Celia's Blue Cottage

2012-02-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

Last night we two grandmas and one aunt finished up our First Aid/CPR class. It is one of the requirements to become licensed respite caregivers for our children's foster babies. It was quite an experience. The methods have changed since I last got a certificate.

We practiced on adult size dummies, and infant dummies. It was informative and a little scary. The basic drill is 30 compressions for one minute intersected followed by two breaths - tiny breaths for tiny kids, and then round and round again. God forbid. Delivering 30 compressions a minute on an adult proved physically difficult for me, and somewhat easier with children. Maybe I need to start lifting my little hand weights again.

The most troubling thing I heard was that most home accidents with small children are choking ones. Our instruction says that anything small enough to pass through a toilet paper tube is small enough to choke a child. I remember turning my own two year old upside down and clapping him on the back to eject a peanut. I felt stupid afterwards for letting him have one in the first place and they were removed from the house for several years. Turned out it was the right thing to do, you invert a small child down your leg and clap it on the back, and then turn him or her over and do the same on the front and repeat.

We got a briefing on how to use AED's (Automatic External Defibrillator) that shocks hearts back into beating, hopefully. Not that any of us have one, they cost $1300 and up, and up. Good to know they are easy to use, and schools are beginning to buy them. I did buy a little kit with two masks for mouth to mouth for children and adults, barrier devices they call them. We practiced giving epipen injections. Two of us grandmas actually have them for severe allergies.

I'm glad to have new skills and to have a refreshed awareness of the environment we are in and how to help. We were told as a Good Samaritan (in Washington State at least) you can't give non-family members medicine, even their own, but you can "assist" them to take some. I guess its a CYA for the Good Sam laws here. I think anyone who can take these classes should, especially if you have kids or folks with health problems in your life. You can learn help and when not to if someone has DNR's or a POALST with instructions. And one the best things is that little cell phone and 911.

2012-02-16T08:43:00.000-08:00

I thought I was through with dribbling and hacking for the winter but it's back. My brain is off duty along with the rest of me. This afternoon I'll gobble decongestants and drink coffee as I have the first half of a two night class tonight, the other half is tomorrow. It won't be back to our small rural town for quite awhile. I suppose I will have to get out of my bathrobe. Good thing I did laundry yesterday so my comfy clothes are clean.

And then there is this. These are the witnesses testifying right now in Congress on the birth control benefit. What kind of panel on women's reproductive rights and health is made up of men, and men priests? Where are the women? Why isn't this on any of the CNN channels? Makes me angry.

Paper Trail

2012-02-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

Monday and I'm opening the pile of paper I got in the mail. Three offers for credit cards. Two solictitations to put money in two different local banks. Ha, ha, ha! One was from the bank that took over the bank I used and liked so I went to a credit union. The other bank, where I once had a checking account, spelled my first name wrong, and sent me dummy checks to use; I hate it when they do that. Then there were the three missives from the phone company all about the tiny change I made in my account. Three pleas for charitable contributions and envelopes with more paper from Medicare about bills they paid on services in April of 2011. It's taken them nearly10 months to pay, no wonder I see things saying Dr. SoandSo is no longer taking Medicare patients. I can't just toss things into the trash, some have names, blank checks with my name on them, and yada yada. So I open it, sort it into recycling, shredding, and needs-to-be-filed. Oh yes, there was a bill, that goes into a fourth pile. Under it all was an envelope from my sister with a cute little Valentine in it. Yea Pam!

While the postman was making his rounds, I was took different stash of paper out and got my taxes finished. I am getting a little refund, I am surprised and happy, I have 5 grandkid birthdays in March and April, no coal in their stockings, ha, ha.

Sunday Funnies

2012-02-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

I woke up very early in the dark this morning and quietly recovered my paper from the front porch. I turned the porch light off first. I didn't want anyone to see me ala bedhead and ratty favorite nightie. The heat is on a timer with my magical thermostat so it was still cold, not hot air time yet. So I did something I haven't done for years, piled up the pillows, put on my glasses, and climbed back into bed to read the Sunday paper. Could have used a cup of coffee but I didn't want to stand in the cold kitchen waiting even those few minutes. Our Sunday paper has shrunk over the last few years to less than half of what it was. The daily is even smaller and could blow away if it wasn't rolled into a tight little chunk.

The first thing I did was read the funnies, same as we did when I was 4 or 5, but sitting next to the oil heater in our family living room. That was our version of central heat in 1946. Dad would sit on the floor and read them to us. The funnies aren't as good now. I think our shrinking local paper gets the cheap ones. When they first dropped (in my mind) the good ones, there was an outcry locally, I wasn't the only one. So they published a selection of possibilities and we got to vote. They are marginally better. And alas for the papers, most of the funnies, good or otherwise can be viewed online. I used to get the Seattle Times delivered but its offered here no more; it also owns the local paper, the Union Bulletin. That means we get a lot of day old AP filler from them.

Then I read the ads. Our local Sears has been selected for extermination and they are having a sale, as usual. I am looking at exercise equipment. It's a sign of the times for me and Sears, trying to get leaner. It would be cheaper for me to pursue my exercise on a recumbent at home than belong to a gym. The disappearing Sears store is one two stores remaining at either ends of our defunct mall, the other being ShopKo. Add it to the list of others left the mall, JC Penney, Fashion Bug, Claires, the food court, those all left as our mall died along with many small locally owned stores. I used to walk inside the covered mall there and have a cuppa when I was done. Ostensibly it was to be remodeled, but that collapsed like many things and it is now mostly torn down. On the back side are the unfinished shells of stores that were to be the new outdoor mall. Ick, who wants an outdoor mall where it freezes and snows in the winter, and is hot and dusty in the summer? The monolithic stores that were never built live in the overgrown former parking lots. The buildings are at various times inhabited by a herd of deer and sometimes by the homeless. Just for tourists there is a highway sign directing you to the Blue Mountain Mall, surprise to you when you get there. Look closely and you could see upwards of 20 deer. Hopefully you will go straight east on Rose Street and get to downtown, along the way you will be reminded that this is after all, a farming town. Nice shops there and good places to eat. We have managed to hang onto the downtown Macy's which resides in a beautiful building which was formerly the magnificent Liberty Theater.

The little double doors at the bottom right of the picture houses Liberty a tiny store with marvelous goods.

Walla Walla made it onto the NYT Travel section of best small towns to visit, wineries, Balloon Stampede, the elegantly remodeled Marcus Whitman Hotel and Restaurant and history squirting out our ears. Another called it the friendliest to visit. But still we are suffering that bane of downtowns, creeping empty store fronts. Remarkably people keep starting businesses and restaurants here, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. I digress though.

This brings me full circle with the Sunday paper. I discovered I can get both the Sunday Oregonian and New York Times delivered to my door here. My friend has me pick up hers when she is out of town and I had forgotten what a major city newspaper looks like. And the funnies, oboy, oboy! Guess I will set my coffee pot up on Saturday nights and be ready for a big paper-fest.

2012-02-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

Breakfast in Bed by Mary Cassatt

I'm up and running again today, gathering stuff for taxes, dropping off stuff at St. Vinnies, and running down the doctor to pay a bill I forgot. That's the nice thing about living near the center of town in a small town. Everything is five minutes away, parking not so hot, like many other places. My biggest thing today is working on organizing myself. A routine change, I am trying to embrace it. I've been in my comfy little rut quite awhile but now I have something new. Our family has two, not one, two new foster babies, a three week old girl and an eight month old boy.

I already care for and homeschool an almost 11 year old grandgirl on Tuesdays, later in the day three of her sisters join us. And then we all join the whole family, great-grands, in-laws, aunt and uncle for our weekly family dinner. Wednesdays I usually take it easy and reconstruct my house. Now I'm getting approval from family services to provide respite care in my son's home. They already have six daughters, three whom they fostered and adopted. This time they hope to adopt both these children, which would give them seven girls and one son. Did I mention they like help, ha, ha.   Having hit my limit with two sons of my own, I am amazed at their energy and piles of affection and love. My rut has suddenly changed direction and grown into somewhat of a highway.

I felt like I was too old, creaky for this, and I liked my regularly scheduled days of solitude. Well, old I am, and the first two weeks my muscles, back, and shoulders were sore lifting and dandling little cuties about. But surprise, after two weeks, I'm not sore any longer, and I'm going back to my gym today. Use it or lose it.  And I got myself an umbrella stroller so I can push a kid around the block if the opportunity arises and laughed because I haven't been out walking with anywhere in quite a while. Just been hibernating for the winter sort of, reading and what not.

This hibernating has had an unfortunate side effort too. I had my annual physical and my usually low cholesterol has shot up (and I've been eating like I was going into hibernation) and I have put some weight back on, so my A1c blood sugar is up too. So my kids in rescuing these tiny humans may have rescued me too.

And this brings me full circle back to yesterday's post about the Komen foundation cutting off grants for mammograms for poor women at Planned Parenthood. Both of our new additions have two older siblings who were taken from the parents and adopted or fostered out. It's not just breast exams women need from Planned Parents, it's support and birth control. Will these mothers go on to have more children that have to be fostered?  I don't know.   The infant girl came straight from birth in the hospital. We are very lucky to have these two children, and I hope we get to keep them forever, but it breaks my heart there are so many of them out there.

Very Angry with the Susan G Komen Foundation Today

2012-02-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

I'm sure most of you know that the Susan G Komen Foundation unfunded Planned Parenthood. Political pressure has been brought to bear, e.i. Republicans, and other conservative bodies, have brought pressure to bear and it will no longer provide grants to Planned Parenthood for needy women to get mammograms.
I read that last night the Komen Foundation was hacked and their banner was replaced for awhile. I do not approve of hacking but I have to admit to some satisfaction with this.
This is what the ad is supposed to look like:

And this is the hacked version:

I've posted several items on my Facebook page including the link to the above Komen Foundation hacked, and this Facebook page De-fund-the-Komen-Foundation and this from Moveon.org which includes a petition to sign. I hope you find this as disturbing as I do. I think this move is anti-woman, and especially anti-poor women.

2012-01-04T08:42:00.000-08:00

North Head Lighthouse - Long Beach, WA

After Christmas nine of us packed up and went to Long Beach, WA. Long Beach is a long drive from here, about 350 miles, mostly on I-84 with hopping back and forth over the WA/OR border. It was raining and dark and we couldn't see much as we crossed over the mouth of the Columbia River on the Astoria Bridge to WA.

Thanks to the Encyclopedia Britannica - view from Astoria

The bridge itself is about 4 miles long with the peak on the south side in Oregon. All sorts of shipping passes under this bridge to continue its travels either upstream or out to the Pacific Ocean bound for just about anywhere you can imagine.

We had a great time in a two bedroom cottage which proved to be cozy and adequate even with six children from 5 to 13 in it. We assembled a new 1000 piece puzzle and played a new game, "Settlers of Catan" a great game, and old ones like Parcheesi. My sister appeared from Portland for one afternoon with her two children and 8 kid sized kimonos rescued from a school theater production. Someone had hand sewn these and someone else had tossed them in the dumpster! The gowns were beautiful and in between rainstorms the girls played badminton, basketball, and tag arrayed in their kimonos looking like lovely winter butterflies.

Now we are home, Christmas is done, but not packed quite away. I've caught a cold and am sore, coughing, sweating, and cannot breed thru my node either. My car has to be taken to a dealer in another city to be repaired. It's covered by the warranty but it never occurred to me when I bought it that the lack of a dealer in our little burg would be a problem. Oh well. Later! For now more tea and a nap. I will lie down and visualize the big waves rolling in at Long Beach, and the piles of delicious cod fish and chips we had.

2011-12-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

All is quiet this morning. It's been a nice few days. I've been sleeping in later and later, then visiting, and enjoying buffet meals. Christmas was fun with family and the six grandgirls, dinner at one house Christmas Eve, and breakfast and gifts at another Christmas morning. They were kind enough not to start until 8am this year. My eldest was working both days and made his Christmas on Boxing Day and came over to open gifts. Then we went to see "War Horse." It was good. I get into my movies, found myself crying at the end and a bit weepy at the beginning to pondering all those young men going off to war. It's one of my favorite kinds of Spielberg flick and a horse movie as well with a race between the horse and auto on an English country road. I love a horse race.

My first attempt at making some kind of candy treat came off well and eldest and I ate quite a bit. Dark chocolate bark with bits of orange peel and chopped pecans. The tiny Christmas tree continues to shine on.

The temperature last night post-movie was 48, not the 25+ we've been having. Delightful.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

2011-12-24T08:32:00.000-08:00

Peace on Earth

Merry Christmas Everyone

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

I bought this Nativity set at The Grotto in Portland over ten years ago. My sister Grace and I visited this Botanical Garden and Catholic Shrine. You can take a glass enclosed elevator up a cliff to the gardens and a viewing platform, quite a view. And they have a huge gift shop that included 100's of Nativities both for sale and not. I fell in love with this one. Lately at the end of the evening I turn out most of the lights and have been enjoying various Christmas concerts on the telly by the light of the Christmas tree. There is something so peaceful about a darkened living room in the glow of Christmas decorations.

We've had quite a week, still are having one. My daughter (in-law) had her appendix out Sunday. Grandkids came to my house and her Mom's house, all were worried about Mommy. She came home that night and is mending, we kept the girls so Dad and Mom could rest awhile. My van is still in the garage and may be until Thursday or Friday. Other family members had things surgically repaired. A dear friend loaned me her car until Monday while she was out of town so I could fetch children, get groceries, finish shopping, rent movies, buy glitter, and do those odds and ends of things that appear right before Christmas Eve. Now Great-grandma has loaned me her car. What would we do without our friends and family?

Glitter, glitter everywhere. The Grandgirls made Christmas ornaments. We glued, pasted, and painted foam balls and pine cones, and sprinkled glitter on them and ourselves. And sequins, and self sticking jewels, and little bells, and stuff. I found red sequins in the kitchen sink and blue glitter in my hair. We sparkle from stem to stern. I have now seen The Smurfs movie twice now, it was surprisingly entertaining, and Shrek 3, and one more that I've forgotten already. I was really tired last night but this morning the house seems, well, empty now that they've gone home.

2011-12-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

Saint Silouan Orthodox Church through the spiky lace on a tree.

The air is still and thick. Fog hugs the ground, the temperature lingers just around 25. The fog freezes and falls dropping tiny little flakes. Everything is covered with fine, tiny spikes of ice. When I picked up two of the grandgirls from school today we could see the gold onion dome of this Orthodox church shining through the trees. It surprised me with its shine, you can't even see the sky today. They stayed at my house until it was time to pick up their mom and my van. For snack we ate the scalloped potatoes I'd made ahead for dinner. They were good, little onion, little bacon, warm out of the oven. There was even a few left for dinner, great food for a cold day. Then one girl finished decorating my Christmas tree. It looks good, and its dark enough in the afternoon to turn all the lights on. I don't think I've ever put up a tree this early before.

It's been a week of events. Something happened to the fuel injection mechanism in the van and it went in for repairs Thursday. Then the estimate came in at around $300, I was expecting something worse, I was kind of relieved. In the evening I got a call announcing the arrival of the newest member of my youngest son's family. They received a three month old boy they hope to adopt. They been waiting awhile for him, and little does he know he now has six older sisters both homegrown and adopted. They are all daffy for him. This afternoon I got to meet him. He just smiled. Kind of like getting a baby in your Christmas stocking. I got my van back and it runs fine now, the gas mileage should improve some. The baby, well, he eats, sleeps, and poops. That's his job.

Saturday is supposed to be the last total eclipse of the moon for a couple of years, with the peak view showing around 6am here in the Pacific Northwest. A doable time of day if the fog lets up a little. I will be up to look just in case. You can read about it here. Eclipse Meanwhile it feels like everyone is waiting quietly for something to happen. Christmas? A bit of clear sky? Makes me want to hibernate. If I eat many more scalloped potatoes and meatloaf I will sleep all winter.

2011-12-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

"You are the sunshine of my life."

Had a fuss budget morning. The van is in the garage with the emission control system warning light glowing brightly. On the other hand I just got a nice refund check for an overpayment. The van will probably eat that up. Should I be sad my refund will be gone, or happy that it showed up just in time to fund this upkeep on an older car that I intend to keep until forever? The choice is mine. This old house is drafty. This old house is paid for. Went out looking at condos, found two in my price range but the cost of selling and rebuying would fund many winter heat bills, not to mention more insulation and wool socks. And there's condo fees. And when it hits 100 in the summer this house actually stays reasonably cool under its steep roof and wide overhanging eaves. And it's on a pretty street, with good neighbors, mixed ages, people from 90+ down to a toddler. I can walk to the library from here, and now the library is serving coffee.

