You Are Remembered!

 Truth or Crest and Colgate and ADA propaganda?  

There is something that has been bothering me for quite some time. If sweets cause cavities why are most toothpastes sweet? They trying to keep that urge for sweetness in our minds so we continue eating sweets so we keep getting cavities and have to keep going to the dentist. I say the American Dental Association is behind this. I know we can use baking soda to brush our teeth but they have me addicted to the sweetness. Every time I type sweetness I think of Walter Payton.

Yesterday I was whisked-away to Machesney Park, Illinois to get my new CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine. I used it last night and I think I slept better that usual though I remember fiddling with the hose (on the machine!) off-and-on all night long. This morning, when I turned the machine off, it read that I slept 7.3 hours and had 5.3 episodes per hour. I am not really sure what that means (the "episodes" part) but maybe that is when I have breathing issues? Perhaps I will read the paperwork that came with the machine sometime.

On the way back home from my appointment the car drove by Harlem Cemetery in either Loves Park or Machesney Park. I remember when I was a yute, when we lived in Rockford, IL, Machesney Park didn't even exist - it was just Rockford and Loves Park. I now looked and Machesney Park didn't become a village until 1981 for you Rockford area history hounds. Anyway, after the Jeep drove by the cemetery it said something like, "hey, isn't that where your grandparents are buried and your parents own land (plots) there?" and she just turned around and there we went. The cemetery is on a crazy-busy corner (Harlem and Alpine) and it is totally surrounded by hustle-bustle stores and filling stations and the like. When I was a kid it was in the MIDDLE of nowhere. I bet there have been offers to buy that land but, messing with the dead, always seems to stop those kinds of talks. Anyway, I unlatched the gate (they have a chain with a hook on one end), walked in, re-latched the gate and started walking toward the other end of the cemetery. It is a pretty small cemetery next to a small church. I new exactly where to go to find my grandparents' headstone. On the way to the spot I looked around for a rock to place on the headstone. I could only fine one stone in the entire walk to the gravesite - nice work groundskeepers! The first time I remember seeing that was in Schindler's List and I loved the idea. I guess it is a Jewish tradition to place a rock on the headstones of people you love. There are several different theories of why this tradition began. Some say it is just to show the dead that they are remembered - that evolved into flowers when florists began, I suppose. Others say it comes from when shepherds used to keep track of how many sheep they had by keeping pebbles in a sling and, by placing a stone on the headstone, it means that God has added one more lamb to his flock. Some say that it is meant to signify the way graves were originally marked - with a pile of stones (probably where the word "headstone" comes from). There are more theories but those are the ones I like best. Anyway, I could only find a tiny little rock but a rock is a rock. So, I picked it up and now there is a tiny "headstone" on my grandparents' headstone. Maybe it is significant because I was a tiny four-year-old when my grandpa died. I felt like it was just fate (or maybe just happenstance) that I passed that cemetery, happened to look over at the precise moment to see it and decided to ask the Jeep to turn-around. I hope it somewhere in the cosmos it made somebody smile and feel remembered. I have thought about both of them quite a bit since placing that stone yesterday so, apparently, it does work!

The tiny little stone place by a 51-year-old four-year-old

Tomorrow Cha Cha and I are headed back to the big city of Chicago for more medical fun. It is just a "routine" procedure to make sure that she is doing well with her new intestines. She was supposed to have gone back before now but my medical escapades threw a Matty Wrench into that plan. I am still working on getting all of the previous medical bills (her and mine) straightened-out and paid and now we will have a few more. I am pretty sure we have "sucker" tattooed to our files someplace. She has been doing pretty well though there are some minor issues that may come to fruition. I am not borrowing trouble just mentally preparing myself. Regardless, we are much better health-wise than we were at the end of last year and earlier this year. Don't start collecting stones to place by our names quite yet.

I have run out of steam and I have lots to do so I guess that is all I have in my writing tank for today. Thank you. so very kindly, for stopping-in. I hope you have a fantastic day; I have other plans. TTTT...MITM (out) TA!