But now I'm setting an alarm on Saturday mornings. I haven't had to set an alarm to wake up for years working the hours I do. It's very different waking up to any kind of alarm as opposed to just waking up naturally. I was always one of those persons that pushed the snooze button. Way too many times. I've never been good with alarm clocks and probably the biggest arguments I had with my mom were of her waking me up after I pushed snooze too many times and then she would wake me and I'd yell at her to let me sleep. Then I would oversleep the next morning and ask her why she didn't wake me! The nerve huh!?
So this past Saturday I set my alarm, went to Joey's to watch Bella and take her to her basketball practice and game at 10:30 while Joey took the boys to Robert's 9:00 basketball game but ended up going to Robert's game until Bella and I had to leave for her game. During our drive, Bella told me that her dog Mugsy was sleeping over her dad's house that night and she was so happy. They sleep together at her mom's and lay their head together on the pillow. Mugsy loves being under the blankets too. After Bella's game I had a few hours and then took her to 4 o'clock Mass. She again told me how happy she was that Mugsy was sleeping over. She has a rabbit, Nibbles, 2 cats Winters and Summer, and Mugsy. She's was born an animal lover, you can just tell.
I was glad Mugsy was sleeping over because otherwise Bella would ask me to come over after church or later that evening. I love that she wants to be with me, and again I know it wont be long before she's all grown up, but I was tired and looking forward to a quiet night and sleeping Sunday morning until I just woke up. And it's so hard to say no to any of them. I have to remember what my niece Irene told me, no to anyone is yes to me. (I'm trying Irene!)
Early Sunday morning my phone rang. It was my brother's cell phone and I answered thinking it was something important, he knew I was looking forward to my Sunday me time. I said hello and hear, Aunt Tricia? My Bella, my beautiful Bella! But I could tell just by the way she said my name she wanted something. She went through this whole story about how Mugsy slept over and she was still lying in bed with him all cozy and then she sounded sad, and I knew what was coming. Robert had another basketball game and she wanted me to come over and hang with her and Mugsy. I didn't have to say no, but I did some fancy footwork with Bella and got her on to another subject and then someone else was calling in on my phone. I told her I had to answer it and I would call her back, she started to ask what she wanted but she's smart, she knew she needed to get back to that sad voice, set the scene, and make me have no choice but to go and watch her and Mugsy. She plays me well that girl!
I took my other call and then call my brother back. He didn't even know Bella called me and said they were all already on their way to Robert's game and Bella was fine, Mugsy was still at his house and she would have him all afternoon. I was so happy. No guilt, a day to myself!
I drove out to Tottenville to the Conference House, so peaceful and a perfect fall day and then stopped at a nice scenic point by the water. There are many parts of Staten Island that are still so beautiful, greenbelt protected land for miles. When I first moved out here I couldn't stand it. I couldn't believe after growing up in Brooklyn I was watching people ride by on their horses. You still see a few today, but not nearly as many as there were in the late 70s when we first moved here. Now I long for those days. So much less traffic. Old beautiful homes with big yards. I would ride my bike on roads with no cars for miles.
But everything changes.
When I was Bella's age I don't think I knew how to call anyone up. Didn't realize that people had different phone numbers. And I don't think I started really making calls to my friends until high school age. All my friends were outside my front door before that. I just went and "called for them" to come out and play.
In my lifetime there have been so many amazing changes in every aspect of my life, all part of a future I never imagined, I don't think any of us did. I watch my nieces and nephews with their cell phones, even Bella using my brother's phone. She knows how to use a cell phone better than I do. Jojo more amazing. Recently my friend Teresa said her two year old daughter told her she wanted to text her daddy. Two years old and this is part of her vocabulary! I watch kids' little fingers moving over the mouse area on a laptop, I can't even do that. They used to ask me how to spell things before they were even in school so they cold find the websites they wanted and are amazing typists even using the hunt and peck system. And though my cell phone doesn't have a key pad, I've watched kids and teens and older, move their thumbs so quick while texting, again something I don't do very well. The buttons are so small, I'm always hitting the wrong key. And I'm a fast typist, been doing it for a living for too many years, but not on those little cell phone buttons.