So at the risk of being a Pollyanna I started thinking about what is right with life right now. My two sons for one thing. That is them many years ago in face paint at a campout at Lake Kachess in the Washington Cascades. The eldest has on a souvenir of a time when my alma mater made it to the Rose Bowl with success. We often camped here in the summer when they were young, and I have lots of warm, sunny, memories of those times. Scrambled eggs and bacon, Grand Marnier in the parent's coffee in the morning. Anchoring the tent on the hill that sloped down to the lake. Once we put the tent on several of those cheap floating air mattresses when it rained thereby diverted the water running down the hill from entering our tent, and we still had the air mattresses under us.

My daughter-in-law picked me up at the garage and brought me home. When I told her about the condos, she asked what was I looking for, and asked was I just feeling "itchy." I told her about the concerns I had for when I turned 80, or 90. Once I said them they seemed to dissipate. She is a perceptive young woman, I'm lucky to have her in my life. I remembered that it will soon be a year since my divorce and how those kind of anniversaries bring on discontented itchiness for me. I am indeed feeling itchy, and my "inner child" always wants to pack up and leave and see something new. We moved constantly when I was growing up and staying put is still rather a novel experience for me. I think I will go back to stripping the wallpaper in the bathroom and find some "new" that way.

2011-12-06T22:59:00.000-08:00

It's cold, not quite winter but it feels like it. I got out of the house and took a little drive past the edge of town and parked looking over someone's post-harvest wheat field into the foothills of the Blue Mountains.  People hauled their wagons if they had one, down over those sharp hills and the mountains behind them. Here lies a route of the Oregon Trail and also the Nez Pierce trail that Lewis and Clark followed through here. Parts of both paths are visible today. Looking east this way makes me think of Walt Whitman's "O' Pioneers."

In April of 1837 an world wide economic crash occurred. As a cure the president and advisors pulled the government out of the banking business. The banks proceeded to quit loaning and began hoarding their cash and nearly 40% of the banks in USA collapsed.  The commodity wasn't oil and its dependent industries but cotton and wool.  Australia suffered its worse depression ever. Here the rush to move west ramped up.  There was a presidential election in the midst of this economic depression, unseating Van Buren and bringing the first Whig, William Henry Harrision into office.  There were issues of immigration and religion, this time Catholic Irish and Germans in particular were coming to the USA. Businesses in large cities bore signs saying NINA, "Irish Need Not Apply." Sound familiar? It's the new ones' fault. The countries, languages, and religions change, but apparently we haven't.

Many people came west to escape it, looking for a more secure life, some with enough resources to exploit it. Some succeeded, some starved on the way. Many things and people thrived here consequently and many people and things were destroyed.  I have more questions than I have answers.

I'm not the greatest historian but the familiarity of this disquiets me.  Where can people go now to make a life?   Not many of us is far from living on the street the way things are going. Don't we ever learn anything? And how could a man like Gingrich gain a following in this country? A man who claims poor children are taught to be lazy and ought to be cheated out of what little play or study time they can have to be janitors in their schools.  Such monumental stupidity boggles my brain. No wonder I need to just sit and watch the wind blow around for a bit.

2011-12-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

I broke my favorite cookbook, my 1967 edition of "The Joy of Cooking." I dropped it on the floor and it disassembled, just barely staying in one piece. The spine is exposed, the front cover is loose, it's just sad. Waa, it's my favorite. I learned to cook for my family using it and it has my grandmother's potato salad recipe glued to the inside cover. The banana bread recipe page is covered with specks of dough from probably hundreds, maybe thousands of loaves of banana bread. I taped low fat and low sugar versions to the opposite page. I experimented with their recipe, I could never get them to taste the way I wanted with both low fat and low sugar. The 1967 serving sizes are just right for me, in later versions they upped the serving sizes as the population started eating more. At my age, if it ever was, more is not a bonus.

I typed "1967 "Joy of Cooking" ' into the search menu and woo, woo, several came up on Amazon. Some with dust jackets, I can't remember if mine ever had one, if it did it disappeared early on. So, I'm crossing my fingers, Amazon don't fail me now. I bought a one listed in "very good" condition (what? didn't they use it?, good for me). Last night I got an email that it had been shipped. I'm so excited, yes, that's what makes me happy. I'm very attached to my cookbooks. This and my "Laurel's Kitchen" are my favorites, although I did get a 1956 Good Housekeeping Cookbook at AAUW book sale two years ago that I've come to love.

That's the last of my lottery money. I actually cashed in on one of my once a month lottery tickets for $100. I bought new slippers, some used Dana Stabenow paperbacks and now a "new" "Joy of Cooking." Merry early Christmas to me, from me.

2011-12-01T07:06:00.000-08:00

I've tackled my slow going dollhouse project again. My grandgirl Alandra and I got a tiny Christmas tree for it and she's decorating it so I decided it must be time to put the roof shingles on it. It was kind of fun. Next I'm making sheets for the little beds that go in the loft above the kitchen. As you can see below even my doll house has dishes in the sink.

2011-11-29T07:27:00.000-08:00

It was announced on the ABC News this was the most successful Black Friday ever, and that the nation was loosening it's purse strings and surely recovery was just around the corner. I thought "idiots" and turned it off. Even in our little, remote city there were people lined up at Sears, and Shopko in the dark. The Walmart was beseiged, no pepper spray though, and the Macy's lot was full. Those I talked to said they had bought Christmas gifts but spent less on those but purchased things like vacuum cleaners, school clothes, $50 blu-rays, that they had been holding off on for months waiting for an excellent price and that they were now done. I think the extra push came from replacing household necessities at a bargain rather than spending up a storm from feeling economic relief.

I am making some gifts myself and did participate in the sale at our JoAnne's. I didn't shop Friday but Saturday went to the smaller home owned places for books, and the like. Still, there are three fresh business closures here. Our liquor stores will be closing due to a referendum here in Washington dismantling the state liquor stores. All those employees will be out of jobs in June. Once Walla Walla was on the list of a 100 best small town downtowns, after restoring old buildings and building up local businesses. Now the empty store fronts are appearing again. It's interesting, second hand shops have replaced furniture stores, consignment shops for kids and women's clothes are thriving, car dealerships shrank. Large farm equipment dealers lost their franchises. The Greyhound bus line no longer stops here. The odd weather hurt the fruit farmers, and the precious wine industry here. I think this dank economy is here to stay for awhile.

How is your town, city, village faring and managing?

2011-11-28T09:22:00.000-08:00

It's a quiet, cool but sunny day. Tiny little birds are picking at something I cannot see in the remains of the garden. I still have a few roses to trim up a little before it really freezes.
And, wahoo, I nearly finished my Christmas shopping much to my surprise in a spurt of online shopping Wednesday.  Good thing as my modem crashed the next day. That was followed by a tour of our little town's small businesses Sunday afternoon with my granddaughter. I am trying to shop locally but it is hard here, selections are limited in our remote location, still I've gotten about half my gifts here. I did buy a fake tree this year while we were out. Small and easy to put up without moving any furniture. I feel like I can relax and enjoy the season now.

Thanksgiving is a blur, 24+ of us gathered two days in a row. Lots of food, turkey Thursday, ham Friday. Good company, silliness, laughter, and some early gifting for small children visiting and their cousins, eight all together.  Four generations. And unfortunately for me, a dog, I had to leave early when my asthma kicked into high gear in spite of a week of pretreating with antihistimines. Being goofy or lonesome I came the second day too and ended up with an inhalation treatment at ER. In the shower Sunday I got cranky, weepy, and sad thinking how my allergies separate me from a lot of people I'd like to be around. That's when I realized I really wasn't feeling well. The hardest part is I'd like have a dog or a cat too if I could, just not in my karma. Time to make lemonade out of my personal lemons and regroup.

Got my modem reset by my carrier, no internet most of the holiday, which is okay mostly except I pay my bills online and read the online news.  I'm renting my modem which I either didn't know or forgot, so I will go out and buy my own, trying not to think how that oversight had me paying for 10 years extra $ to my so-so cable company. Not a fortune but one of those little irritations.

Still, I am feeling mellow today and looking forward to my five year old granddaughter spending the afternooon and dinner with me.

2011-11-23T19:45:00.000-08:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL!

Hope your weekend is fun and your travels are safe.

Turkeys at the Grandgirls Farm

I'm thankful for my family;

For all my grandchildren;

My dear friends;

All my truly cool in-laws;

More than enough food in the cupboard;

For a comfy house to live in;

For a reliable paid for vehicle;

For living in a place free of tornadoes, blizzards, and hurricanes;

And of course my blogger buddies!

Just a thought...

2011-11-22T17:24:00.001-08:00

You might as well laugh...

2011-11-20T08:53:00.000-08:00

TGIF

2011-11-18T08:51:00.000-08:00

I'm passing this on because it worked for me today. A Dr. on TV said to have inner peace we should always finish things we start & we all could use more calm in our lives. I looked around my house to find things I'd started & hadn't finished, so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiuminun prscriptuns, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum.

Thankyou, Susan

Landscaping

2011-11-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

What is left of my rose trellis and climbing rose from h--l.

This is landscaping in the broadest sense of the word. Since tomorrow is garbage day I went out to the backyard to gather up all the fallen branches from the week or so of windy weather we've been having. Surprise! The trellis had broken off and it and most of the climbing rose that was on it was collapsed on the deck in front of my back door. Grrrr, it's 31° in my backyard. I don't want to go out there, it's cold! Being a grown-up, I slammed the back door and said all those words I don't say in front of my grandgirls. However being really irritated calls up quite a lot of energy that's not going to any good use so I put my woolly coat, woolly hat, leather gloves, woolly socks, and rubber shoes and went out and retrieved the rose pruners and my giant geared lopper from the garage. I stopped to stare at the thermometer, yup, 31°.   What happened to our semi-sunny 45° degree weather? Oh well, it's still garbage eve, much celebrated in my household, and the 90 gallon monster I get from the city is only got about 10" of trash in it. Go Grandma.

This rose and I have a long history, it was here when I moved in 11 years ago and I spent 6 or 7 years trying to kill it. It was raggedy and has the nastiest thorns.  I chopped it down. I dug it up, many times, following roots and dragging them out. I poisoned it, a move I try usually to avoid but cutting and digging wasn't doing it. So one year, bowing to a power greater than mine a trellis was erected to let it grow on. If it wouldn't disappear I would use it to shade the deck which gets hotter than a frying pan in the summer. The first year it seemed happy, growing up to the first rail, but the next year it sent out long branches and I interwove them through the trellis to spread the shade as far as I could. The third year it filled in nicely and gave out many red blossoms. The next year it didn't want to blossom and in the following winter 2/3 of it died like everything else shrub-like in the yard died in a prolonged deep freeze that came after an untimely warm spell in February. And it never seems to have recovered, but it won't die.

So there I am, I chopping and pruning, muttering dark thoughts about being out in such weather snipping away and then it started to rain a little, and the rain froze, making the deck slick. Little tiny particles of sleet or miniature snow got stuck in my hair and eyelashes. More colorful language emerged, quietly, there's small children next door. And then I started laughing. This thing needed cutting long ago, the trellis wasn't strong enough anyway for the kinds of wind and gusts we have here, and fate made sure I got out there to do it and conveniently there was enough room in the trash for the remains. So much for being the mistress of my own ship.  At least it got done before dark.

Raymond Carver a Washington Writer

2011-11-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

I've been reading my small collection of Raymond Carver books again. In some ways it suits this dark and blustery weather, and the late fall season. His later work is a reminder for me of what a game changer it is when the realization strikes that you've come out appreciative and still moving forward after life's early sturm and drang, even in the face of great personal challenges. The first Carver I ever bought and read was "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," it's 1981 collection of short stories and the title of one of the stories. One of this week's joys will be strolling through the used book stores looking for the missing books in my collection. I looked him up on the web and found Carver is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington. I'm sorry I didn't visit him during my last visit there. This is the inscription on his tombstone.

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Also his poem "Gravy" is inscribed there.

No other word will do. For that's what is was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going

nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
He said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don't forget it."
RAYMOND CARVER
(1938-1988)

2011-11-11T08:05:00.000-08:00

Veterans Day 2011

Just a pause to appreciate our troops scattered around the world, especially those in combat areas. I imagine most of us have watched as our young people left our neighborhoods, churches, and schools leaving home and family for an unknown future in the service. I pray for their safe return, and for all those over time who have not returned or have come back injured in ways hard to heal. May we all greet the returning gently, with love, and support, and comfort the families left behind.

Alaska Dreaming

2011-11-09T09:30:00.000-08:00

Sun glittering on ice Alaska July 2011 Mendenhall Lake, Tongass National Forest

Mendenhall Glacier was on my "must see" list. It's part of the Juneau Ice Field. It's about 12 miles out of Juneau, Alaska.

Mendenhall Glacier

My sister and traveling buddy from inside the visitor's center.

A Whole New World of Old

2011-11-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

Photo KATU

Having relatives and friends in and around Portland, Oregon, I peruse the local papers and TV stations to keep up with their news. I brought up KATU TV to see the most amazing glass sculpture and a gallery of other wonderful art pieces. They are featuring the Geezer Gallery, a fine arts gallery, the inspiration of Amy Henderson, featuring elder artists. Read here why-geezer. "Rather than a term of derision, we seek to redefine geezer as a term of strength, empowerment, and perhaps even endearment. Instead of a pejorative, geezer can become a rallying cry for all of us, regardless of chronological age, to embrace the creative forces which reside within." Their home page displays the logo "The Geezer Gallery- a whole new old." The gallery is located at 7710 SW 31st Street, Portland, Oregon, in Multnomah Village, one of my favorite places in the world to be. Shops, bakery, coffee, you can't go wrong.

Lamp by Chuck Castro

The gallery has an art as Therapy initiative, especially as it concerns our growing elder population. I have experienced personal growth working through issues with art. The works in the gallery are varied and interesting. They are about so much more than the art you see in the gallery. Below is a glass piece by Frank Springer, a fine glass artist and retired Portland cop who at 97 volunteers in Portland schools teaching about glass and art on personal basis with young students. As you probably know the arts of all kinds have taken a serious beating by the current economy in the schools as elsewhere. To me this is a peerless match up, the elder experienced artist and our children who are are our future.

Plate by Frank Springer displayed at the Geezer Gallery - photo KATU

I found it especially exciting because I'm an artist, an artist in a long slump, but I just started volunteering with an art program in our Walla Walla elementary schools, Art Lab. I signed up to do "a" tour of the Walla Walla Foundry with my 5th grade grandgirls and their class. Turns out what they really needed was several someones to be at the Foundry helping put the tour on so I signed up for one a month. And, now I get to go on tour with just the adults to pre-view the place in detail. I have been there before but not so much from the inside. Then I had to shake the cobwebs out of my head and write a blurb about one of the many, international artists who do their work there. That material written by us volunteers goes to the teachers to use to prep the students for the tour. It needs to be interesting, and brief, a challenge. I used to write and do art and photos for a small PR group years ago, some of that experience is still there I found. I got it done and I liked it. I think this is my own art therapy and it started some juice flowing again. Last night I found out the artist I wrote about, Ming Fay was in town. I plan to hustle down over and see if I can catch a glimpse and see what he's up to there, an art goupie at 70, ha, ha. The map of our lives is out there if we just don't quit looking for it.

To Halloween or Not

2011-10-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is last year's Halloween photo. Such a joyous little face. This year two of the grandgirls came over and carved pumpkins. I didn't take pictures right away and they spoiled in an untimely fashion, pre-Halloween. Collapsed actually, and grew black fuzz. That's never happened before. Piffle.

Last year we got a few dozen of high school or college age kids at the door, our neighborhood is two blocks from Whitman College. Disconcerting to be looking up at the trick or treater, and they couldn't be bothered to make a feeble attempt at dressing up or putting a mask on. I feel a Maxine moment coming on. Oh yes, and then there were the large vans with lots of little Halloweeners being trucked in from miles away, how do I know? I asked. I can't be po'd at the kids but something about that bothers me. Some of the dentists in our area have taken a note from the police and are doing a buy-back, giving the kids $ for their candy or a toy. Last year I gave out Halloween bubble bottles and plastic Halloween "jewelry." The tall trick or treaters didn't seem to enjoy that so much. Yup, I am definitely channelling Maxine. I guess I will drive down to K-Mart and get some candy. Those little ones are so cute, and shy. Maxine and I will survive. Maybe I should wear my black spook cape and a mask myself, nothing too scary, really don't want to scare those little ones.

By the way my favorite Maxine quote today is "At my age strappy shoes means sandals with velcro."

