Confessions of a Grandma

I took my walk downtown Saturday, stopped at a craft fair, scooted through the farmers' market and stopped in a couple of the shops. I was looking at some candles when I all of a sudden started to get a little sneezey. By the time I got home I knew for sure I was coming down with a cold. My head is stuffed up like the vacuum that time I inadvertently sucked up a stray sock from under the bed--no air getting through. I have a three point headache--behind and right between the eyes--my ears itch, my throat is scratchy, and my nose is raw and red enough for me to enter the Rudolph look-alike contest. I miserable! I went to bed early last night after a healthy shot of quality brandy. I took an hour nap this morning and a two hour nap this afternoon. I made myself a big pot of spicy chicken noodle soup and I've been sipping on that or green tea with honey while I'm awake. At least the high fluid intake conspires with my bladder to get me out of bed and shuffling on into the bath...

We went out for lunch the other day at a funky old Florida place on the Intracoastal Waterway called Pop's Sunset Grill. We really like it on a nice day. You can sit outside in the sun, sip a cool drink, munch on a fish sandwich, and watch the boats go by. This time we were joined by a rather unusually tame yellow crowned night heron. He noticed the french fries in my basket were not getting gobbled up and apparently thought he could help out with that. I pointed out a number of times the sign that was directly behind me: "DO NOT feed the birds! PLEASE!" He was quite pushy in his campaign to get me to believe that the sign referred to the gulls, not to a fine specimen such as himself. He was practically on my shoulder eyeballing those fries (which cannot be good for a heron's general health). Mike, always the soft touch when it comes to animals, did slip him some shrimp tails, and I have to say the bird was very polite about snatching them up. When our stuff w...

I always learn something about cooking when we visit Mike's daughter. This year it was a stock base called "Better Than Bouillon," and it really is. I got a lobster base and used it with milk and flour to make a sauce for spaghetti and sea scallops. Added fresh green beans and crusty rolls--yummy. I try not to use too many processed foods because of the salt. This is so much easier to accomplish now that I am not dragging home form my job feeling tired and hungry. Now that I have the time to put into shopping and preparing food, it's a lot more fun. Still, a spoonful of that stock base really made a nice addition to the meal and I just did not add salt at the table.

At one point in our lives (before retirement) we were seriously considering a full time move to Florida. We have some land and we had met with a contractor and come up with a design plan, even made a down payment. We applied for the appropriate permits but then our plans were pretty much sank in the swamp of bureaucracy. For reasons we do not comprehend, the woman at the Army Corps of Engineers decided to make our lives a living nightmare. A process we thought would take about six weeks took well over a year. Since this was in the midst of a boom time the estimated cost of construction kept going up until a house we could afford with the money from selling the house we already have became way out of our range. Finally, in complete frustration, we pulled the plug on the project, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I would be seriously grand children deprived if we had moved down here year round. Now we get to come down for the winter, but can enjoy what we like abou...

My maternal grandfather was not successful in turning me into a famous ballerina, but my paternal grandfather taught me to polka. My Grandpa Sam was one of the kindest and sweetest individuals to ever walk the face of the earth. He was playful and fun loving in a quiet kind of way. It is not at all hard to picture him dancing and having just the best time swinging the dance floor on a Saturday night. It is quite a bit more difficult to picture my grandma dancing along with him, but I know there must have been a side to her that I never got to see.I wonder if there are still radio stations that have a polka hour? I know there are tapes and reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show. It was on the rotation at my mother's nursing home--wonderful therapy for Alzheimer's patients. It's amazing how people who can't remember the names of their children can belt out the lyrics of the old songs. Different part of the brain or different pathways to retrieval...I don't know. I do know, ...

I bought this shrunken wool sweater at a resale shop--"felted" by mistake at some point in its life. I wanted to turn it into a kid's sweater--kind of cheaty, but much easier than knitting the whole thing myself. It will be donated somewhere. Mike and I like to have Sunday morning breakfast--something a bit more than our usual coffee and English muffin with peanut butter. This morning I made waffles from scratch. This is the very first time in my life that I served waffles that did not pop out of the toaster. What a lot of work. Any recipe that requires separating eggs and whipping the yolks and whites separately is a major project in my book. They were good, though--light and tender--and we had brought some Vermont maple syrup down with us so we had that to pour over them. Isn't it great to learn and do new things right into old age...er...maturity.

