Even our resilient and positive mother, Janet Preisel, pictured above, felt a bit down from the health challenges of dealing with cancer. Our father and she had previously retired to North Carolina, and they lived right down the road from her middle child, Colleen. Her bratty youngest, AKA Karin, searched for a way to offer support from New York to Mom between our visits, and "101 Days of Sunshine" was born. Seeing how uplifting it was, I began to write "Bridge to Reminisce" to support Mom from Pennsylvania. The two blogs are related, just like Karin and I are, so I have them linked. An avid reader all her life, Mom enjoyed our amusing stories and would eagerly await new posts. Before she passed, our most supportive fan asked that Karin and I both continue to write after she was gone.





Sunday, October 26, 2014

Get Up- You Are Wasting The Day!

As Karin mentioned, I was one of the green burritos on the cabin's living room floor in my sleeping bag. I was not, and shall ever remain, NOT a morning person at all.  I am a night owl, and usually only saw the sunrise on the back side of a sleepless night.  At the time, I didn't care for the sisterly-tot-turning-me-into-a-trampoline wake-up, Grandpa's Tarzan yell, followed by his looping announcement of  "Get up! You are wasting the day!"  Even the wonderful big band and swing music that I loved our grandparents playing for us seemed slightly less wonderful when it was blasting at 6 AM.


In retrospect, Grandpa Joe made our vacation home possible because he spent years getting up at 5 AM to work at the Alcoa Aluminum Plant in Cleveland. He allowed us the consideration of moving around quietly for the first hour so we could all, as he described it, "sleep in." It was impossible to get seriously annoyed with him, however, because he was so cheerful, and really just wanted to spend as much time in the fun company of his family as possible.


Grandpa joking around before going for a walk

Well, it wasn't completely impossible to get seriously annoyed- his wife, Grandma Kay was definitely was not a morning person either, but in spite of that, she got up and cooked him breakfast at 5 AM for years while he was working. She just wanted to snooze a bit on the weekend mornings.  Her husband was so relentlessly cheerful, that she managed to get in the spirit of things eventually, once she had a cup of strong coffee.

Now, I am very glad Grandpa didn't let us waste even a part of those days.


Camp Road


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