2011-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

It's a nice if chilly day today. My clematis has grown up the side of the garage and out onto the phone line back towards the house. It the afternoons it looks like red stained glass. I'm going to try to catch a picture of it tomorrow, I waited until too late in the day today.

I skipped the pain pills this morning so I could drive myself to the library, a short jaunt. I got three DVD's and Dana Stabenow's "Hunter's Moon" to read. The films I got are "The Book of Eli," "Elizabeth - The Golden Age," with Cate Blanchett, who is one of my favorites, and "Eat, Pray, Love," which got mixed reviews but I wanted to see it, and I love watching Javier Bardem. It's a lot better than trying to find something on daytime television. I was surprised how tired I was when I got home so I took a little nap. When I got up I defrosted some of my homemade chili for dinner and started in on my book.

My friend Merry offered to loan me a new book she has, the latest Louise Penny, saying they "were trying not to read them too fast." I can sure appreciate that, if I zip through them they are gone, like old friends leaving after a visit and not to return for a long time. So I think I will follow her lead and read more slowly. I know I was in mourning for awhile after I read all three Steig Larsson's "Girl Who..." books, in despair that there would be no more. The upside is if my memory gets worse in the coming decades I can probably read them all over again like new books.

2011-10-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 3 in the morning Monday with a terrible stabbing ache in my side. Went to the Urgent Care at our local clinic and was given CT scan that found a large 3/8" kidney stone. That one wasn't going to wash through so they gave me a shot of something for the pain and set me up with a urologist who scheduled me into surgery late that afternoon. My dear daughter-in-law Heather took me to the doctor, delivered me to the hospital, returned me home afterwards, and stayed the night with me. What a girl. I am so blessed to have her in our family. Her mother sent dinner over on Tuesday.

This is not going to be my best or brightest post. I'm still on pain meds and am somewhat ditzy, but I'm feeling so grateful for family and friends who have shown me their care in many ways. Thank you all.

Weekend

2011-10-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

Sister Susan on our Alaskan Cruise July 2011

I'm looking out the kitchen window this morning watching the leaves slowly drifting down. I like sitting at this kitchen counter with my laptop and gazing out the window. I've been retired for awhile but still can't seem to get caught up with projects, and still the first thing I do every Saturday morning, is put in a load of wash like I had to go to work Monday. This morning I got to the clothes hamper and...there was nothing in it. Ack, now I'll be off all day.

I could start sorting through the photos of the Alaska trip Susan and I took with two friends. I did one post once then forgot about it doing other stuff instead. Still haven't put the roof on the first rooms of the doll house my grandgirl and I are slowly building. I need to clean up the garden before it freezes, some silly little cherry tomatoes and some peppers actually managed to ripen even though anything resembling warm weather has passed. Drain and roll up the hoses. Prune the roses and pile mulch under them. Finish knitting a muffler. Actually make a wreath out of all those pine cones I collected in SE Oregon. Work on my painting some more.

What do I do? Read a lot, go the gym intermittently, volunteer with Art Lab this school year, an art program in the grade schools here in Walla2, visit friends, home school a granddaughter once a week, and go for walks. This summer though I've felt like one the lilies of the field, "they toil not, neither do they spin." I do portage granddaughters often so I do a lot of driving but get nowhere, ha, ha. It never occurred to me I'd be a mom/taxi again with my grandgirls, but that's good, I like being in their lives. Did I mention I read a lot? And play on the computer, the new computer. No more black screen of death. Whoorah! Now I can write up my blurb on an artist named Ming Fay for the Art Lab so the 5th graders we are taking on a field trip to the Walla Walla Foundry here will learn (I hope) something about a current, and successful, working artist, whose works have been made here. I have an art degree and made most of my livelihood drawing airplane parts and working in technical publications. It supported me and my family so I'm not complaining. Still, I get all excited about someone who has managed to make a living with their art.

Yesterday, with book in hand, I went to pick up two grandgirls after school for an afternoon of snacks and pumpkin carving. I left really early so I could drop off other library books and get a good place to park in front of the school. I thought I might read while I waited. I'm finishing up a Kate Sugak mystery by Dana Stabenow, an addiction lately. Instead, I rolled the van windows down, let the mild air drift in and blow away fragrance of wet soccer shoes and socks, left the radio on a smooth jazz station and watched the trees in the sun and just chilled. Wonderful.

Oh, and I do buy a lottery ticket now and again, and last week actually won $100, which I will spend on more Dana Stabenow books. Life is good.

Transitions

2011-10-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

Thank you Inkless Press

My old PC has served me long and well but I have been nursing and cajoling this one along for the last year. It's XP, it doesn't have enough RAM. It makes crunching noises, it stops and gives me the black screen of death. It gets stuck and whirrs endlessly until finally I unplug it since you can't get to the shut down process. The applications I use keep giving me messages, "we no longer support XP," meaning - you're on your own girlie. I have finally given up and ordered a new PC. It was supposed to arrive at the store (no shipping charges that way) yesterday but oops, it didn't. Meanwhile I fill in at the library and on my little ASUS eee. I suppose I could just stick with my tiny laptop but I have young girls doing on-line home school work on the work station, and I can see better on the big screen of my work station especially if I'm trying to watch a movie or Inspector Lewis. No, I'm not wirelessly connected to my TV.

I'm a retired programmer and recovered gadget junkie but I seem to be sliding slowly into technical oblivion. I could download virtual books on my little laptop if I only could figure out how. My main winter project is going to be to learn how to use the stuff I have. Like remodel my blog page. My son's Droid befuddles me and the screen is too small for my eyes but it makes me drool. But I don't want to spend the money on it or pay the wireless phone people a fortune to get the connections to run it. Doesn't fit in the budget. I added up what I spend now to remain "connected" and almost passed out. I have enough money but not a lot of extra. Being able to gab online and with old friends is valuable. Many are out of reach without a long ride in the car, some of them unable to drive far anymore. Then there are my faraway blog friends.

Hope my PC arrives soon.

Friday Statements

2011-10-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Now I'm going to the gym so I will the energy to keep writing letters and fending off what Paul Krugman called the "economic royalists." Have a good weekend all.

2011-10-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

By John Wagner for Hallmark

I received this from a friend of a sister and it cracked me up. I actually did spend sometime last week thinking about the subject matter. It's been over 10 years since I last updated my "Living Will" and some things are clearer to me. I always thought I'd have a speedy, brief departure, and who knows how it will roll out in the end? My designated burden bearers are my two sons. I think it is somewhat of a burden, so I have tried to be a specific as possible to make it as easy as possible to do what dear old Mom asked for please. Still, circumstances and laws change. When I first wrote a living will, I imagined it would be no trouble to be doped up beyond pain if necessary while I wandered off to my final destination.

Lately though, hospitals, doctors, and hospices, are under the gun not to deliver too much of those heavy-duty painkilling drugs, as though an 80+ year old enduring a painful, fatal disease would become a society destroying painkiller addict. And there have been questions raised about "what if the level of comfort might kill the person," in my own case I say so what? But since I have a lung disease, and opitiates tend to reduce the functions of the central nervous system, as well as being a tremendous balm for a painful end stage disease, it may be my problem too, even though I still say for myself, so what, assuming a bread truck doesn't get me first.

I found a generic form online for the State of Washington Living Will Washington State but it fails to address some other pertinent issues, such as if I am elderly and especially if I'm in ill health from other issues what kind if any surgeries or treatments should anyone be allowed to perform on me. I have seen a fair number of my friends or relatives accept surgeries that killed them, right away or later, so they got some extra suffering tossed into the dying process. Again, to be personal, general anaethesia is not a good event for an older person, especially one with compromised airways, I avoid it like the plague. I stopped breathing during a minor surgery when I was in my 30's and now I am marching into my seventies. Still if I was in horrible pain, and a little surgery would stop it, maybe it's worth the risk.

So this is more than just finding a form and filling in the blanks, I am looking for a better form, and making a list of considerations I didn't think about 10 years ago.

Do you have a living will? What would be on your list of considerations? And of course there is the assisted suicide question which is an option here in Oregon and Washington. I doubt that would be my choice, but as I said you never know.

Girls' Night Out

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Several of my grandgirls, our community binoculars, and I went on a bird walk last week in the early evening at the site of the old Whitman Mission. Lovely afternoon with just a hint of fall in the air. We and about two dozen others including several children were escorted by a naturalist and introduced to the possibilities of sighting migrating birds in our area, the Walla Walla Valley and Columbia Basin. We did see some Canadian Geese and Wood Ducks in flight overhead but none settling down for the night. On the ground at some distance was a black heron, a pheasant, and any number of magpies. We could hear an owl, some songbirds, and quails wrestling each other as they settled in for the night. And, Blackbilled Magpies. Magpies for whatever reason do not get much respect. They do at time raid the nests of other birds but not often. They are quite common and belong to the same family of birds as the crow. Many people don't like them, I do. The girls collect their long attractive feathers.

Our guide pointed the Magpies out to us telling us that they served an important service much like their cousins the crows and ravens. They are scavengers and they clean up what others have left behind, roadkill, leftover fast food, dead critters in the wild. He told us something new to all of us. Magpies build large nests each year that take them about 40 days to construct and they abandon them after the chicks fly off and build new ones in the following season. The old nests are used by owls who, we were surprised to learn, do not build their own nests ever, not a stick. If it weren't for magpies and hawks, crows, and herons our lovely owls would have no place to raise their young. Owls do it turns out do sometimes toss the current residents out (or eat them) and use the nest. Sort of a hotel room with a mini-fridge.

It was getting dark and we could see a gorgeous sunset happening through the skinny clouds, very red through the ever present stubble burn smoke and dust from the surrounding wheat fields. We scurried off a little early, we were late for a family dinner but we had seen most of what we came to see. What a wonderful evening walking around the fields planted with the rye grass that used to grow all over here naturally. We also saw a turtle nest. There is an old mill pond here inhabited by turtles. Some turtle mom laid her eggs right next to a portion of ruts belonging to the old Oregon trail that goes through the Mission grounds here. The naturalists have built a screened cage around it to protect it from predators. We will go back to watch it progress, maybe we'll be lucky enough to see the babies.

The Call

2011-09-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've been locked in a spell of introspection and my mind just refuses to shut up the last couple of weeks so I went online and looked up books and then went to the library. Nothing resets the overheated brain like a good book and I got several books including Yannick Murphy's "The Call" from our library's new book shelf and filled my mind with the thoughts of someone else. I couldn't put it down. It's has an unusual format all inside the mind of David Appleton, husband, father of three, neighbor, and veterinarian in a small rural area. It's a mental journal sculpted around "the calls" he gets as a vet. "Call: horse down." And on to "What I saw coming home:" "Things I've said to my wife." Seemed simplistic at first but it's anything but; Murphy's writing reminded me of Cormac McCathy's lean prose. The calls expand, someone who calls and hangs up. Then their 12 year old son is injured in a freak hunting accident and lies in a coma.

It's a small book but gripping and I couldn't put it down. I read until 2am and then got up at 7am and finished it. Time spent totally inside someone else's head. Yannick Murphy is quite a writer and I'm looking forward to reading more of her creations. It certainly derailed my circular thoughts of what I shoulda done or should notta done. Yea, Yannick.

2011-09-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Washington Post 09/08/2011

The Dwindling Light

2011-09-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

After the dust storm passed conditions are strolling into pre-fall. Nice afternoons, and cooler evenings and nights. As my youngest son's family has five of six girls playing soccer (each with about two games and two practices a week). I've shuttling some my grandgirls to soccer games out of town. Yesterday we got the girls all lined up on the field and they did their warm-ups, and ran around the field, and around repeatedly when no referee appeared. As thoughts of leaving appeared so did the referee.

The game started enough that it was nearly dark by the time we finished and those of us inert in our folding chairs in the shadow of the hill were getting goosebumps. Autumn comes in a process I know, but it seems to have just snuck up on us all at once. The flock of chickens on the girls' farm have become reluctant to lay eggs in the dwindling light and chilly evenings. They will put lights on in their hen house to fool them into a few more eggs before bedtime. I took a nap this afternoon instead of cleaning the furnace filters, and vacuuming as I promised myself. Maybe I need a light to make my day longer too.

2011-09-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

It's been hot and dusty here. We are still getting smoke from Oregon fires, the fire up by Goldendale, WA, and clouds of dust from the wheat/hay harvests. Our sunsets are blood red, and then last night during my grandgirls soccer game it backed off a little. This morning was clear, cool, and lightly breezy. The advertised thunder storm was a light sprinkle so I opened all the windows and doors and aired the musty house out. Refreshing. About 1pm the wind picked up and the results are pictured above. I ran around and closed all the windows and doors again. It still smells better in here and went out to pick up books at the library, duh, I coughed for an hour after just jumping in and out of the car. The dust storm is gone now, but I know better, still when I get an email from the library saying all the books I put on hold are in, I can't help myself.

I got the next of Dana Stabenow's Alaskan Kate Shugak series, "Blood Will Tell", and the third of Louise Penny's Quebecois Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series "The Cruelest Month." So far neither of these women authors have failed me. Thanks to my friend Merry and friend Nancy for telling me about these books. Also thank you to Cowtown Pattie's blog for her review of Heather Lende's (another Alaskan) Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs. Our little rural library didn't have it so I bought it, and it's a wonderful autobiographical tale. I'm about half way through it. I got a second hand hardcover so I think I'll give it to our library when I'm done reading it and passing it around. Thanks Pattie.

2011-09-10T23:33:00.000-07:00

A Messy End

2011-09-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

Even my little strip of a blooming garden has produced enough to brighten up my meals. Although from the picture you can see the biggest crop seems to be Hollyhocks. Today I pulled up my basil. I will cook it fresh in a tomato, basil, cheese pie. The rest I will save to dry and use all winter. The basil is done, the green peppers are creeping along, none of them likely to turn red. There are very few cherry tomatoes left.

I like to make omelets and frittatas loaded up with my own chives, green peppers, and chopped Walla Walla Sweets, bought not grown. I cook the veggies first, this morning I included some carrots sliced into tiny, thin strips. I'm planning on having steamed broccoli with dinner and will cook enough to save for breakfast eggs. Sometimes I sear and cook down the little cherry tomatoes, add basil, both fresh from the garden, put in some garlic and cheese with the eggs and wrap it in a tortilla. It's a great way to use up those little bits of fresh and cooked veggies, for any meal. I'm making myself hungry.

Here's my favorite Tomato Tart recipe.

I am a packaged pie crust fan, faster, easier.
Prep: 20 minutes. Bake 25 minutes, test with a toothpick. Let stand for 5-10 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 450° F.

1 prepared pie crust
1 1/2 cups shredded queso fresco cheese (6 oz.)
4 roma tomatoes
1/4 - 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
4 cloves peeled garlic
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup cotija or Parmesan cheese
1/8 tsp ground white pepper
Fresh basil leave for topping (optional)

Press the pastry into your pan or dish and flute the edges but don't prick. Partially bake the pie crust for 5-7 minutes or until the dough is dry. Remove crust from the oven. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of queso fresco cheese evenly in the crust. Cool the pan on a wire rack. Reduce the oven temperature to 375° F.

Meanwhile cut the tomatoes into wedges, drain the wedges on paper towels. Arrange the wedges over the melted cheese in the baked crust.

In a food processor, combine the 3/4 cup basil and garlic. cover and process with off-on turns until coarsely chopped. Or, snip the basil and mince the garlic. (that's what I do, smells wonderful)

In a medium bowl, combine the basil/garlic mixture, the remaining queso fresco cheese, mayonnaise, cotija cheese, and pepper. Spread mixture evenly over the tomato wedges.

Bake in the 375° F oven about 25 minutes or until cheese is golden. Let it stand 5-10 minutes before cutting into wedges. Serve warm, if desired, garnish with additional basil leaves.

Makes 8 appetizer or 4 main-dish servings, yummy with a salad.

2011-09-05T09:17:00.000-07:00

July 07 2011 Whales entertaining a fisherman near Sentinel Island lighthouse north of Juneau.

It looks like it's going to be in the mid 90's this week so I rousted myself out early to make the rounds with the sprinklers before the heat set it. Very lovely out this morning, around 65. A slight breeze is shaking the leaves in the huge sycamore trees across the block and making them glitter in the morning sun. Good day to be alive. Happy Labor day to you all.

A Day at the Fair

2011-09-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

My granddaughter and her 4-H heifer

Went to the fair to see the sights, mostly to see my grandgirls who are showing heifers this year, five of them anyway. We saw the art, ate a Gyro, saw the flower show, ate an elephant ear and spent a lot of time in the barn with the girls. Other than to say those kids sure work hard for space in the show, I am short of commentary on anything today, just feeling peaceful and laid back, waiting for the big judging tomorrow morning. Last year this girl got a heifer to show that "flopped," just laid down, every time she tried to lead it anywhere. That's how I'm feeling today. Hope your day is as pleasant.

