I was thinking that this past year has been very uneventful for me, and that nothing either really good or really bad happened to me.

Then it dawned on me...I found Blogstream in 2006 and that is the best thing that happened to me in a long time. I love getting up in the morning and checking my e-mail, and then going around to visit all your blogs and catching up on your latest news.

So thank you to all my Blogstream friends, I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year.

I got a phone call from my sister yesterday.

My father’s sister, who is my favorite aunt worked for many years in a supermarket deli, and her husband was a subway conductor. They lived in a nice house in Long Island, and they 2 sons. The older son, served in the military, got married, bought a house, worked hard and opened up his own business, but he died of cancer in his 40’s. After that his wife sold the house and moved to FL to be near her parents.

The younger son bounced form job to job, always getting fired. He got married and had 4 children, they bought a house but didn’t make the payments and it was foreclosed on.

So my aunt let them move in with her. They had the whole upstairs and she lived in 2 small rooms in the basement. Her house was paid off but she agreed to take out a mortgage because her son needed money so they put the rest of the money in a joint bank account.

A few weeks ago she went out to get the mail and her 21 year old grandson ran out and grabbed it right out of her hand, and wouldn’t give it back, he told her his father wanted to see all the mail first. She had seen that it was from the mortgage company, so she called my cousin Angela to ask her to check into it.

Angela made some phone calls and found out that she no longer owns the house. The other day my aunt had a big fight with her son and his wife and she called my cousin Angela who heard them screaming and cursing at her. So my cousin decided to drive out and get her. Meanwhile my aunt wanted to go to the bank to withdraw the money from the joint account she had with her son and put it into her own account.

Her son physically tried to stop her from going, he grabbed her and she fell on the ground screaming and he tried to drag her back into the house. The neighbors came out and told him to stop it or they would call the cops. This woman is in her 80’s and has had open heart surgery. They left her alone and so she walked to the bank to transfer the money and her son, his wife and his son all showed up, yelling and cursing and making a scene, so the bank threatened to call the police if they didn’t leave.

Now my aunt is staying with my cousin in Brooklyn, my brother who is a lawyer is going to go over and talk to her son and see what situation what the house is, but it looks like it was foreclosed on and her son spent all the money from her account instead of using it to make the monthly payments.

Luckily we have a large family and will all do what we can to help my aunt out, by now her son and his family may have moved out and taken all her furniture.

My Christmas was okay, first the good parts, my daughter was feeling better and was here with me instead of being at her dad’s. I spoke to my family on the phone and all is well with them, and I had an hour long conversation with my son which was really nice, we hardly ever talk for that long on the phone. And my husband cooked a wonderful meal.

Now the annoying parts, when I woke up in the morning my husband informed me that we had no water. We have a well and the pump had overheated and shut down. There are no plumbers available on Christmas and no hardware stores open, so the situation looked bleak. Luckily my husband found that the problem was with the water filter, so he disconnected it when the pump cooled down he turned it back on and it worked.

Then we had a major storm, heavy winds and rain, but luckily our power did not go out as it often does. There were severe tornados about 2 hours north of here and people lost their homes on Christmas day, that’s just so sad.

We were having dinner at 4:00, my husband’s daughter and her 10 year old daughter came over at around 3:30, I had a family Christmas movie on the television and her cell phone began to ring playing a loud obnoxious song. She looked at it and didn’t want to talk to the person who was calling and so it kept ringing about 5 times.

At 4:00 my telephone rang the same time as the doorbell did, I took the phone into the bedroom to talk to my daughter, about 10 minutes later I went back into the living room where my husband’s son and his girlfriend, and the daughter and her daughter were sitting and I starting talking to them, apologizing for being on the phone and they all just ignored me, and the son turned up the volume on the TV. He had changed the channel and they were watching a movie.

So I just ignored them and went into the kitchen to help my husband. We have a small dinning room table so we had the food laid out in the kitchen on the counter so that everyone could make a plate in there and bring in to the dinning room table. Since I was already in the kitchen, I was the first one to make a plate and sit down at the dinning room table. So then the daughter, son and girlfriend all make their plates and walk right past me and go into the living room back to their movie.

The nine year old, my daughter and my husband sat with me, and we ate while the TV was blaring the “F” word.

In the past I have told the daughter that I did not allow my daughter to watch R rated movies and I have asked her to change the channel when she put one on over here, but yesterday I did not want to cause a fuss. Luckily they left right after the movie.

As usual they came over empty handed, my husband gets a bonus every year and gives them each $200 dollars the week before Christmas so they can do their shopping, yet they don’t buy anything for us. Not even a Christmas card, candy cane or cookie. They are not children they are 29, and 27 years old, they didn’t even say Merry Christmas, they just ate a free meal and left.

I hope they enjoyed it because I am sick of it and we are not doing it next year, if it takes me all year I will think of some way to get out of it. Maybe I’ll go up north to spend a real Christmas with my family next year.

I hope all my Blogstream friends are enjoying the holidays.

Yesterday my daughter and I went to see The Lion King. It was an amazing production, the costumes and the movements of the people playing animals were wonderful and so was the music. There were 2 very talented 10 year old children in the show as well.

My daughter said that it was the best Christmas present she ever got.

Today she is not feeling well, she wanted to go over to her dad's anyway, but I said no. I think she was actually relieved, she doesn't like to disappoint him, but she needs to stay home in bed where I can take care of her.

My husband will be cooking a seafood dinner tonight, I can't wait.



Youngest daughter, 1991