ithurtsalot2

Posts: 66

Member

Send a PM

Give a Hug

I have a money saver- I just made home made croutons. for salad or breading chicken. I had some bread that was a bit older than I wanted to use. I sprayed it all up with some cooking spray and spices, I had some ranch by HV in a shaker so I used that too. I have all kinds of spices I never use. I cubed the bread now I am baking on 250 for an hour I am going to watch to see how it does since I havent done this for a long time. My Grandma would be so proud. She never wasted a thing. She lived through the depression as a kid. She was a widow with4 kids by 28, remarried and had 4 more. She had breast cancer with 4 kids still young at home lived through that too. Then she went on disability( she was a hair dresser so it was hard to go back after the masectomy. They were not wealthy but never really did without that I saw. I know it irritated her in her older years to see how wasteful and spoiled we all became. I think that's why we are where we are today with our economy. I am taking responsibility for that too. not just pointing fingers. Hey we need to make a new thread... tell about our most inspirational family member! Could one of the leaders move this to that thread?

Ann in BG

Grandpa came to this country with the clothes on his back at age 16. All of his family died in a fire when he was 12. They learned how to become Americans and adapted to their new life very well.

I am proud to be one of their grandchilren. All the values that they bestowed up on their children were in turn bestowed by their children to the grandkids.

May your troubles be less, Your blessings be more. And nothing but happiness come through your door!

Count me in on the Grandma worshipping. My Grandma moved from the dustbowl to Oregon in the 30s. They bought a farm and put my Dad and his sibs to work practically at birth, but if it hadn't been for that farm both their families would have starved. My Grandma could teach us a lot about "reduce, reuse, recycle"...she washed and reused breadbags, aluminum foil (one roll lasted her a decade). She had a special clothesline on the back porch for drying foil & plastic wrap. She never bought a vegetable in her life, if she couldn't grow & can it, she didn't need it.

It would kill her again if she saw how much money I waste, especially on food and containers to store it.

My other Grandma I didn't know very well. She was taken from her family when she was 5 and sent to a boarding school for Indians. She lived there until well into teens, then came home for a visit and managed to get herself enrolled in the local (white) H.S. She went on to win a major speech tournament, which was quite the accomplishment for an Indian in the public schools in the 20s. She got a job at the Indian School where she was raised and moved back to Carlisle to work & married my Grandpa. They announced she was the queen of the rodeo (first Indian, ever) and she came back to the Rez for that. She had to pin her braids onto her headdress because she was quite the fashionista and had "bobbed" her hair...we joke that she invented hair extensions. She lived off the Rez most of her adult life and assimilated into white society so well I didn't realize she was Indian until I was 6. Later she moved back to the Rez and fit remarkably well into the "traditional" lifestyle for someone who was not raised in it. She died when she was 103, outliving two of her children, including my mother. She made the absolute best jerkey in the world and I cannot eat the crap they sell nowadays.

She could play the piano as well as any classical composer until it hurt her hands too much to do so.

She won more ribbons than I can remember at the state fair for her sewing, needlework, crochet, cutwork, embroidery, canning, baking, candymaking, and every other food category available....several of them, sweepstakes ribbons.

She learned to sew at the age of nine on a treadle sewing machine and made all of her clothes from then on (with a few purchases, here and there). She made all of my clothes too until I got old enough (early teens) to start objecting to it.

She too, was raised in the Depression. She taught me the value of cooking in large quantities and freezing everything, so that one would never go hungry. After divorcing my abusive father, and struggling to raise me in a time when single parenthood was still rather uncommon, we spent a couple of years eating such basics as tuna, beans, and mac and cheese until she was able to buy her first house. All of this while working fulltime as a secretary.

She later re-married and moved into a larger house in a nicer neighborhood. From there, she took a large suburban lot that was nothing but dirt and tumbleweeds, and turned it into an award-winning garden and landscape. She began to specialize in the growth of chrysanthemums - many of them, exotic varieties. After being a multiple award winner in the local Chrysanthemum Society, she went on to become a judge, first locally, then nationally.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after I graduated high school. She was told that the type of cancer she had was a type that commonly spread rapidly. So even though the cancer was only found in one breast, she opted to go for a complete total radical mastectomy. Afterwards, it turned out her other breast was crawliing with cancer that the doctors missed. Thank God she had the foresight to do it all at once.

After helping her through the chemo and radiation for what I believe was two years, she went into remission, only to surprise me after eighteen years with the announcement that she now had metasticized breast cancer that had spread to her bones, and she was dying of cancer.

She lived approximately another two years, trying to keep living her life and trying to stay strong while trailing an oxygen tube around with her everywhere. I finally lost her at the age of 62 after an unbearably painful fight with her disease.

I was her only child. She was my role model and my best friend. I still miss her terribly, even though it's been going on twelve years now. I don't think I will ever fully get over her death and the days preceding it.

What a tough LADY! Gentle Hugs, Ann