Perspective

2011-08-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

How tiny we are as we sidle up along side the Johns Hopkins Glacier. We aren't as close as these pictures look. It calved while we were watching the enormous side of ice pitching forward, coming loose, and falling into Glacier Bay. Then seconds later the Wagnerian cracking explosion of sound reached us while the wave from its fall into the bay rocked our ship. Sad these giants of ice are disappearing, Götterdämmerung indeed.

Alaska and Mysteries

2011-08-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

Glacier Bay 2011

July 3rd the four friends boarded the Oosterdam en route to Alaska: After spending the night and the next day at sea being rocked and rolled in a storm we came into Glacier Bay. The weather was cool but dry and views were astonishing. This visit is tied for first place in my mind with our later visit to Juneau and a whale watching venture. The mountains are huge but the crisp air seems to magnify them and they aren't even the biggest ones around. They opened access to the foredeck (where the crew gets to gather without us passengers) and gave us a park ranger to talk about the glaciers and point out what we were seeing. It turns out the picked her up during the night to do this and then on our way back out they returned her in a skiff. How many of us have had a job where we are whisked away by an ocean liner in the wee hours. Kind of cool. And she was good, informative and fun to listen too. I am in love with SE Alaska.

I am also a devotee of murder mysteries of many kinds. I started out on Agatha Christie when I was around 10 and found "Death on The Nile" in my grandmother's books. This year after I came home from Alaska a good friend of mine asked me if I'd ever read any of Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak mysteries. They are set in and around a fictional area resembling the Chugach National Park north and out of the SE panhandle of Alaska where our trip occurred. She suggested I start with the oldest and read in chronological order so as not to miss the developing relationships and personal story of the protagonist. Our little rural library didn't have the first one so I got it used from Amazon for about a dollar + shipping. Now I'm hooked on Kate Shugak and Amazon's dollar or less books. Being also a hoarder of maps, I have some of Alaska so I can follow the path of our heroine, as well as the path of my vacation trip. Feels like the best of everything.

Yesterday evening I sat on my back porch, read, and watched the thunder and lightning that blew through here. A smattering of rain fell and I went inside. Today the sky is blue and there is a light breeze and it probably won't break 85 in my yard. I am a blessed old girl.

Down the Rabbit Hole or Better Living Through Chemistry?

2011-08-26T13:14:00.000-07:00

Don't know if this is a rabbit hole or some other critter entirely. I found it along a forested trail at the Heritage Museum in Ketchikan, Alaska. Lovely, green, and peaceful.

Its been just about a year since my marriage ended.  In January I was bummed, then I perked up. I started doing things again, planned a great summer vacation with my sister and a friend from high school, and started a painting.

I came home from my vacation and began having panic attacks alternating with the inability to get myself out of the sack easily. Just wanted to sleep my life away. I went to the doctor for my regular checkup and mentioned how I was feeling. I was pretty sure I knew why it was happening just not how to stop it.   My doctor recommended antidepressants. It took awhile to find one as I don't have much tolerance for drugs of any kinds and experience some bizarre side effects at times. With misgivings I started on antidepressants for the second time, and down the rabbit hole I went and into the dark. Some days would be fine and some days I slept all day and night unless I had to be somewhere.  Then I began sleeping less and less, down to 2-3 hours a night at best, that's how they torture prisoners of war, sleep deprivation, ugh. My doctor was out of town so I called the druggist who said to take them every other day for a week and then stop, which I did.

It's been some weeks now and the side effects seem to have wore off except I have an occasion sleepless night. No more panic attacks so maybe the meds accomplished something or the panicking was temporary. I don't know. And I wonder how many older people can't tolerate the doses tested on much younger people, some 200 pound 35 year old man for instance. I know I felt mostly normal except for the sleep thing on the every other day regimine which was 1/2 the very minium dose. How many older people are drugged right out of their lives this way? They aren't feeling bad, they aren't feeling anything at all. I lost about 6 pounds in two weeks because I forgot to eat. I'll be 70 in the winter and in spite of the diabetes and asthma I am relatively healthy, and within 5 pounds of a normal weight. If medicines do this to me, what do they do to the frail and/or elderly? I can tell you some years ago when my now departed Dad came home from a surgery having hallucinations we looked up all the meds they sent home with him for side effects. Three of the six could cause hallucinations. He knew he was seeing things that weren't real but they were disturbing. We called his doctor and he said "stop giving them to him, he doesn't need those anyway." Problem solved. What if you don't have four daughters to watch out for you like he did?

I'm better and if I'm feeling anxious I go for a walk or go to the gym and work it off. Thank the Lord I can do that.

I Ran Away from Home

2011-07-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

I've been traveling, visiting relatives, bringing grandkids home with me, returning grandkids to whence I got them and then finally leaving on an adventure with my sister. I kind of overdid it and I've been sleeping a lot since I returned home but it was great.

Leaving Pier 91 on the Oosterdam for Alaska

July 3rd, four of us, myself, my sister Susan, my friend Cathy and her daughter Mary, together took an Alaskan Cruise. It was the first cruise ever for all of us. After days of less than clement weather, it was around 70 and gorgeous in Seattle the day we left. Blue skies, mild, warm air with the smell of salt. Delicious, for an expat Seattlite now living in Eastern Washington it was almost too much, made me briefly but really homesick.

The view from the ship looking back around Magnolia Bluff into Seattle.

We basked in the sun on the deck, took pictures, drank tall drinks made of rum, raspberry juice, and who knows what and watched the shoreline of Seattle go by. A most auspicious beginning.

Me and my fruity drink, photo by Susan Zumberis

By nightfall we were sailing by the 300 mile long coast of Vancouver Island en route to Glacier Bay. We were overtaken by a storm that night. For me the rocking of a boat is relaxing and I slept very, very well. Heading out for breakfast it was amazing to take one step and find yourself three feet across the hallway by the second step. It was actually kind of fun, but not for all. Many people were wearing little white dots of seasickness medicine behind their ears. The restaurant at lunch was very quiet and not crowded. Quite a few were staring at bowls of soup but not eating.

There was a "formal wear" dinner that second night and for reasons I cannot explain I brought brand new shiny patent leather high heels to wear to those events. The big wavy water didn't slow me down but the shoes did. I haven't worn heels in 10 years, good thing there were rails everywhere, I made it there and back and put the heels away, not because of the rocking ship, but because my 69 year-old arthritic feet were screaming "help, help, she's killing us." I went to the other "formal" dinners in toenail polish and black flip flops covered with silver spangles with soft soles and 1" heels. Ahhh, much better.

So long lovely shoes. My granddaughter wants them of course, I see them shining in her lovely 13 year-old eyes.

There and Back

2011-06-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

My grandgirl Alandra and I went to Portland Friday; it took us five hours with our side trips, visiting a little park on the Columbia River called Hat Rock and discovered a whole little community of houses tucked away on the river. We took loads of pictures and while they easily went onto my tiny laptop, I can't seem to download all I chose so here are the ones that made it. We were on a mission to see "The Allure of the Automobile Exhibit" at the Portland Art Museum, visit family and bring my other. grandgirl Sophie home with us.

This is the view out the window of the van as we enter the Columbia Gorge going west at Wallula Junction on Hwy 730. Burlington Northern has most of the good real estate here. The scenery was gorgeous, gorgeous gorge and the weather was perfect.

She caught a windsurfer in flying upstream in the wind just before we reached The Dalles.

This picture of Mt. Hood looming over Hood River is out of order but I am out of patience for struggling with this but it was a great day for getting pictures of the mountain. Because it was Saturday the road construction was paused as well.

Above is Mt. Hood overlooking the Dalles Dam on the Columbia. Alandra took most of the pictures through the window of a moving van and they turned out pretty great.

The photographer recharging her creative juices the next day after our arrival by hiding in her cozy bed at our hotel.

Day 4 and Counting

2011-06-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

The Lovely Granddaughters on their way to VBS

I am pooped, oddly not so pooped as in the beginning of the week. I'm also having fun and really like the craft crew I get to work with, and the kids, what well behaved kids, I'm really proud of all of them. The kids painted a ton of birdhouses with laughing and racket and joy. A couple of the high school guys helping painted two of the most creative bird houses. The kinders win the prize for working the hardest. Getting up an hour earlier this week has been worth it. Not so crazy about being on my feet 4-5 hours a day something I've managed to avoid for years. I guess my future career as an underpaid Walmart Greeter won't happen.

One of the first attempts at a group photo!

I guess my other future occupation as a Walmart kid's photographer is in jeopardy too. Ha, ha!

Vacation Bible School

2011-06-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

No pictures, whatever the reason they just wouldn't load this morning ;-0. This is day three of VBS. I'm helping with the crafts. It has been a fun week so far. No pictures being made out of noodles or seeds but plenty of key chains, birdhouses, and popsicle stick picture frames. I have six grandgirls who attend here it seemed like a good place to be. The last time I did it was several years ago and it was satisfying and I like kids. What I forgot was the several years has made some changes in me.

Day One - Arrived for our cowboy themed affair. It's red day, dress in red. Forgot my water bottle, ate a huge chocolate covered donut that is not on my diet anywhere. I wore sensible shoes but my feet gave out after about 1/2 an hour and complained bitterly the rest of the day. Kids, coming by grade K-5, were delightful and seemed to enjoy themselves. Our fearless craft leader is a joy to work with as are the two mid-high girls who make up the craft team with me. Two of my grandgirls have graduated from attendees to team members and it was fun to see how good they were with the kids especially the young ones. You'd think living in a household of six girls they might be tired of children but the opposite seems to have happened. We decorated bags for the kids to stash their product for the week. I cut out at least 10 pounds of cowboy boots, hats, hearts, butterflies, I am good with scissors and our decorations, except for glitter ran out fast. The room is covered with glitter, the kids are covered with glitter, fortunately none of it seemed to be actually glued to the kids. Went home, covered my feet with bengay, put on my socks and napped for an hour.

Day Two - Brought my water bottle and earplugs, and the six grandgirls. The meetups with a zillion kids singing are fun but deafening. My feet got different sensible shoes and two ibuprofen beforehand and quit hurting. Ate a muffin, oops. It's purple day, and dress like a cowboy day. Purple? And cowboys? The high school boys who are herding kids this week did a great job with the kids and being purple cowboys. Since this is a farm town in spite of the wineries, almost everyone has a stetson and/or boots. Although the kids are given water at least twice during the three hours one wee lassie overheated, and we watered her again, and laid her down in a quiet room and her gran came and collected her. We glued together the popsicle sticks, they colored scarves with markers, and some of the younger ones colored what I think of as Sunday school coloring sheets. I am inordinately fond of those and still have mine from 1946 or 47. Went home, took a shower, we had a sunny day and put on my bengay laden socks and took a nap. Printed off another coloring sheets and went to dinner with family.

Day three - Got the six girls again. I'm adjusting to getting up a 6 am, set the clock but woke up at 5:30, ewhhh, how did that happen? I have rise early though, it takes me forever to get ready for the day, on any day, shower, lotion for terminally dry skin, do all the meds, fix a healthy breakfast. I'm taking a banana today to fight off chocolate croissants, will it work? Feet don't hurt, took ibuprofen anyway. Been setting up the coffee pot the day before and we are ready to roll.

Father's Day

2011-06-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

Dad in 1937,

In college, no wife, no kids, plans for the future.

Dad (on left) in Seward 1941.

He married in May, 1941, graduated college in June and went to Alaska as a biologist. Mom was in Oregon with her mother and one child (me) on the way, and a war coming. Still had plans for the future.

Happy Father's Day Daddy.

Still Standing

2011-06-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

I was looking through my photos of things I might like to paint and there are many images of old buildings collected there. Some in good condition and some not. This has been a life long obsession and a theme in many of my dreams at night. Who built this, lived there or used the place? And I wonder where they went if the place was abandoned and why they left. This barn has seen better days but it is still providing shelter of a sort for a few horses. The hay inside was fresh and you can see the tracks of a vehicle that has been in there recently bringing supplies I imagine.

Some days these old buildings feel like my alter ego. I have a better roof than this barn and I'm still standing. I do provide transient shelter, food, affection, and company for some, I have moved out of the center of family life and into a peripheral role. I am the alpha dog in a pack of one. I am happy that those who come here chose to do so for they have lives and hearths of their own which was the plan. The exception is the recent departure of my spouse that was not the plan but became a necessity. Unlike these structures I record I still have the option of reinventing myself and my life and that seems to be my main business once again.

I read once that women tend to have dreams about houses when their lives were changing. That's been my experience. Tiny houses with secret giant rooms. Houses that floated on water or soared into the skies, many variations of my beloved grandmothers' homes, and a recurring dream of a yurt in the wilderness. I tend to do my grieving in my sleep in my dreams. While I was trying to make my marriage work I had nearly nightly dreams of living with my parents, not in their home but one belonging to me. My sisters drifted in and out as did my children suggesting this and then that. One night I dreamed they told me they couldn't help me anymore saying "you have to get out, now" and when I woke up I knew my marriage had crashed and burned.

Fort Walla Walla Days

2011-06-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

Each summer there are couple of events at our local historical museum, one of which is Fort Walla Walla Days. Fort Walla Walla Museum To paraphrase a Neil Diamond song of we "packed up the babies, grabbed the old ladies and everyone go..." We even got a break from the weather, sunny and around 73, so my 13 year old grandgirl, her great grandmother and her sister, plus myself climbed in the van and off we went. There was music, food, sunshine, live reenactments of fur traders, Lewis and Clark (who actually trekked by here), and the last few years a Civil War encampment and several staged skirmishes.

The woman who served as narrator on the sidelines with the audience told us this 40 pound cannon was built by one of the participants and it took him four years to build. I'm sorry to say I wrote the man's name down and other pertinent details but lost the paper on the trek home. He's part of the reenactment group of the 3rd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Co. F. They and their cannon have been invited to participate in the 150th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 2013.

3rd Michigan

Here's a view of the Confederate soldiers from afar beginning their charge. There were three skirmishes over the weekend. Not wishing to offend anyone, one went to the Union, one to the Confederates, and one was a draw. Walla Walla had received newcomers after the Civil War from both sides, I imagine this area would have seemed a very long way from the wreckage of that war and a place for people to start over.

It was kind of fun to have three of our four existing generations together this way and while this is not where I grew up it is the home town of the rest of the ladies young and in their 80's. It's fun to see the museum anything and to view some of the plentiful local history. If you come bring your walking shoes, its really large and hilly in spots. You can catch a ride on a golf cart though so don't let that stop you.

The First? Last? Days of Spring

2011-06-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

It hasn't been a sunny spring at all here. Normally the temperatures would be pushing the upper 80's by now and we have only had a few intermittent days that reached 70. It's cry havoc for the farmers, and orchardists. No strawberries, although I had one in my bed with promise of more to come. So I turned up the lights inside and started my painting. Monet has nothing to fear yet. I'm painting my impressions of young fish schooling in a hatchery pond. I hope they were schooling and not suffering from whirling disease which is stalking western hatcheries. Fish are a fixture of my family stories. Dear old Dad was a fisheries biologist and it's metaphorically tangled with my art. Well, why not, two of us are Pisces, arty water signs. What surprised me was that after spending some of my young childhood living in or near hatcheries I had forgotten what the fish looked like, where their fins went, the shapes of their snoots. It took many sketches to start getting the shapes right. And of course the colors in the ponds are many shades of gray so I took a hard look and used the color a particular shade of gray seemed to contain for me. This is an early attempt.

Then, this weekend two of my grandgirls stayed with me and shock, the sun came out. We made it to the Farmer's Market, which was quite spare due to the weather conditions here. We bought salad greens and shaved ice treats, and noticed many of our favorite vendors were not there. Then we went home and played with the camera, taking many pictures of how the trees made their own shadowy portraits on the table umbrella in the backyard.

The picture below, is of the support pieces of a defunct tent gazebo. I'm sure there a million of these lying in dumps around the country or behind someone's garage. I'm going to make mine into yard art. Going to rustoleum primary colors onto them and "artfully" hang some of my accumulated "art supplies" on them. We can change them out from time to time. I plan on hanging some of my excess beads on them (I am an addicted bead gatherer). The girls are going to help with it. I'm have plenty of material as I'm sure others of you do. I see stuff on the beach (I could make a necklace out of that, or a collage out of this), on walks, at garage sales, etc. Artists and crafters have boxes and baskets of "found" materials, don't you guys? In fact I have a box of baskets. I used to create custom made stained glass windows for houses and I still have some of the models I made for customers from eons ago. I could hang those on these gazebo uprights. I can see the light shining through them already. Assuming we get any light.

