Cindy's Blog

You love them, you hate them, or you don’t care. I happen to love them. I got my first tatt back in the early 1990s when tattoos were still illegal in Massachusetts. I just walked into a tattoo shop in Rhode Island and picked a “flash” design off the wall. My mistake, LOL! I love most of my tattoos, but most people do have some tattoo regrets. But I’m fine with all of my tattoos. They all have meaning and memories. I’ve got what could be called a half-sleeve on my lower right leg, which includes about a dozen or so patchwork, tropical-themed tattoos. I also have a “sister” tattoo on my right forearm. My sister and I got the same tattoo to celebrate our birthdays back in 2020. The Arrow is because we are both Sagittarius. The feather is a chicken feather because we both have chickens, and the hearts are for big sister and little sister.

I’ve now started working on my left leg. A while back, I dreamed that I had my grandfather’s ham radio call sign tattooed. I thought, strange dream, but an interesting tattoo idea… Most people who grew up in Lakeview, Waltham, MA in the 1950s and 1960s will know these call letters because when my grandfather would broadcast, he would interrupt everyone’s TV reception in the area with W1KXX! While I was at it, I decided to make the tatt a tribute to my paternal grandparents. Through my genealogy research, I discovered that my grandmother was a Mayflower descendant. This fairly new tattoo combines a radio tower and call sign with Mayflowers. The large bottom flower is similar to the logo on the back of the Mayflower II ship docked at Plymouth Harbor.

My most recent tattoo was done at the 1st Annual Providence Tattoo Convention in Rhode Island in August 2025. I’m a big fan of the TV show Ink Master. I heard that my favorite artist and an Ink Master finalist from Season 12, Dani Ryan (@daniryantattoos), would be at the convention. Aaron also likes tattoos, so we took a ride to RI for the day and had a great time at the convention. For Dani, it was a first-come, first-served day, and I was lucky to snag a spot! She is both super nice and extremely talented. All I really cared about was getting an Ink Master tattoo from Dani, but what should I get? Finally, I decided to get the word Aloha with a Hawaiian flower as the letter “o” to celebrate our recent dream vacation to Hawaii and to honor my Hawaiian cousins. Aloha is a single word with multiple meanings. It can be a greeting or a goodbye, but it can also represent many other feelings, such as love, fellowship, empathy, compassion, peace, and kindness. It’s a beautiful word and a beautiful tattoo.

I’m in the process of moving a few domains to a new free site.  I’ve been paying a monthly premium to host my websites, and it’s time to dump this expense.  Does anyone even need a website these days, with social media dominating the online world? Of course, businesses should still have a website, but even some companies are using Facebook as their homepage and Gmail for email.  Over the past few years, I’ve let many of my domain names expire, but I’m still holding onto bissells.com.  I’ve just moved the site to WordPress.com, which offers free hosting.  A savings of $75 a month of wasted money since I hardly use the website anymore. 

Bissells.com is 30 years old this year!  This was the first website I built back in 1995 – before most people knew what a homepage was. AOL was popular at the time, but what was the World Wide Web?   I used Microsoft Notepad and learned HTML code to build the site.  There were no easy ways to create a website back in the mid-1990s. Here is a screenshot of what the site looked like back then: Bissell Homepage in 1995. This skill would come in handy years later, when I moved from nursing to web development. But that’s another story…

After moving the site to wordpress.com, I went through most of the posts in order to fix some broken old links.  Many reference links, photos, and videos are long gone. As I was browsing some old posts, I saw a few political posts from years ago complaining about George W., John McCain, Sarah Palin, and republicans in general. Topics included mostly civil rights and healthcare, which are still two of my main pet peeves. But WOW, who could have imagined the horror of Donald Trump?  Yes, I complained about his first term, but his second term is so much worse and a threat to our democracy without any exaggeration.

I have talked a bit about politics on this blog, but I totally avoid any political posts on social media.  I just don’t want to waste my time getting into political debates online. The country has not been this divided since the Civil War.  I kinda wish we had just freed the slaves and then let the South fend for itself back in the 1800s. Or wouldn’t it be nice if New England were its own country?  But as they say, “it is what it is,” and I hope we survive the next 3+ years with Dictator Trump. Unfortunately, I have a feeling things will get worse before they get better.

The good news is – if you can call it good news – if we do survive Trump, he has shown us how fragile our democracy is, and the many flaws in our system that need to be fixed.  Who would have thought that a narcissist with no sense of decency or empathy could ignore tradition and the Constitution and basically do whatever he wants? Plus, the enablers who stand by and watch because they want to hold onto power, and they are afraid of Trump’s bullying and intimidation. I have studied history and particularly World War II.  Trust me when I say that there is no exaggeration when comparing Trump to Hitler. Trump is a fascist dictator, and the only way to stop him at this point is the power of the people and the power of our votes. There will be much work to be done once Trump is gone, not only in our country but also in repairing our reputation in the world, which will take time. Oh, there is so much more to say about Trump and his cult, but I’ll close this post for now. I felt I needed to document some of my thoughts about this unprecedented time we are going through. I have no doubt that Trump will go down in history as the worst US president ever!

My sister Sue and I attended a plaque unveiling for our mom, Joan Winterkorn, at the Waltham PFC John M. Sullivan VFW Post 10334. Mom was the very first Auxiliary President of this post in 1977 and worked her way up the ranks to State President in 1994. She loved the VFW and helping veterans and their families. It was a lovely gathering, and we are honored to have our mom recognized for her many years of service.

September 30th is NICU Awareness Day, honoring the babies and families who have experienced the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), as well as the doctors and nurses who care for these babies. For us, and many others, the NICU battle for survival was just the beginning of the war. We will always carry our NICU scars.

This is our first “family photo” taken by one of the NICU nurses with a Polaroid camera. The twins are one month old in this photo taken on August 28, 1993.