At 52 I have many friends who don't really know a lot about computers. They just weren't exposed to it in their jobs and now their kids are making their heads spin with all they know. My friend Tara often has me check her kids Facebook pages, she has no idea what it is, often refers to it as My Space or some other name. She does know enough that she has to keep tabs on them and tries but she just doesn't get it. My brother Bob, just a few years older than me finally has a cell phone and an email address as he has a daughter and this is how he gets to keep in touch. My sister Linda, when she texted me the first time, I was shocked. But she said she does it all the time now, it's the only way her kids respond, if she calls them they don't pick up but if she texts them they reply. A new world.
I can only imagine what my parents would think of all this, the generation before mine. My parents were amazed by cable and VCRs.
When I was a kid and into my 20s, there was always a radio playing in the kitchen. My mom loved to listen to music or her baseball games, having her homemade score card on the counter, cooking, baking, and stopping to keep score. She went through a talk show radio phase as well, I don't remember the name of the show, just it being on.
In the morning it was always 10.10 news.
Whenever I hear that radio station it sends me back to those snowy winter days, anxiously awaiting to hear the closure of the schools in our area. When I got my own apartment, I put 10.10 news on in the mornings, it comforted me, made my apartment really feel like my new home, without it, it was like "waking up on the wrong side of the bed". 
I worked at RKO Radio Networks then, in the early 80s. I was in the newsroom often and even there, with satellite radio, when they broadcast the news it sounded like it was coming in over the wire with that click in the background, a sound effect. I think still used on 10.10 news, though I haven't listened to AM radio in so long. I can get FM in my car, my 93 Infinite I call Ida, but the antenna is gone and I guess that's why I can't get AM?? When I first drove my car, well not my car, the car I was driving, it only had AM Radio so when I was looking to buy my first car all I wanted was FM Radio and air conditioning. I didn't care about anything else. Didn't matter if it had mechanical problems, just as long as it had FM Radio and air conditioning. That car did not last very long. Duh! Live and learn, now all I care about is if my car will keep on going and getting me safely back and forth from wherever I go. I talk to her and thank her every time she starts up and and gets me to my destination. If the radio goes or air conditioning, I don't care, just keep going Ida!!!
I remember my brother Jimmy's first record player, the Beatles records on 45s. I remember the record player on top of the dresser in the boys room..bunk beds with a trundle bed underneath...three of them in that small room. The record player was Jimmy's, we could listen but no touching. I got my own for one of my birthdays, maybe at 8 or 9 years old. And record players kept evolving, now stereos and then cd players. 45s and albums...45 rpm and 33 1/3 rpms...a zillion years ago. Telling kids what a record was is enough, what difference did it make what size it was, archaic to them.
Remember we needed those plastic doohickeys to put in the center of the 45s. I guess record players came with them, but we lost them and needed buy those plastic doohickeys, and you lost them too. Then you would try to recreate the doohickey, which never worked, the record went around and round in a loopy way and the music sounded the same. And the needles? You had to blow the dust off, sometimes I used a penny on top of the arm to make an old needle work, you had to replace those, and I never did it enough. 
I loved going to 86th Street in my neighborhood, the shopping area. At Woolworths and the record store for hours picking out my 45s or an album. Sometimes spending hours in there just looking. Now not only do we have cds, you can just download music from your computer and you don't even have to go to the store to buy it. Satellite radio. Again a future I never imagined.
And then came the walkman, 
first just the radio, which was too cool, I loved blasting it on the bus ride to work, but when they added the cassette feature, I liked that the best. Again I could choose from my zany diverse selection of music. Depending on my mood of the day, making "mixed tapes" of my favorites. 
Much like I am today with my ipod, I'd rather listen to the music I like than once in a while hearing a song on the radio that I might like or these days even know! I'm constantly asking my niece and nephews, Bella, Jojo and Robert, 6 to 11, who's singing on the radio, they know them all.
And I love to hear them singing along. I don't ask them to sing louder, I have to pretend like I don't notice, but oh I do notice, it is heaven, even when I don't like the song.
I imagine a future now with my great nieces or nephews calling me up and hologram of them appearing...Hello Aunt Tricia.
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