We had a great time, took the girls to an open air play at a local house museum, in another town and it was wonderful. On the way home, I treated my little darlings to a lesson in interesting language when some man drove through a stop sign in front of us on the way home. No harm was done, and I called him an old coot, how's that for the pot calling the kettle black. I just hope I didn't say anything they haven't heard from their father while he fixes his tractor, then I can blame it all on him, of course he blames me for his interesting language, where would we be without our families?

A Slow out of the Gate Sunday

2011-05-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

I got up chomping the bit yesterday; cleaned house, worked in the garden weeding and chopping the roses that died in the cold we had this winter. The eight plus foot tall fragrant old florabunda is down to about three tiny sprouts of less than three inches in height. Same with the others, black and dead. I sawed, used my geared pruner, and hauled trash can after trash can of debris. So proud of myself. At 1am I woke up to every muscle in my body screaming "what did you think you were doing?"

Ugh, I am not a creature of evenly timed habits, I crash and burn, rest up, and go like 60 until I crash and burn again. Kind of making hay while the sun shines. I made myself some herbal tea, took two ibuprophen and went back to sleep, same thing at 5am, then I woke up late, but I feel better, happier. Nothing like working your angst out on helpless shrubbery that needs to go away anyway.

It sprinkled before I got up and my Sunday paper had not quite made it to the porch and was soggy. I was going to call my paper girl for another when I remembered how she left my paper on my porch dry and safe all through our nasty freeze and snow so I hung the wet pages up on the chairs in the kitchen to dry insrtead. It read just fine and then I decide to save the papers and do a project with my granddaughters making paper mache' animals like I did with my own kids eons ago. Some one in the family still has a lime green elephant I made. So that's why I've saved all that decorative stuff I have, ribbons, trims, beads, button, and wiggly eyes.

Then I read my blogs, much better than the paper here anyway. Thanks to all of you who were so encouraging about my shoving myself back into making art. It's funny how saying my hopes out loud, among my blogging friends makes me think about why I haven't done anything. Then I noticed this:

All my good brushes, some from college, and best colored pencils are in the kitchen being guarded by ducks and a Chinese checkers game. My easel is in another room. My paints are in the closet. What's wrong with this picture? I moved them.

Not the space I really wanted but I've stalled long enough to because I don't have the right space. Now easel, canvas, paints (sitting on the printer), brushes, and palette are meeting in the same place. Hooray!

What Makes You Happy?

2011-05-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

"Water-Lilies" Claude Monet 1908, Dallas Museum of Arts

In spite of having an art degree, I had no idea how many waterlily paintings Claude Monet had done until I tried looking up an image to add to my blog. The series is actually around 250 paintings. I picked this Wikipedia link because of its nice selection of Monet's Water Lilies. I've never painted 250 of anything not that I'm comparing myself to Monet.

Making art (which I am not doing) made me happy, seeing art makes me happy. I started thinking about this several weeks ago and pondering why I am currently artless, ha, ha, but got derailed by personal events, things that made me unhappy and anxious. Today on Facebook an organization I joined earlier this year, the Picture Lady Program, posted this link from the UK Guardian . Art Makes You Happy. Scientists have discovered that looking at art induces the same feelings of pleasure as being in love. I loved the quote from Grayson Perry - artist "Life without art would be a series of emails." Bland as I assume he's saying.

So, I have my easel is up in the spare bedroom, canvas in place. Pictures I took posted in sight for inspiration and quotes. Will she, won't she? Is this little morsel of inspiration due to all the gardening I've been doing, seeing things grow and blossom, or helping my four year old granddaughter paint her own birthday cards? I don't know. The Picture Lady Program, who brings art to our schools where art and music have been slashed by the economy may have once again gotten my attention. If viewing art feels like being in love, and I can understand that with my heart, I guess I will get out there and scoop up the endorphins.

Friday Thoughts

2011-05-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm glad for these things:

I was slugabed last Friday when I heard the sound of this balloon running its burner and to gain altitude. There was no wind and it was suspended over our backyards a long time so I could toss my robe and shoes on and get this picture.

Chocolate.

In half an hour my house will be filled with four grandgirls who are supposed to be doing their homeschool work today. Although it's like herding cats some days I will be sad when they all stroll off to high school.

My church sings. We had a prayer service last night for our pastor and we sung our little hearts out for nearly two hours. My youngest son played his guitar and many with good voices went up by the pulpit and made us sound good.

Thank heaven for little girls, the two on the right are my grands.

I'm grateful for my family, large, diverse, full of characters. Always there in a pinch or a celebration.

I'm especially glad for the new little family member who showed up 11 weeks early at 2 pounds 9 ounces. He is strong and doing well. He is breathing well on his own, gained two ounces, and he's pooping regularly now. Isn't it funny what makes you happy?

Friends!

I've lost two more pounds and am six pounds away from where I should be. My pants except for two new pairs of jeans are all too big and fortunately I can replace them.

I am down to just one regular medication to take. That's for my diabetes. I can still eat dessert occasionally and of course, chocolate. We have a to-die-for candy store here, Bright's Chocolate, and I run in and buy myself one stupendous dark chocolate truffle when the urge strikes. I'd buy five but I'd eat them all in the car on the way home.

I'm glad for this blogging community. I don't write everyday but I sure do read it everyday.

2011-05-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

I couldn't think of a title for this post so I will just jump into it; our Pastor Robin Peterson died yesterday. It's huge loss to his family, his friends, the congregation at College Place Presbyterian Church, and to the community at large. He fought hard and long to conquer the cancer but finally the Lord called him home. Bless you Robin. He got in your life and stayed there. I really miss you already. Here's is the link to the post his daughter left yesterday. Pastor Robin

The Inconstant Gardener

2011-05-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

These are the last of my tulips to open. All the daffodils and earlier tulips are faded or gone. Some of my neighbors have tons of bright yellow tulips just opening. I have to look into that and see about extending the time of some early color in my yard too. This is my first spring season in the yard on my own in many years. I still haven't adjusted from gardening in the milder, wet climate of Seattle to gardening in this semi-arid spot in SE Washington.

I'm slowly replacing water hungry annuals and shrubs with drought tolerant perennials. I shamelessly snoop in the neighbors yards as I walk to see what works and what doesn't. Tiny violets pop through the grass in the spring. Most of my neighbors try to get rid of the violets but I think they are charming, I look forward to seeing them. We have the same joyful dandelions as Seattle but there's also a weed with thorns that comes up everywhere like a tiny ground cover along the streets and vacant lots. Its thorns will go right through a rubber flip flop and the effect on bare feet is brutal. Having spent most of my life's summers barefoot this was a painful shock.

I found someone to prune and shape a couple of trees in my yard. They've become huge over the last 10 years and are eating my roof, or least plugging the gutters and giving the moss a nice place to grow. An arborist has to be a cheaper solution than a new roof.

My chosen task for the end of this week is to cut all the dead stuff out of the roses which after last winter are mostly dead stuff. I've filled two 96 gallon cans so far. I wore gloves but forgot about my arms which are now dotted and striped with scratches and punctures, the roses fought back like a mad tabby. The front garden still needs more work and its new little lavender plants haven't arrived yet. What is arriving is the rain, again, so I am cutting this short and rushing back out get two tomato plants in the wreck of the vegetable garden before they die. I can clean out enough space to get them going. I'm finding that in spite of frequent breaks for water and unkinking my back I still like gardening. All this fresh air and sunshine must be healthy, right?

Two Days of Sun and Counting

2011-05-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

Blue Mountain Lavender Farm

Small Provence Lavender and an unknown rescue lavender

I bought these lavenders last year and because of the cement walk project in front of the house I didn't get them into the front garden bed around my yard light. You can see the yard light in my blog header. I stuck them into a bed in the backyard and they survived the winter and have grown quite a bit. The little Provence from the lavender farm are grow round and tidy much like the field lavenders above. The other two were leftovers from Shopko, the garden manager gave me a deal, free. I've had good luck reviving the post season leftover perennenials, lavender, heather, grasses, daylillies, and the occasional azelea. The daylillies have grown like crazy and need to be thinned out and shared. All these plants have been cheap or free. The key to survival here has been water, water, water, and rest in my sheltered dirt by the deck for a few months. The orphan lavenders are kind of messy and I'm going to plant them in the vegetable garden to attract bees. Last week I got six ice plants from BiMart, three purple and three pink leftover from last year and cheap (I am a plant scrounger). It's a ground cover and I'm hoping it will drape over the sides of the cement stairs up to the house.

I didn't put these plants into their new home yet because of the continuing rain we've had and hideous hay fever that was followed by a hideous cold. Apparently I've passed on to my son, an awful way to thank him for a lovely Mother's Day. Two days into antibiotics I feel human again and it's a beautiful day. I plan to get these all moved into the front garden around the yard light. The bed still isn't edged out the way I want it but I have plenty of time before the plants get too much bigger. Hope I don't forget to take the before picture.

2011-05-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

My mother and mini-me.

Miss you Mommy.

Happy Mother's Day

Be you mothers, aunts, sisters, single dads, grandparents, or friends and teachers, may all of you who give children love and a sense home have a fine day Sunday.

Dinner and a Movie

2011-05-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Our radiant day of spring sunshine yesterday has been replaced by cool, breezy, and overcast again. I'm afraid to stick my little tomato plants in the ground unprotected. Tomorrow I will venture out to the local garden emporium and get a couple of those little jacket things to put around them. Yesterday I dug up a weedy garden bed around my front yard light and planted three pink ice plants. When the sun comes back I will add more and move my little lavenders out there too. The local grown asparagus showed up in stores this week and for dinner I made a Swiss cheese, mushroom, and asparagus Quiche. Made it with fresh eggs from my kids' farm. Three big duck eggs. Smelled heavenly and tasted delightful if I do say so myself.

Now for the movie. Well, more of a short. This is on U-toob as we like to call it, made by my sister Susan and her daughter. Click here, Too Much Sugar, a humorous cautionary tale made for grade school kids, she teaches fourth grade. It was shown it at an assembly at her elementary school. She plays Grannie and the grandson which cracked me up. I, of course, am quite proud of her acting and her daughter's film work.

Finding Old Friends

2011-05-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

The last couple of years I've been trying to find old friends. Even with Google and Facebook our past women friends can be hard to find with the name changes women go through. When I divorced I changed my last name to a family name and not my maiden name, and I have kept it ever since. I saw a suggestion that you look for the parents of your friends and give them a call but at my age most of those parents are gone, but not all.

I did find one dear friend by searching the Internet. I knew she was in Hawaii. Along the way I met a new friend with the same name, also involved in education, now how funny is that? The second woman actually knew of my friend.

We moved a lot and grade school friends were few and very hard to find again. The friend that continues to elude me is Patty from 5 through 8th grades. My constantly moving family actually stayed in one place for 3 1/2 years and she was my best friend. Alas, she and her family seemed to have disappeared. I found another classmate from that time, Mary Ann who lived up the road and walked to school with us. That was from an article in the Oregonian about Mary Ann's mother who had turned 95 and the party they had for her.

After starting and leaving two high schools, I got to stay in one school for the last two years and graduated with two friends, Cathy and Naomi, who found me after I signed up for the alum association. The alum paper provides news about people by class year and lists those who have passed on. I was shocked to find many of the girls I knew had not made it to retirement age. I also discovered my first love and prom date had died at 60 of a heart attack. Harbinger of things to come I suppose.

Here's the happy ending. My friend Cathy lives about four hours from me. We finished high school together and started college together. I've visited her in Seattle and we've picked up kind of where we left off after a separation of 30 years. She has a daughter about the age of my youngest sister and the four of us are going to vacation together this summer in Alaska. I am really excited about this happening. Naomi has moved from Hawaii to Texas and has invited me to visit. I've never seen Texas and I'd love to see her. She was in Seattle for awhile but an illness kept me home and we missed that opportunity. This makes me grateful for the Internet, the easy exchange of pictures and email. Now if I can just find Patty.

2011-05-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

May the all those injured, harmed, and bereaved by Osama Bin Laden take comfort in this day.

Lord protect our country and especially our troops.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

2011-04-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

Been humming David Bowie songs today, bet my young grandgirls don't know who he is.

Just read Ronni Bennett's blog about shoes and old feet. The postman arrived with a SHOE catalog, drool. How is that for serendipity? In it is a Mary Jane shoe with a rubber sole in silver. Kind of a dressy (if that's possible) tennis shoe. So much has changed for me, gone from admiring spikey heels with one tiny strap to wanting silver tennies. Although Ronni has a pair of pink jeweled mules I will probably try to duplicate.

Much has besides shoes has changed.

1) My music, I still love David Bowie, and Marvin Gaye and many others, oh like, Creedence Clearwater, but now I also like Nightwish, a Finnish metal band with an operatic songstress and orchestra arrangements, and a lead guitarist who looks like my idea of an ancient berserker. And Shakira.

2) I used to walk, hike, and kayak. Now I've turned into a gym rat showing up usually five days a week to hike on the treadmill and let the nautilus equipment pummel me.

4) Food, drink. I ate anything and everything. I drank a mocha a day at my favorite coffee place, now its one cup of coffee usually at home; two cups means antacid pills. I loved rum and cokes, fruity drinks, now most hard liquor gives me a headache right away, the "no waiting" hangover. Probably a combination of allergies and medications. Fortunately a little glass of wine actually lowers your blood sugar so I save that for those dinners when everything is too good to pass up. Mostly I drink water.

3) I spill things. No wait, I always spilled things.

4) I used participate in political marches, now I write letters and send email.

5) It takes half an hour for me to take my pills, drink two glasses of water, and do stretches in the morning just so I can get dressed and eat breakfast. It used to take me half and hour to shower, eat, and dress and go to work.

6) I am much more patient with my little grandkids than I was with my sons when they were little. For that I am sorry, I really thought what I was trying to teach them was really, really important.

7) I no longer have to rush to be on time to things because I kept washing dishes and hanging up clothes before I leave. They'll still be there when I get back. I vacuum and clean after the kids leave not before.

8) I used to listen to the news and the weather in the car on the way to work. Now, I go out on the deck every morning whatever the weather and give myself the weather report, and be thankful that I have my own (neglected) backyard and I can see trees and birds.

9) Then there is driving. I love to drive, short scenic drives, driving to visit my relatives, and so on. The price of gas is rising as you know and my solution is to drive less. I'm not buying a more fuel efficient car because mine is paid for and safe, and may last out my driving career. Is is really efficient and green to toss out a perfectly good car for an expensive hybrids at this point in my life? I think not. Where do the leftovers go? I noticed when the deal for trading your car in to get rid of junkers, the cars they got were better than most of the cars that the poor people here drive. And before I leave my soap box - it's not just money that made me decide to drive less. I am shocked that we are bombing yet a third middle east country, and I want us out of the wars over there. It's all about the control of oil over there. That alone makes me feel a need to commit to driving less that stands on its own. My sons are too old for the military but why would I want my neighbor's son or daughter to die in a war like that? I don't.

What Happened?

2011-04-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

This morning I finally got online and did the "your account" thing with my cell phone provider. I needed to because my voice mail was password protected and I haven't been able to use that in the eight months since I got the phone. Then I decided to buy myself a ring tone as a reward for finally taking care of it. It told me I couldn't because my 8-month old phone isn't set up to do that. Whaaat? Apparently I bought a very passe phone. Well it was cheaper. I wouldn't mind a fancier phone but I don't want to pay the extra monthly charges and every time I try to look at stuff on my son's Android I end up dialing someone by mistake, touchy touch screen. Fat fingered me.

In another life I was a programmer and PC techie, loaded down with cell phone, pager, work access at home, and I set it all up myself. I could bring whole production systems to their knees from miles away. Now my daughter Heather had to set up my TV for me, and then discovered my PC speakers were monaural rather than stereo as they were plugged into the wrong place. I'd like to stream netflix movies to my TV so I could see them better but the whole process intimidates me. Soon I think I'll have to get a new PC, mine has occasional fits of the "blue screen of death" at times, I think its because MS has sucked up all the spare space with its endless updates. I'm not looking forward to all the shopping and comparing anymore.

There must be some answer besides going to live in the hills in a yurt and growing potatoes. Hmmm, with an outhouse there'd be no toilet to wash either.

Ruminations

2011-04-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

It can truly get windy here and it amazes me all the ways people have found to harness that wind. We parked in the lot of the local theater to watch this fellow and a companion flying before the winds. I found it thrilling watching these young men enjoying themselves and putting on a show for us so I could get pictures. This is exactly the kind of thing I would have loved to have done as a kid. I used to use my roller skates to do long jumps over things, now it would asking for a life in a body cast to do that but maybe rolling around a parking lot...I wanted to tell him to get a helmet.

