Day +76 “What a Little Moonlight Can Do”

Here we are, better than three quarters of the way through this longest journey. I feel great… still a little shaky on my feet because of the neuropathy… but I managed to do three laps tonight. Only two last night, but I felt better tonight. There is a little problem: Becky and Sean gave me a new 16G Nano for father’s day. No, that’s not the problem, but the Nano has a Pedometer built in. I set it when I started to walk this evening and when I was done I had 2916 steps. Using a nominal 3 ft stride (even though I’m a little vertically challenged), that works out to 1.66 miles. Becky had measured (on the computer) the circle and came out with .41 miles per lap or 1.23 miles. ??? Tony is going to re-measure on the computer again and see how it works out.

The other night I mentioned my Grandmother… quite a gal… died a couple of months short of her 101^st birthday. Lots of stories about “Nonnie” as all her 28 grandchildren called her, but I try to tell a few. My folks were living with my grandparents in 1949 getting ready to break ground on their new house. Unfortunately, my grandfather died in the summer of ’49 and left a 50 year old widow who had never worked outside the home and a 10 year old (my uncle Anthony)… ouch. My parents agreed to stick around to get her through this difficult time and ended up staying 10 years. So I grew up with Nonnie.

She went to 7 AM mass every morning and I always waited for her to come home. The coffee on the stove was cold so she used to mix the coffee and milk in a pan and heat it up…latte e caffè, as she called it. She was a renaissance woman… the LATTE. It was always accompanied with some toast… sometimes with Italian bread, and then a special treat, an anisette toast. I was only pre-school age at the time and loved getting spoiled.

We finally got a TV around 1951 and she zeroed right in on the soaps at noon… nobody could bother her during that time. Then on Friday nights I remember there was “I Remember Mama”… how she loved that show! “Rin Tin Tin” was on either before or after “Mama” and with my father bowling with the Holy Name on Friday’s we had the whole night covered… at least for me, I was in bed by eight. Her love affair with the soaps continued for many years. But Friday night would not be complete without a couple of hands of “Double Solitaire”. Nonnie’s love of playing cards was almost a passion and as long as she won, she was happy. Winning was everything, even if it meant “changing” the rules in mid-game, or moving a card or two when a fidgety five year old was looking the other way! How that woman could cheat at cards!!!

Love you all… thanks for the prayers and good thoughts.