was difficult, we did not see her for about a week. I did go visit her about a week ago, and she seemed to be doing well given her circumstances. Dad and I went to see her today.... first time Dad has seen her in two weeks. We stayed about an hour, and it went quite well. She was very quiet and sort of "spacey", and while she seemed glad to see us, and knew who we were, she just sat quietly and held our hands. Leaving was not as difficult as we thought it might be.

Lest you think me heartless, the advice to not visit her was good advice. Several other people confirmed the difficulty people with dementia have dealing with changes, and that visits from friends and family actually make the process a lot harder.

Mom is doing as well as can be expected given her level of dementia. Dad is doing quite well, and looks the best he has in quite a while, because he can actually sleep through the night, and Don is feeling good too, because Dad is doing well, and Mom is getting the best possible care under the circumstances. While I still carry my cell phone 24 hours a day, and sleep with it on the nightstand, I probably won't be getting the regular emergency "help" calls from Dad. Dad and I are sleeping more soundly now.

Many heartfelt thanks to all the folks at Highland Hospital, Episcopal Church Home, and Independent Living for Seniors!

Thus the missing first 22 daily blogs from 2012!

Spelling????

I'm not commenting on her skills with kids, but don't hire her to teach your kids anything!

And, while I missed getting a picture, I saw a car driving away from the Wegmans parking lot with a plate on the front that said

LICENCE

December assortment

Haven't posted in a while, so here goes an assortment of December 2011 stuff.
Above - a bottle tree Mom and I found in Fairport, NY on one of our Tuesday "just wander around and take lots of left turns" drives. Actually, this particular Tuesday drive had some method in the madness. I wanted to see if I could get Mom to confirm some information I had about places she lived in Fairport many years ago. We couldn't confirm anything, but we had a great time. We hit some streets that I had never been on, despite living in Fairport area for pretty much all of my childhood! As we sat looking at this bottle tree, I spotted a cemetery behind the homes on the other side of the street, and we then drove around and found
Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Civil War Monument in the cemetery.

Above - CJ at the diner, and below, Maya trying a violin at preschool.
Grandchildren are an important part of any month!

Below our 2011 Christmas ornament of the annual holiday party at the Palmeri home.
This year a top that doubles as an ornament! Not a great picture, but I loved that spinning the top in the lid to the cookie tin yielded a view of the other color on the bottom of the top!

Below, a creche puzzle created by our friends Russell and Sue Greenslade graces the mantle at the Sams household! The missing palm tree piece on the left has since been found!

Happy New Year!
Maya - always on the lookout for a project to do - wants to make a bottle tree!
Past Bottle tree posts...
Bottle tree in the neighborhood and Bottle Bush

Old Whistle made by The Toycrafter

Maya's preschool teacher found this among some old Christmas ornaments, and was very excited to show it to me the other day when I was there to work with the kids. The date on the side is 1979, but may have been made at any time over a number of years as I never changed the copyright stamp that we used on these whistles. This one illustrates very nicely the design system I used in designing this and 5 other whistles -- all based on the basic "police" whistle. Mentally remove the upper portion of the music note, and you have a classic metal (or plastic) pea whistle. We used actual cork balls just like the originals. Blowing on the whistle causes the cork pea to rotate around inside the chamber, with the whistle noise stopping each time the pea passes by the opening. Check out the video/audio below.

I won't go into all the details, but the first designs of "pea" whistles that I did all utilized the same basic blank to create two whistles from each blank. We could create a few hundred blanks, and then later cut out whatever style we needed..... music note, Zwiggle (see picture below), bird, etc. (I can't make my memory bring up the other designs right now) Also shown below is a Saguaro Cactus whistle that I made for my Dad who lived in Arizona for a number of years, and loves all things Arizona!
We usually used the yellow nylon cord loop on the whistles as shown in the music note picture at the top, but for a while we tried using a key chain hook, but these did not sell as well as we had hoped. Below, you can see the opening in the whistle that is the key to the whistle. The whistle is a very simple musical instrument, with air blowing over a hollow space creating a tone. The size of the hollow space determines the pitch. If you take the lower portion of the music note above, and mentally place it over the Zwiggle body, you can see that the exact same whistle blank can be used for both pieces. More about Zwiggles

Below is the Saguaro Cactus I made for Dad!
Also from the same basic whistle blank.

Community Puzzle with Maya's PreSchool Class

Grandpa Don took some Community Puzzles to Maya's Preschool class... morning and afternoon sessions.

Above - the Community Puzzle partially completed during the morning session.

Below (and below that) the completed puzzle toward the end of the afternoon session.

Somewhere around 20 years ago, I created The Community Puzzle. I subsequently sold the product to a friend, who has since sold it to someone else, etc., until it is now owned and distributed by California Paper Goods Company.

Maya and Grandpa made one at home a while back.

Frost

Just in case you thought frost was something simple?

Click pictures above and below to embiggen - not as big as they used to be, but still pretty cool - Get it?? Cool???

Pharmacist?