My mother used to watch musicals and the dancers and say "I could have done that." She very well might have, she had danced in Vaudeville shows in Portland when she was a very little girl and kept her flexibility and long legged grace up to the end of her life. As she grew older she quit bemoaning her lost alternatives and truly seemed to enjoy watching others perform, in particular my younger sister who has always moved well and seems to have the performing gene as does her daughter. When I realized that I'd quit envying others doing what I used be able to do, I understood better her joy in musicals, watching Olympic ice skaters, and gymnasts. Now I love watching the speed skaters, Apolo Anton Ono is amazing, not to mention he is a fellow Seattle homie, and a handsome young man. And the snowboarders, especially the women.

Things way different since I was a girl. I loved basketball. No basketball teams in my high school. My first opportunity to play on a basketball team didn't came when I was in my 30's and a young mother. My alma mater now has a great collegiate women's basketball team. My grandkids, all girls but one, have much more opportunity to develop their physical side as well as their minds. A very good change.

Spring Bouquet

2011-03-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

In spite of the lack of sunshine through my windows, my pot of flowers keeps showing new blooms. I'll plant the bulbs in the yard when the time comes. I went to Home Depot (fondly known as Ho Depot from a time they lost part of their sign in a wind storm) and checked out the plants there. I was there to get a light fixture and some other things as the electrician is coming tomorrow to put in extra outlets and fix a fried light fixture. Last week it was the plumber. A couple in front of me bought a couple of boxes of assorted bedding plants. I hope they aren't out there trying to plant them though. The wind has kicked up, gusts around 35mph, and rain is right behind it. If they get them right into the ground they won't have to water.

Saw my doctor and she talked me back onto Zoloft with a plan for tapering off it more gently doing cold turkey. I agreed to it, the abrupt way was making me dizzy and now I feel better. I'm not generally a good pill taker but I'm not interested in falling flat on my face again like I did last week. Fortunately I didn't hurt anything but my own feelings. So apparently there's a reason for following directions. Snicker.

Now the house smells delicious, I just took two loaves of banana bread out of the oven. They have almonds and apricots in them. Yum. Just going to have some bread, finish watching my Netflix film, and then off to the gym. Nice quiet day, tomorrow I'll have 4 grandgirls here besides the electrician, and I'm cooking dinner for them and their daddy. Also fun, but definitely not quiet.

2011-03-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

I love these little violet crocus, crocuses, crocii? These are in a pot of bulbs sent for my birthday. It was supposed to be tulips and there are some in there but there are jonquils, and tiny iris, and something I haven't identified yet. It's been fun watching them push up the dirt and stick their little heads out. There's a parable there somewhere. Something about me sticking my head up out of the sand.

Thanks for all the comments about my last post. Anytime I post something that personal I feel sort of exposed and I appreciate the thoughfulness and kind words from all. Brighid, I had to look up the Sweet Potato Queens and I haven't stopped laughing yet. I'm sure you must be a candidate for a Sweet Potato Queens Revirgination kit, me too!? And as Rain remarked, I thought Zoloft tamped my creativity down to slow go, to almost no go. It hasn't been around that long and I have my doubts that all that needs to be known about SSRI's is known, much like with estrogen, or coffee, or chocolate. It filled the bill at the time.

Dreams & Medication

2011-03-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

During my travel from married to single I experienced some health problems, a jittery heartbeat with chest pains ending in a trip to the ER. They kept me overnight, ack! Many tests later my heart was pronounced healthy with an odd early heartbeat called a PVC, GERD, and severe stress. My doctor put me on a small dose of Z*loft, an SSRI, not my favorite thing to do but I needed more peace than I could give myself. It worked. Then it started keeping me awake at night so I tapered off a little and then just quit. I've replaced it with nearly daily trips to the gym. Now I'm sleeping, a lot, and having odd dreams that are probably related to stopping the Z*loft.

Last night I dreamed I was an newly minted Orthodox nun, except we were all dressed in white and the orthodox nuns are usually dressed in black as far as I know. I was assigned to hand out medications to the poor but whoever was in charge was just giving me handfuls of assorted pills with verbal instructions to give this to so and so and that to so and so. All of which I promptly forgot so no one got anything as I wasn't allowed to write instructions down. That was disturbing. But there is a repetitive theme that has appeared in this dream and all the others over the week, having the ground crumble out from under me. I drive down a dream road and when I try to drive back up it has washed away or fallen over the edge. When I walk somewhere in my dream the same thing, or I open my front door and there is a huge hole in front of the place I'm living. I think its SSRI withdrawal and a belated reaction to a failed marriage which was like the ground crumbling under me. Some years ago I took Z*loft after my mother died, and while it perked me up, it also made it nearly impossible for me to sleep. I'd forgotten that. Still I think less drugs is better for me, and probably I need to process what happened to my life the last few years further and continue jumping on that treadmill in the gym. Nothing is over until its over.

A Dazzle of Dragonflies

2011-03-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Deep among the flowers, butterflies press their way;

The slow winged dragonflies dot the water.

I'd whisper to the wind and light: "together let us tarry;"

We shall enjoy the moment, and never contrary be.

Tu Fu - Chinese poet 712-770

***

Lonesomely clings the Dragonfly to the underside of the leaf.

Ah! The Spring rain.

Anonymous Japanese poet

2011-03-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

Though the purity

Of the moonlight has silenced

Both nightingale and

Cricket, the mourning dove alone

Sings all the white night.

- Anonymous

2011-03-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

I was up in the middle of the night last night for no good reason. Tossed and turned and finally got up after 1am, checked out the TV and gave up and read a book until about 4am. It's " Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons:Tales of Redemption from an Irish Mailbox," by Greg Fitzsimmons a comedian, and 100% Irish. I myself am 50% Irish or so via two little grandmothers with dark curly hair and rosaries.  The book is pretty funny but reminded me of the years of notes and phone calls from my grade school to my parents.  Fitzsimmons calls them Irish Merit Badges. Now I'm tired and inert. And the delete key on my new keyboard is in a different place. The familiar place is occupied by a key that sends me to the end of a typed line. So I think I'm deleting and the cursor scoots off into the margin. Grrr. And gray weather is like a soft, blanket, zzz. Not at all energizing.

Gray, gloomy, wet, March. The month of my birth and of my two years younger sister who was a blond little girl who used to whistle in church. Three of my grandgirls' birthday are in March, and one grandson. So many of us popped out in this end of the winter month, the products of summer unions and affections. Were we sunny reminders of a happy past, a bright spot in winter, or was it "Omigod, look what we've done?" Perhaps a little of both. I know my own parents were clueless about babies, especially our mother, an only child with zero infant experience. Or sibling experience. I think my sisters and I delivered endless shocks to her at times. "Why do you girls fight?" she cry, "I'd loved to had a sister." And she was right; I wouldn't like to be an only child. And, I'm glad we were all girls, gave us opportunities we might not have had with some sons in the mix. Although I've often wondered if it had some deleterious effect on my two marriages. Both to younger brothers of eldest sisters. Being the alpha girl I haven't always been very flexible. Oh well, who cares?

The next two sisters were much younger and both born in May, a more welcoming time of year. I was nine when third one came, sweet little red headed girl.  The fourth and youngest sister is 20 years younger and we have a loving, entwined relationship. She was in my care a lot as a baby and toddler and sometimes we have a parent/child view as well as sister/sister and friends as well. I think the parent/child thing has become a two way street at this point in our lives. I believe we are spiritual twins. It's her young son who is my grandson as his sister is my granddaughter. They are in the age group the rest of my grandkids though in fact they are my grown sons cousins. I felt honored to be at the hospital with her and her husband both times when her children were born. Lots of sisters there.  The staff called us the Birkenstock sisters the last time around.

All this remembering is making me hungry.  Or maybe I'm just tired.  The youngest sister with the dark, curly hair will be here with her kids for spring break so maybe I will shock them and clean up the house. After my nap.

2011-03-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

Hooray for public libraries. This is of course a summer picture; there are no leaves on the trees here right now. Now that my PC is bug free, my keyboard has died. I've hauled my library card out and gotten online and taken out a few books to while I'm at it. I've been reading Wallace Stegner and they had two of those I hadn't gotten to yet.

I just read a quote from Stegner's "All The Little Live Things." I don't know what he meant, but it keeps running through my mind as I try decide what it means to me. His protagonist Joe is 65, mourning the loss of his only son and examining his own life from his new home in a rural area, "and it used to comfort me to know that these little mountains, like everything else around, are very lively, very Californian. The range grows, they say, a half inch or so a year, and in the same time moves about that distance northward. It is a parable for the retired. Sit still and let the world do the moving." I wonder how many people retire this way. I was never a mover and shaker though I did give my money and time to various causes, tutoring and literacy, political campaigns, Patty Murray in particular. I picketed with the farm workers and Chavez in my younger days and then again with his daughter when I was in my fifties. Did that make any difference? Do I make any difference right now? I have grandchildren who I'm hoping to help send out into the world with an education and a moral compass based on love and compassion. So the world keeps moving on with or without us but I still think all of our inputs may count for something in the aggregate. In a way we all are living on the fault line.

2011-02-26T17:50:00.000-08:00

I'm a little late with this as the light snow pretty much disappeared yesterday even though it was about 12 this morning when I got up. The weather mostly went around us again. I'm grateful. I went to sleep in my sweats last night, too lazy or tired or both to get another blanket out for the bed. Before I turned in I went out on the deck and looked up at the sky. Clear as a bell and a zillion stars in every direction. Our local owl was performing its vocalizations. I could hear the noise of the little stream that runs across the front of my neighbor's yard by the sidewalk. No other sounds. I was really glad I'd insulated myself up in my wool socks and heavy bathrobe and gone out for a look. It puts winter and days of freezing temperatures into perspective.

Weather Wonderings

2011-02-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Monday on my birdless bird watch, I took a picture of Bennington Lake, an artificial lake put in by the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control. It was finished in 1942 same as me. It has hiking and horseback trails, places to picnic, and a boat ramp for motorless boats. This is the lowest water level I have seen since I moved here over a decade ago. This is 52 acres of water, close to town, was 52 acres, now it must be about 20 or less. Someone has been making "donuts" in the nearly dried mud.

We seem to be getting peculiar weather, warm and dry alternating with cold and dry. All of February's average rain fall fell in about three gully washing days and disappeared. The snow pack has failed to materialize, the Blue Mountains get white and then it all melts off. The Walla Walla Valley is situated in a weather anomaly, right now snow is falling heavily around us, but only lightly here. I saw a National Geographic map of weather changes and it had us marked to become wetter as times goes by and we have had two cold soggy springs so far, vegetable gardens suffered. I guess I will continue with xeriscaping of my yard. Will I have to give up tomatoes and peppers for carrots, lettuce, and beets?

Birding!?

2011-02-21T23:32:00.000-08:00

The sun came out today so two of my grandgirls and I took the binoculars and camera out to do the bird watch thing.

We ate our pre-hike donuts and apple juice in the nice warm van and decided which way to walk. We went upstream on the nice graveled path between the river, some farmland, and an old orchard. Nuts! No ducks, or herons, or anything. The magpie that flew over us as we were driving in was the only feathered critter we saw. Then wind came up and showed us we were woefully underdressed to walk or wait. Not one complaint was uttered by these cheery kids even though it was apparent their grandmother was trying to turn them into popscicles. We turned back, climbed into the nice warm van with the heat on high. After drinking more juice we drove up to Bennington Lake where the wind was less of a problem. We saw plenty of hikers and a couple of horseback riders but not one bird, too cold? I don't know. Still we had a great time. We took pictures of each other and the mountains and got into the nice warm van. Home we went to eat pizza and watch Harry Potter do his deeds once more.

On Wisconsin

2011-02-18T21:33:00.000-08:00

Today I stand with the teachers, nurses, and all public employees of Wisconsin who are fighting for their rights. Wisconsin Leads Way - NYT

Good News

2011-02-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

It's time for the yearly physical again. This isn't me in this picture but this is the booth they put you in to test your pulmonary functions. When they shut the little plexiglass type door it makes me feel like I'm on a quiz show waiting to come up with the answer to the million dollar question. Today I got the right answer.

I've had asthma all my life and for a decade or so I've had some mild underlying emphysema. That worries me, our Mom died of complications of emphysema. But today I found out that my asthma is only very slightly worse than it was when I started coming to this office 10 years ago, and that the empheysema is no worse at all. A much fun as a million bucks would be this is the better prize. And, the frosting on the cupcake, I weighed in at eight pounds away from my ultimate weight loss goal. I was so buzzed I went to the gym and wore myself out and came home and napped for three hours. What a party girl.

2011-02-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day

My first date was a Valentine's Day tolo. Does anyone use that phrase anymore? Anyway, it's a dance that the girl does the inviting. I was tall, over 5' 8", skinny, weighed about 105. At the ripe old age of 12 I looked about 10. In March I would turn 13.  We had just moved again, from Sunnyside, Oregon, into SE Portland. My hair was very long and my Mom used those headband thingys to keep it back off my face; I was inept (still am) at doing any hair stuff. Because of that the other kids called me "Alice" as in Alice in Wonderland. Or maybe I was off in Wonderland, who knows? Funny enough Alice is an anagram for Celia, but I digress.

Roy shared home room with me, an art class with a fabulous teacher. Both of us wanted to be famous illustrators when we grew up. Magazine illustration was very big in the 50's. Roy was 13, tall, skinny, and blond like me. I think people would have had no trouble thinking we were related. I loved to dance, practiced in my room alone every night, still had the rudiments from dance lessons in grade school. I was just dying to go to a dance, our school held them every week. It was clear by February the possibility of anyone asking me to a dance was teeny to remote.  I sat by Roy every day in the back of the room and it was easy to ask him what he thought about dances. He looked at me and said, "Oh I can dance, I just don't think anyone would go with me." I told him I would, and just asked him straight out to go with me and he said "Yes."

It turned out Roy, like me, only lived a couple of blocks from school. Almost the same couple of blocks. So all the parental units decided we could walk to the dance on our own. Except for a frothy white strapless formal left over from an overdone grade school graduation the previous June, I only owned one dress, a green cotton jumper with little tiny flowers on it. I wore the little white bolero sweater that covered up my bony little chest when I was wearing the formal. Mom did my hair with a green ribbon, Alice style again.  Roy came to "pick me up" that Saturday night and off we strolled. I had a wonderful time, and I think Roy did too, as he asked me to the next one and we kept going for the duration of the school year. Alas for me, the family fortunes required a move to Seattle at the end of school: Dad went to work for the state of WA working on salmon research at the University of Washington. I liked my high school and was not very happy about leaving it, or Roy, or moving again either.

I did see Roy one more time. The next year at spring break Mom and my sisters and I went to Portland to visit my grandmother. WA and Oregon have different weeks for spring break even then so I took the bus over to my old school and tracked Roy down. We had lunch together and said goodbye. He hadn't known I was moving since I didn't know about it either as usual. He said he wondered what had happened to me. We promised to write but neither of us ever did. Hope you are having a good Valentine's Day Roy.

Shady Pines Dancers

2011-02-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

Got this link today from my friend Joy. It's charming and funny. Don't worry they are all dressed. Turn on the sound and be patient, they start up slowly - like me. Shady Pines Dancers

Dream Time

2011-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

I had a restless night last night. My cold is leaving but asthma has gotten into the act. When that happens I wake often or am awaken by dreams. When my body is under duress my dreams are vivid and lively. Some are warnings, I was startled awake from a dream of living on an island off the southern coast of the United States in colonial times. It was early summer and too warm for my heavy long skirts, and to humid for my dream self to breathe well. Still asleep I told my dream spouse that I thought I was dying it was so hard to breathe. And then my eyes popped open and I realized that my shortness of air had invaded my dreams. So I trundled off to the bathroom and did the nebulizer thing and took a pill and went back to bed. Later I awoke again from an awful dream about something happening to one of my children. All that hard breathing makes your heart beat hard and sets up a certain amount of bad dream producing anxiety. So I stayed up for awhile and had a cup of tea and returned to bed in peace for the remainder of the night. I really like sleeping and usually my dreams are interesting if not fun. I'm better today. It set me to thinking about dreams though.

When I was younger and painting and designing stained glass windows, I practiced what was called active dreaming to get ideas. I'd try to relax before sleep and then think about the project I wanted to create and its elements. Often I would wake with an idea. I kept a journal by my bed to jot those ideas down before they faded as dreams are wont to do. Another decade later I was making my living as a computer programmer and found that technique worked just as well for me solving thorny computer problems. I'd wake in the morning with a big "I've got it!"

