Bye Bye "Birdie" by Diane Ogden

No not Ann Margaret or Janet Leigh in the original movie, but Berdie, you  know, Berdus Knickmeier. (And that's me with her in the photo about ten years ago.) She is in room 261 at the Nazareth House which I don't think has been painted or refurbished in many many years.  Money I suppose. Isn't it always a matter of money?  Green paper? Be different if it were hard gold right before "me" eyes, but its Green Paper that rules the world and Berdie's dying mill where she lives.  I know I know, this isn't happy news from this lady today.  Hey my God Mother is dying in a room all by herself.  They check on her every hour and a half!  No one called Hospice because maybe they are just hick's, I don't know. No wait, the Green Paper is why no one called Hospice. Her Green Paper ran out.
Hey! Nurses did put an oxygen mask on her so she wasn't grey anymore. Now she can live another day in that joint, struggling to die. Hopefully they will give her the "big dose" unbeknown to anyone so she can cross over.  They told me she was crying for her Mama yesterday morning.  That would be Tillie, my Grandma.  Berdie is approximately 98 years old.  She was OK until she fell out of bed because Wisconsin Law doesn't allow the 1/2 length bed rails to be raised at night. Why that's called restraints.  Dumb ass law! Restraints is tying down, not protecting elderly who are like children from falling out of bed..  So Berdie fell out of bed on her head....bye bye Berdie....  I love you forever. P.S. that is the same Nurse Home (Dying Mill) my Dad went to for rehabilitation after knee surgery and almost died because they never moved him.  Maybe Alzheimer's isn't so bad.  At least you don't know your in that joint! And it only hurts the ones you love. Take your pic.

Grandma Tillie Jungbluth's Pffefer-nuts

I have written blogs before about my Grannie Tillie and how good she was to me, how she talks to me from another place or space or dimension. How I can smell her sometimes. She was good to me. She was never anything but a poor farm woman. She milked cows, made cheese and butter from an authentic "huge contraption" called a creme separator. (top photo because I cant get it to move down!) Grandma Till also raised chickens and geese and ducks and she baked cookies. The best cookies ever. She let me eat as many eggs as I wanted, and she hugged me all the time. When I hear the crows I am reminded of the sounds that woke me when I spent the night with her. (Oh and those dark green window shades too.) One would think evil, but it wasn't. Just crows on the farm. eewww. Back to cookies and her life. She told me she always wanted to be somebody. But, that she didn't know how.

So this year she will be somebody all over the United States of America. Grandma Tillie's traditional family Pffefer-nut cookies will and are being shipped all over the country to different relatives and they are under glass! Glass pickle jars that is. I have a friend that has a printing business called Tuxedo Printing, Madison, Wisconsin... and on a minutes notice, because the idea came to me in just about that fast a time, he made me those great labels in the above photo, just for Grandma Till.

I hope she is smiling and not thumping me for not getting enough flour in the dough. You see that 's her secret. These German cookies are to be rock hard and then dropped into hot coffee, let to sit a bit, spooned out to melt in one's mouth. Black strap pure molasses, corn syrup, peanuts, anise, and so on.... They are as amazing as she was. Merry Christmas Tillie, you are somebody special.