During my adult life I found myself dreaming of those people I loved who had died. They still populate my dreams but at some point in the grieving process I have had what I think of as the "goodbye dream." The person appears in my dream and says goodbye and lets me know it is time to get on with it. Some come right away, some take years. My parents are a good example. Right after my mother died I dreamt I was watching her cross a grated bridge from one side to another. Not very original I realize, but about 3/4 of the way across she turned around and shook her head "no," this wasn't my time but hers. She looked like she did when I was a little kid, 1940's hair, slim, in high heels and a big smile. She was happy. She was telling me to let go. My father was another story. In the intervening years I've dreamed of him often but nothing like a goodbye dream. Then last year about 8 years after his death, I dreamed of him living in a tiny but immaculate cabin (you have to know him, he fixed everything and liked, I think, to live simply) in the woods near a river. He had designed and was building a lovely pond that reflected the sky, the mountains, and the woods. He looked like he did when he died but he was dressed as he was when he was a young man exploring Alaska, and tracking the wild salmon. I woke up knowing he'd gone home too. He was content.

I took a class when my kids were tiny where we were taught active dreaming and to keep a dream journal. The plan was to take something out of it and tell yourself you are that thing, because you are, it all comes from within the self. My first try was with a large wooden desk I'd dreamed. I asked myself who I was as a desk. I was utilitarian, drawers full of records and flotsam, lovely wood but somewhat battered. I realized that I was stuffed with the things of other peoples lives and I was very tired. I was a young mother of a baby and a toddler and hadn't had decent sleep for a couple of years. I had lost track of myself completely, turning into the ultimate household appliance. That wasn't good for me, my husband, or my kids. I changed some things you can bet. I still keep a dream journal and I think it helps me to decipher what is really going on inside my heart of hearts.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

2011-02-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

Meaning something like "Congratulations and be Properous."

My family was still in Honolulu when the year changed from 1949 to 1950. It seemed like a big deal to my 8-year old mind, the marking of a decade. It was the first time we kids were allowed to stay up for a New Year's celebration. It was fantastic, fireworks going off everywhere, people out in the streets banging on drums, pans, and anything else that had any resonance. Even an 8-year old could buy fireworks and I did. They were very cheap and no one seemed concerned about selling them to kids. For days we bought loads of long strings of Ladyfinger firecrackers, very cheap at the time. They actually packed quite a bang for a tiny firecracker. Then we'd get our matches at one of the many small eateries or markets in business at the time, or nick them from our parents, all of them smoked. It was odd we could have firecrackers but matches were forbidden in our house, or at least that's how I recall it. We'd light up the whole string or pull them off and light them one by one, joyously flinging them everwhere. Kids thought it was fun to break them in half and light the middle so it sprayed sparks like a sparkler. One of mine blew up in my hand and burned the heck out my index finger and nail. It didn't dampen my enthusiam for more than a couple of minutes. It was black for weeks. The nail is still crooked.

It's the year of the Rabbit which is supposed to be a gentler sign than the year of the Tiger (2010). I doubt the Egyptians would agree at this point. Still its just begun and I have hopes.

My Hawaiian Sojourn

2011-01-31T12:30:00.000-08:00

Celia - 1950 - Waikiki

We moved to Hawaii in 1949 because of Dad's job, he was a fisheries biologist and he was spending quite a bit of time in what I think of as the South Seas working on something having to do with the tuna fishery there. Eventually I went back to school. My early schooling was spotty due to asthma and moving around. I skipped kindergarten, started the first grade in Seattle, moved to Portland, Oregon and in with Grandma Grace and her cat. I continued first grade spottily that winter in between cat dander related asthma attacks.

In March, right before my 7th birthday, we took the midnight Pan American flight out of Portland to Honolulu. I think it was on a DC4. Two things stuck with me after all these years. It was bitterly cold on the plane; too cold to sleep much. The stewardess covered my younger sister and I with army green wool blankets and kept bringing us hot chocolate. The other was the sight of the magnificent sunrise over the Pacific Ocean with not a speck of land in sight. I've never seen a sunrise to match it. We arrived at 8am, went to our motel with a kitchen. There was a severe housing shortage there after the WW2 and the Korean War was heating up. We managed to lived in four places in our two years there, each a little better than the last. That first day, after a nap Mom, my sister, and I went to the beach and were promptly fried into fritters. We girls had to stay inside in our underpants for several days.

I didn't return to school until the fall of 1949 and went into the 2nd grade. I had been sort of home schooled through the rest of the first grade. School was very rough, besides my kintergarten age sister, there was only one other white kid in my grade. The first month or so I was tormented, beaten up, and chased home by assorted little dears. And that dear bloggers is where I learned to fight. My mother who was shy, homesick, and afraid of everything was not much help. When Dad was in from his sea travels for a bit he taught me how to defend myself, since being skinny and asthmatic made it difficult to run away. I will keep his suggestions to myself except to say they worked, and I did not pass them on to my children, who were better watched over than my sister and I. We also had a mean teacher but she was an equal opportunity mean teacher and humilated everyone on a regular basis. However, punishment for poor behavior in class was to be sent outside onto the covered veranda of the school with your nap mat. That made me laugh even then, being forced to daydream in the lovely sunshine and catch the occasional gecko that paused too long within my reach.

The picture is of me in our last home there, a two bedroom cottage. Last time I heard, about five years ago, those cottages were still there but were now surrounded by high rises.

2011-01-26T10:26:00.000-08:00

Antique Lampson Pneumatic Tube System

I went to the bank yesterday to deposit a check at the drive through. They have a pneumatic tube system to get the goods to the teller. Once while accompanied by a grandchild I remarked that similar tubes were used in department stores to get change and send notes. She was amazed. Frankly I was amazed the first time I saw one. I must have been 5 or 6. I wonder if anything ever got stuck in them. Isn't it funny with all the things that have disappeared in the last 60 years, such as many of those department stores, that the tube mechanism has survived.

I got to yakking about how stores like Frederick & Nelson (gone with the dodo) had not just those tubes but elevators with elevator operators in them. They asked you what floor you wanted and announced each floor as it came near along with a synopsis of it's goods. F&N was where I saw my first escalator as well. And it was in Frederick's that I lost my 2 1/2 year old son on the escalator. I was pregnant as a house with his brother and as we got on the down escalator he snatched his hand out of mine, ran back up, and jumped onto the up escalator effectively putting to floors between us. A helpful clerk got on the phone and got a second clerk to round up my runaway while the first clerk trekked back up two floors with me to collect my wandering child. She kept asking if I shouldn't be staying home, I did look about to deliver but wasn't and she walked me and junior out to my car. That's customer service for you and F&N was famous for that.

Frederick and Nelson in 1929 - Seattle, Washington. Photo Asahel Curtis.

Frederick and Nelson also had a bakery, a tea room and a millinery department at one time. When I started high school women still wore nylons, heels, gloves, and hats when they went shopping downtown. Frederick's also took back anything they sold, no questions asked. I got my made-to-order chocolate wedding cake from their bakery in 1966. They made an addictive chocolate candy called fudge half dips, dark chocolate wrapped around a walnut fudge center that just peeked out the top of each piece. To die for! I think they were the precursor of to all those truffles abounding everywhere now. They also made the original frangos which are now peddled by Macy's. Later as the store began to have financial problems they put paraffin in the chocolate of the half dips. A great howl began including an article in the paper and the original recipe was restored. Christmas was amazing there. Somewhere I have pictures of solemn, shy little me on Santa's lap at Fredericks.

All this grew out of a trip to the bank. Wonder what else in my memory bank, if I could just get some human RAM I could get at it. Oh, oh, now I'm thinking of Jack LaLanne, someone else none of my grandkids have heard about.

Norman Rockwell

2011-01-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I read kenju's post about the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Filled with envy I looked it up on the web and after its close, January 30, 2011 , it will travel to Tacoma, Washington, where American Chronicles opens on February 26, 2011 at Tacoma Art Museum. It's a bit of a drive but there are people there I was hoping to visit and what a treat if we all could go see it.

Oddly enough it meshes with my post about kids from yesterday. A print of the picture above was given to me by mother for reasons best explained by the picture itself. She even looks like me at age 10. Girls didn't often get into fights in the early 50's but I had occasion to defend a younger sister, a neighbor's dog, and myself from a school boy's insistence on dumping grasshoppers down my back and squashing them. Can you hear the righteous indignation here? Woe to those who cross a combatant who thinks she is fighting for an honorable cause. It didn't hurt that I was the tallest, if skinniest kid in our tiny country grade school. I can't help but wonder that I still have some pride in this behavior, the same behavior my young sons engaged in with each other and drove me crazy trying to change. Mom said " I hope you have 10 kids just like you..." Good thing I stopped at two.

Day Off

2011-01-23T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I stayed home and took a day out of the world. I sat on the steps of my deck in the rare winter sunshine. I watched part of the second season of "Clatterford," a BBC comedy that makes me laugh and nod my head in recognition. I read some more, did some stretches, knitted a little, and got into my gym clothes. I couldn't make myself go the gym though. Then I started thinking, remembering.

August 1981, Love the Rosebowl Shirt

I thought about my life as a mother when both my sons were under 10 and all the fun we had, and some not so fun times. My youngest climbed the fountain in the Seattle Center and got blown off by a water spout, and fell onto another pipe which gouged a huge gash in the side of his head and at first it looked like his eye was punched out but no, thank God. And as soon as it happened I was thinking what kind of a mother lets her little kid do that. It didn't help that there were many, many other children on the fountain too that hot Memorial Day. A doctor and a nurse appeared out of the crowd to help and assure his eye was intact. Then came my sister and her partner. They were parked nearby and took us to Children's Orthopedic Hospital ER who by then knew us by name. The x-ray showed a crack but the MD said it didn't look right (what?) and had it redone. The crack was a flaw on the film. So he was patched, stitched, and he healed good as new.

My eldest at 5 or 6 visited Children's ER for the first time after running into the kitchen to show me his new "trick." The trick was making a bb fall out of his ear. Before I could say "no" he dropped it in his ear and it took up residency. I tried sucking it out with one of those bulb things you use on baby noses and gave up for fear of pushing it in farther. They managed to get it out without surgery but it took a long time and was very painful for him. The doctor told him he was going to give it one last dig and it would hurt and asked him if he would "let" him do it. My child said "yes." It came out but God forbid I ever hear a child scream like that again. This was the same child who at age three chewed a candy wrapper into a wad and shoved it up his nose so far he couldn't get it out. Mom and her trusty tweezers fixed that one.

Their Daddy and I used to call them the Flying Rascoulie Brothers. Both of the little twerps were walking by nine months and used their new found knowledge to climb over the side of their cribs and drop themselves onto the floor. So they had regular beds very early. Try explaining to a 9 month that he has to stay in bed. So they got rocked to sleep and quietly tucked in for the night. They come by it honestly, I was the sister who jumped off the roof of the house with an umbrella and at age three got up and left my parents house for a midnight stroll around Seattle. Mom said a "bum" came to the door and asked if she was missing a little girl, he'd been going house to house. My youngest did that too, but unlike my parents I heard him. He was down the walk before I caught him though, laughing and running away from me. We put those little hook and eye things on our doors for awhile. Their favorite entertainer for years was Gallagher and his smashed watermelons. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but they sure liked him. Probably still do.

Snow in the Palouse

2011-01-20T14:31:00.001-08:00

Snow in the Palouse

The hills here got another powdered sugar coating this week. Looks like our patch of balmy, 50 degree weather is gone and the weather trolls remembered it's still January. Got my computer up and running again and added external storage for backup, something I should have done ages ago. Now its me that's crashed and burned. The change from dry and cold to damp and windy seems to have kick started an arthritis flare or maybe it just got a mind to do that itself. All I want to do is sleep and that's not the best thing so I'm setting my alarm to get myself up after 8 hours and then taking an hour nap most afternoons. The worst is in my feet and that keeps me from walking much, not good, not good. Just nature's way of reminding me I'm not 40 anymore, or 50, 0r 60, jeez.

Being parked more than usual I've gotten a lot more reading done and some knitting. I just finished "Cane River" by Lalita Tedemy. I really liked it even though much of it was painful to read. The mores of the times are difficult to take in, and makes this family of strong women even more amazing, not just that they survived but managed to prosper. Now I'm starting "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," by David Mitchell. I'm only a few pages in and am totally in love with his art with words. It's set in Shogunate Japan where Jacob employed as a clerk with the Dutch East India Company is confined with other traders to an small artifical island near Nagasaki from which they pursue their business.

Life is peaceful and uneventful for the most part. A great relief after the divorce drama of the fall. My life is remaking itself. Every now and then I get some new small housewares to fit my one person household, a six hole muffin tin, a little bread pan that fits in the toaster oven I had forgotten I had. I got a new, small skillet too; not that I haven't kept all the big stuff, company is coming for spring break. Just to keep some uproar in the background I have started tearing wallpaper off both the bathrooms. I'm sure I'll have them painted by the time company gets here. Ha, ha, ha.

New Beginnings

2011-01-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

I tried getting pictures of the grandgirls on Christmas day. Couldn't get all six in or any child to look up from their loot. Still, it was a lovely, peaceful morning followed by a delicious breakfast served up by their mother. A good send up for the coming new year.

I got up early on the December 30th to get ready to go to court to get my divorce decree. The weather had been cold and snowing and I was concerned about parking. Because of my asthma I can't walk far in below freezing temperatures. In spite of the weatherman's promises of more snow that night none had fallen and the streets were clear and the sun was out. I got a parking place in front of the courthouse. I hadn't been in court since my granddaughters were adopted and found like the big cities we now have a metal detector and they collect your cell phones and go through your purses and bags. We have a gang problem here too, there are no paradisaical places any longer. I was the first one on the docket and was sworn in and had to sit in the witness chair and declare my marriage was irretrievably broken; Washington is a no-fault divorce state. It took seven minutes and I was done.

I can't say I was joyful, it wasn't that kind of occasion but I felt immensely unburdened. I don't know what is coming down the road but I am kind of excited to greet it. I never imagined I would end up in divorce court at 68 but there I was. In the afternoon I had a pre-arranged phone visit with a very dear longtime friend and as planned we had a glass of wine and toasted our futures. She was abruptly "retired" by her firm and has been on unemployment since early 2010. She is legal secretary with excellent skills but not one nibble of a job so she is starting her own business providing those services for companies who cannot afford their own staff. I think she will do quite well. We toasted to our futures and whatever that may bring and what we can make of it. Here's to a new year and the hopes and plans we all have.

2010-12-24T21:26:00.000-08:00

Illustration by Judith Ann Griffith

Peace on Earth

Merry Christmas One and All

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

2010-12-23T07:55:00.000-08:00

This is a local river where an eddy in the bend of the river froze into a perfect circle. An amazing piece of nature.

We have no new snow but some freezing fog last night. The grandgirls have been out of school nearly a week now and are coming over for a Star Wars/pre-Christmas party with me. They've never seen it and I have first three films, not that we'll be watching all of them at one time. I have popcorn, muffins, and hot chocolate. Lunch will be pizza. The little tree is decorated, not a Charlie Brown tree although it's working it's way there. It doesn't seem to take up water and the needles are dropping fast. Still, it is lovingly decorated with care by the eldest of the group and its beautiful to me. I am grateful they live near and I can see them often. I am missing the two who live in another city about 275 from here. Merry Christmas all.

One more week

2010-12-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

One more week until school's out. I can't think how many years its been since I've been in school, or my kids have been in school but I still look forward to Christmas break.

When my sister Nancy and I were little kids we thought Santa brought everything, gifts, decorations, tree, the whole thing. There may have been lights up around town, a creche at church, and trees in our grandmothers' houses but not ours. The house was undecorated when we went to bed Christmas Eve. We left cookies for Santa and then into the sack straining to hear jingling, or hooves on the roof. Nevermind we had no chimney. My sister Nancy and I would then pop out of bed at dark thirty and creep towards the living room. There would be the tree, lights on, big lights shining in the dark and gifts. I'm sure our little jaws dropped to the floor. It was magical and mysterious. Its still one of my favorite things to just sit in the dark and watch the Christmas tree lights.

Did you have that lead tinsel they used to use on trees? It was silvery and heavy and didn't fly around like the new stuff. We called it rain and carefully picked it off and saved it for next year. It was made of lead not mylar. I was surprised to find you can still buy it, on the web at least.

The Christmas I remember the most I was four which would make my sister two. Old four and old two as our birthdays were in March. That year under the tree were not one but two doll houses with furniture, and a metal wind up train that ran around on a set of tracks with friction sparks blowing out its chimney. I imagine the memory has to have lost some details but it seems clear as a photo in my mind even now. Some years I have had fake trees, decorative branches, even a virtual tree one year made of lights fastened to a wall. This is my first Christmas as a single for years so I decided to get a real tree and put it up in the living room window. I going to get lights, some of the new large ones that look like the big, old, multicolored lights of my childhood. I plan to get the tree with my son and then enlist the grandgirls in decorating. Christmas Eve I will sit for a moment or two in the dark before the family dinner and enjoy some of the peace just watching those lights brings.

Obama's Stealth Attack on Social Security

2010-12-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

I watched Obama yesterday as he outlined the changes and "compromises" in store for us. I was totally disappointed and royally pissed, not just as a senior but for the future of this whole country. "Yes, we can," seems to have become attached to "but we're not going to."

Check out Ronni Bennett's right on column at Time Goes By today: if the payroll tax holiday were to become permanent - and it will if it passes Congress with this current proposal - it will force massive cuts to Social Security. I'm not up to the task of commenting today so with Ronni's permission I have copied the below portion directly from her column. Please read it and take some action.

Obama's Stealth Attack on Social Security
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please read the post below and then come back to read this update.
The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) tells me that time is of the essence on this proposal as Congressional members try to get out of Washington for the holidays. In an email, the NCPSSM said, “Flooding members' offices is what is absolutely needed...House members have been far more vocal in their opposition to this deal than we’ve seen in the Senate but it’s vital that seniors and their families contact their representatives in both."Far too many in Washington don’t understand the fundamental threat of what’s being proposed and they need to hear from seniors.” At their website, the NCPSSM has set up Payroll Tax Letter to legislators that is similar to what you can do at congress.org. Here are instructions:
Follow this link
Under “Elected Officials,” enter your Zip Code and press Go
At the top of the next page, select “Issues”
At the top of the page, select “Tax Holiday is no holiday at all”
Separate letters to the House and to the Senate will appear. Feel free to personalize them. Fill in the required information, press “send message” and you're done.
PLEASE DO THIS in addition to calling and emailing individual lawmakers. And please don't put it off for later. Time is short and the future of Social Security is at stake.
Also, feel free to copy any or all of this post and use it at your blogs. Attribution to TGB is not necessary.

Fresh Snow

2010-12-02T21:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a quiet week. Two days of warming and the seven inches of snow disappeared and then today it began again. The small maple across the street has kept its red leaves through the surprise early snow and freeze.

Looking up I see snow sticking to the tiniest of branches.

The bell in the backyard totally still, no wind at all as everything turns white again.

Nightfall and the neighbor's Christmas lights are on, the first on the block. More snow tonight says the weatherman. May all travel safely home this evening.

2010-11-26T07:22:00.000-08:00

A quiet frozen day today. It's was a balmy 16 when I got up today, better than the 4 of yesterday morning. This has turned out to be one of the most peaceful and pleasant Thanksgivings I've had. The food was great, two of the 9 year old grandgirls made desserts, a pumpkin pie, and a pecan pie, plus the pumpkin cheesecake their mother made. I am truly impressed, I can tell you I was making no pies at age 9. I had a couple of nice glasses of wine too.

My eldest son got the day off after all and my grandgirl Julia and I drove over and picked him up driving slowly through the white, quiet frozen day. We made a stop back at home because my socks had gotten wet, wrong shoes for crossing the snow. I am so out of practice. Put on my dry woolie ones, my polka dotted knee high rubber boots, and tossed in my slippers for house wear and we were off again. No football fans here, lots of conversation.

Eldest son is off to work today, and the rest of the guys are going to bundle up for a day of steelhead fishing. We women are meeting again today for lunch to plan gift buying for the six young granddaughters. No shopping today, ugh! We combine ideas and money to get them what they might like. This year we've added a young single mom with three kids under 5. Coats are big on this list. We got them through one of the social service organizations. The thought of people with no coats in this weather is painful. Good time to pass on our no longer used decent coats and sleeping bags too.

May your day be filled with blessings.

Making Gravy

2010-11-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

I used to collect all sorts of dishware until I started paring down quite a bit. I kept a few pieces of vintage Bauer pottery including this gravy boat. It's going to be pressed into service again after many, many years. I'm cooking up some edibles for those of us with diabetes and concluded that the thing I would miss most is gravy and found this recipe which I tweaked and cooked up this morning. It tastes really good. Yippee.

Since the turkey is at someone else's home there are no pan juices to defat so I used about 3 oz. of chopped leftover chicken, one finely chopped celery stick, and 1/2 cup finely chopped Walla Walla Sweet onions for making a base. I sprayed Pam in a non-stick fry pan, browned the chicken, celery, and onion until the onion was browned. Then I added a cup of water, pepper, and made a stock and let it reduce for an hour or so over a low heat. Nothing exotic. Then I added the four cups of turkey broth and let it simmer. I finished off a small portion to taste test and loved it. Tomorrow I will strain all the chunks out and blend with the cornstarch and water right before I travel the six blocks to dinner. I don't think anyone will know its a reduced calorie and carb conconction.

Prep Time: 5 minutes; Servings: 16; Difficulty Level: low

Ingredients
1/4 Cup cornstarch
1/4 Cup water
4 Cups TURKEY BROTH and defatted pan juices (see below)
Salt and pepper

Directions
In a large saucepan, over medium heat, bring turkey broth and pan juices to a boil.
Meanwhile, blend until smooth the cornstarch and water.
Whisking constantly, slowly add the cornstarch mixture and continue stirring until the gravy is thickened.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Provides 16 servings at 1/4 cup per portion
Note: To defat pan juices, pour poultry drippings into a glass measuring cup and refrigerate until the fat solidifies. Remove the fat layer and discard.

Nutritional Information (Per 1/4 cup serving)
Calories: 12
Protein: 1 g
Sodium: 10 mg
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Carbohydrates: 2 g

First Snow and Thanksgiving

2010-11-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

It was 27 and white when I got up this morning. It isn't exactly a blizzard and for that I'm thankful for that. One son lives on a farm and slogs down to the critters every morning to feed and get them water that isn't frozen; the other has an hour commute each way to his workplace, so this is plenty for us. I meant to get this sedum (I think) into the ground some time ago but I forgot about it until this morning when I stuck my head out the backdoor for a look about. And the lawn furniture is still sitting out. I have a list of things I was going to finish yesterday. For whatever reason, I decided it was a fine day to nap and read, and overeat, and nap some more. Sooner or later I will dress in my winter coat and go brush the fairly dry snow off the van and head for the grocery store. I did shop yesterday but left part of the list at home, the one with ingredients on it rather than the usual bread, eggs, and milk. My brain was traveling in bookish places rather than around my kitchen.

I'm working on making diabetic tolerant accoutrements for the big family dinner a few blocks away. Could be a big dinner, and we certainly are a big family. I found a recipe for low fat, low carb gravy that tastes good. Ditto for a dessert, a Waldorf salad, and I'm bringing a big green salad as well. Some of the guests have troubling high blood sugar. It's hard to eat tiny amounts of the regular stuff, avoid bread and stuffing and not feel deprived, hopefully this will help and no one will go into a coma later. Maybe it's time for a post meal walk as well.

Meanwhile I'm grateful for the love of my family and friends. Very grateful those in the family who lost their jobs have new ones, three people ending a very long stretch of unemployment. I'm grateful for the smiling faces and the hugs of my grandkids and my grown children. We are housed, fed, and dressed. I am thankful for Medicare. And also, I'm grateful I lost about 30 pounds over the last year or so and because of that my feet don't hurt any longer.

Our Cars

2010-11-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

After posting about older drivers I got to wondering if my Kia minivan will be my last car. I found myself thinking about my own driving career and my first car. I got my learner's permit at the age of 16. Dad taught me to drive, he was the calmest teacher. Mom was a driver but riding with learners behind the wheel was not her forte, and she screamed, nothing helpful, just in fear. I refused to go take the driver's test until I was 20 and in college. I had a little test phobia which a couple of years in college cured. My folks thought they would have to battle me for the car, we only had one. Instead they began to think I not only I would never get a license but maybe they would never get me out of the house either. Late bloomer.

When I graduated my Mom handed over some savings bonds my grandmother had bought for me when I was born. I cashed them in and off I went to the car lots. I bought a 1955 Oldsmobile 88, 10 years old. One with a 324 V8 and, I think, a Rochester 4 GC Quadra-Jet carburetor. It actually got around 19 mpg on the highway. My sister asked me why young women and teenage boys bought the same cars. I suspect in my world of the 50's and early 60's boys would pick their own car but a girl in my kind of family not be allowed to have a car like that. She'd have to be older and working and I was. I knew nothing about the power in it, the specs were given me later by my boyfriend and soon to-be-brother-in-law who owned a '56 much like it. Oh, it was fun to drive!

I was not clever or wise in my purchase. I just liked the way it looked and it fit my tiny car budget, no car payments. I discovered at the ripe old age of 22 that I could lay rubber with it on the highway. And gas was was 20 cents a gallon then although the Olds actually got about 19 mpg on the highway. I got my own apartment. Ha, ha, parents, fooled you. When my boyfriend went 250 miles away with his summer job I went to visit him driving from Seattle through Eastern Washington as fast as I could, windows rolled down, long hair knotting madly in the wind, I'm free, I'm free!

Towards the end of that summer on a trip home disaster struck, smoke began pouring out the tailpipe. Black smoke, as Bill the Cat would say, "ackk!" I left with assurances from my boyfriend who loaded the trunk with gallons of oil and water, and more from my Dad by phone, that if I took it easy and refilled oil and water at intervals I'd make it home. I did. Ah, the optimism of the young. My baby had to go into the garage and I had to borrow money from my parents to bail it out. It cost as much to rebuild as the car had to buy. And, I now had the equivalent of car payments as I paid my folks back every month for what seemed like forever. It was a good repair job though and I had the Olds until 1971 when I sold it after 7 years to pay for things for the baby my hubbie and I were expecting in the fall. The guy who bought it loved it as much as I did. It was turning into a classic.

Last time I wandered out to look at one for sale the seller wanted $22,000 for it, same colors red and white and in great shape. Heck that wasn't much more than the minivan cost, and certainly had that tank like safety factor going for it. I could get all my granddaughters into with some new seatbelt installations. Sigh. Now I see me driving it up the Columbia Gorge to Portland, and getting my first ever speeding ticket.

The Snowman Cometh

2010-11-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

We got a spot of chilly sunshine today and the whole neighborhood seems to be engaged in raking leaves out into the street. This arty shot is my neighbor's dappled yard. We are officially under a "winter watch" until next Tuesday which means probably snow and freezing temperatures. Maybe that's good, I could use a day off from insulating faucets, trying to fit foam creations over the basement vents, and wrapping things for the winter. Got a lot done though.
Happy pre-turkey day y'all.

Aging Drivers

2010-11-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

I just read Maggie's post at Postcards about her upcoming driver's test and l-empress' response note and her post We took Away His License about her husband's licensectomy. I thought, how timely, as yesterday while trolling through the TV stations with the remote I was stopped by a panel discussion on C-SPAN by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), titled Safety, Mobility, and Aging.

Usually those CSPAN things are big snoozers for me but this was interesting. The Panel Chair: Deborah Bruce, PhD, NTSB Subject Areas and Participants: Trends and Limitations in Safety Data – Anne McCartt, PhD, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety; Travel Patterns – Sandra Rosenbloom, PhD, University of Arizona; The Effects of Aging – Bonnie Dobbs, PhD, University of Alberta; Fragility and Crash Involvement – Ann Dellinger, PhD, MPH, Centers for Disease Control. It's a two day affair and will be on here today as well.

Safety, Mobility, and Aging. Hope this link works, I've just discovered how use the link button. It's a 2 hour clip so be warned.

They are of course pounding away at the high rate of crashes by the elderly, which they defined as 70 or maybe 65. They haven't decided as someone mentioned that 70 is the new 60. In spite of the insurance companies desire to put us in the same pool as 16 year olds, Anne McCartt related that the accident rates for older drivers have actually dropped in the last two years. Dr. Rosenbloom stated the thinking is that older drivers are healthier, drive better, especially women who are retiring with a lifetime of driving experience unlike their mothers, or grandmothers, and have different travel patterns than earlier generations, more heavy traffic, cars with screaming kids, long distances in traffice, and are therefore more experienced. One of the better safety rates is with older commerical drivers for the same reasons. It sounds like the way to keep driving safely is to keep driving. Rack up those miles.

Dr. Rosenbloom also suggested that the problem is not aging per se but those who age with cognitive impairment, that the solution is not raising insurance rates but screening for cognitive decline, and removing those persons from the driving pool. Dr. Bonnie Dobbs (Alberta, Canada) stated that they have developed a screening tool that has been implemented in the medical community in British Columbia for screening. The onus is on the doctor to screen and report. If if goes well in BC they hope to see it implemented across Canada. Here is a link to a state by state report of licensing renewal provisions for older drivers.

Dr. Dellinger answered a question about "who the older driver is" by saying everyone over 65 as elder drivers no longer works, "it could be 70 and even 75." She thinks so much has changed particularly with baby boomers in terms of health and extensive driving experience that old thinking no longer works and that there is "no right answer." She also mentioned that the older drivers' rate of fatal wrecks isnot due so much to the severity of the wreck but to the fragility of the person involved. What would heal at 40 might kill you at 80.

Some other interesting comments for me were that there is a slight uptick in women drivers in the 80-85 range, that women tend to self-retire from driving earlier than men, and that women live about 10 years past their driving career and men about 6 years. The panel seemed to believe that the lack of public and mass transit is a big factor in older drivers continuing to drive at a late age. They mentioned that the lack of transportation is a big contributor to the isolation and decline of elders.

I will miss my vehicle if the day comes I have to stop driving. Right now where I live there is some bus and some Appointment Keeper transportation that comes to the door and delivers you to the doctor, or grocery store and will pick you up. Who knows if the public funds will be there though when we reach the time we need those services? Meanwhile, exercise those driving skills.

You'll Never Take Me Alive

2010-11-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday I woke up with chest pains, again, a reprise of something that had been randomly going on for over a week. This time it really hurt. Maybe it's not indigestion or asthma!? All week, I'd been gobbling aspirin, tums, eating little, drinking pedialyte and nibbling bananas thinking perhaps I was dehydrated or had low potassium. I check my peak flow find that the asthma is pretty much as it always is. My pulse is fast (of course, now that I've scared myself) but it also is skipping beats and rattling around. Whaaat? Then I think "If I die from a heart attack, they won't let me in the pearly gates for being stupid." So I called my son Dave.

Dave says he is coming after me and to call 911 if anything gets worse. Yup, I was going to drive myself, just what your NOT supposed to do. Then it went through my mind that I'd be embarassed for the neighbors to see me getting carted off in the Medic van, and does that get paid for by my insurance? Where did my common sense go? So I took two aspirin and found a book to take with me. I unlock the door and sit at my computer to distract myself and what comes up? A cartoon of a guy peeping out his mail slot at the grim reaper. He says "You'll never take me alive," and the reaper replies, "OK." Now I'm laughing, how cosmic is that? We are our own worst enemies.

David dropped me off at the ER and went to park the car and I checked in. I got scooted right in and wired up. I wanna go home. Dave comes in and entertains me and the whole ER staff while I'm getting EKG's, nitro glycerin, giving blood samples, and having a chest x-ray. He can be very funny. I have not had a heart attack; I am not having a heart attack! YEA! I may have GERD (Gastric Reflux) and, my blood pressure is low, my temp is 3 degrees below normal, and I have a persistant arrythmia. They hook me up to a heart monitor and check me in for a night of observation. My son Chris comes in and spends the evening with me until I go to bed, well, go to sleep, I am stuck in bed. The MD says my heart looks healthy but they don't know what the arrythmia is. The end result is I am now home on a beta blocker and Prilosec and have to go back to the doctor next week. I also have a bottle of nitro glycerin for pain with instructions to come back if three tries with the nitro doesn't stop it. Actually, not come back, call 911. No driving myself or waiting around.

Here's the warning signs for heart attack, stroke, or cardiac arrest. Call 911, do not pass go, do not collect $200 and don't drive yourself. You may, like myself be lucky, attack free, but the most frequent symptom of heart attack is not pain, it's death. So be grateful if you get some warning and hustle up some help.
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Conditions_UCM_305346_SubHomePage.jsp

I am grateful that it turned out this well. I hope this isn't permanent, and I hope I find out exactly what it is. Excepting occasional emergencies, I've lived well with lifelong asthma, this last year I learned to live with Type II diabetes and have gotten down to half the meds for that and lost about 25 pounds. I may have to learn to live with something else but now I've had some practice. Meanwhile I am so grateful for my children, my two sons and my beautiful daughter-in-law. What is truly beautiful about them all is their hearts and their caring. Love you bunches kiddies.