I caught two “texting” related items on the television this past week. Oprah did a show about the danger of texting while driving with deaths resulting. Yeegods, that seems like a no brainer and yet people were convinced they had the dexterity and driving skills to manage it. Of course, I have seen people putting on make-up, shaving, and reading the newspaper while driving so such inattention isn’t unique to the cell phone. The other item was the tail end of a news story about an International Texting Competition. No kidding. I didn’t catch where this took place. The team of teens from Korea won and the United State team took second place. Is a mixed message being given here? P.S. I guess my computer is old. Spell check is not recognizing the word “texting.” (Image from PhotoXpress)

Several years ago I was taking a class in counseling women as part of a post graduate program I was in at the University of Vermont. At one point the professor asked us first, what profession we each most admired, and second, what profession we each would choose if we were given a “do over.” There were probably a dozen women in the class and if memory serves me, eleven of them said they most admired dancers and they wished they could have been ballet dancers. (Maybe one or two admired and wanted to be classical musicians.) I felt kind of like an oddball when I said I most admired writers, but when we went around again to say what we would have liked as the idealized profession, I said I would have really loved to have been a publisher. Psychologically, this was supposed to demonstrate that I have a strong identity as a nurturer. I don’t know if that is true, but it is a subject for another post. Right now I want to explain why I am not a dancer. So it’s really not a secret to anyone wh...

I am ready to give up watching the news. It's too depressing. Today I saw a bumper sticker: CRONE--creative researcher of new experiences . Now, that's a group I would join on Facebook. Both Mary Matalin Corville (on CNN) and Rudy Giuliani (on ABC) stated publicly that there were no terrorist attacks on the United States during the George Bush presidency. UH, I guess if you don't count 9/11... On the subject of terrorism, I TOTALLY believe blogger Betty ( http://bettysnewtrick.blogspot.com/2010/01/chasing-terrorism.html ) has the answer. I hope she will run for president. I want to be just like Helen Philpot ( http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/ ) when I grow up. When is common sense going to return to our political process in this country? Every recent development seems fueled by anger. It's not healthy and it's certainly not productive.

I have always liked to travel and I like to walk for my exercise. Many years ago I read that you should always walk looking like you know exactly where you are going--to look lost is to look vulnerable. So even though I am directionally challenged and therefore often lost, I have practiced and manage to carry off a purposeful stride. It works. I know because it is amazing to me that people often stop and ask me for directions so I must look like I know where am and where I am going. Of course, it does blow your cover when some one stops to ask for a good breakfast place and you have to admit you haven't a clue. Today, I was loading some groceries into the back seat of the car at the Publix when a woman stopped. "Excuse me," she said. "I'm new here. I'm from Michigan . I'm looking for a nail salon. Can you tell me where I could find one?" Not a very observant individual. First of all, I look like the snow bird that I am. (I wore shorts t...

The Florida cold snap appears to be over. The frost did a number on the tropical plants here in this subtropical area. It was starting to look like October with sheets draped over plants like Halloween ghosts. Sadly, the bougainvillea that was so beautiful over the neighbors fence succumbed. We'll know soon enough how hard the citrus crops were hit.

It sure is hard to watch the coverage of the earthquake aftermath in Haiti. These disasters can bring out the best in people. Every where I have been in the past few days has had some sort of collection set up so people could give to the Red Cross. Unfortunately, the worst comes out, too, just adding so needlessly to to the suffering--bogus 'relief' agencies, price gouging and black markets. Nature can be cruel enough; it seems like human beings ought to come together in a situation like this.

I received this e-mail and it just cracked me up because my mom was always shooing us away from goodies she had made "for the church." When my brother brought an apple pie he'd baked to family Christmas dinner, his wry presentation comment was, "It wasn't good enough to give to the church, so you can eat this one." A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death's doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookie wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands. With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven. There, spread out up on newspapers on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocola...

I went to church last Sunday. Worth the price of admission: a choral meditation by the twelve voice choir. It consisted of the word "Imani" (which I believe means "faith") sung slowly over and over again. It doesn't sound like much, but I cannot describe how beautiful it was. I just sat with my eyes closed and could feel those voices reverberating through me. I found myself repeating "Imani" as walked down the beach this morning, experiencing again the meditative benefits.

The car trip from Vermont to Florida is a long one--something like 1580 miles--so it provides a lot of time to think. Every once in a while I would think of something that I wanted to remember as a topic for my blog. Whenever that happened, I reached into my bag and pulled out the pocket sized notebook I keep as an external brain, then jotted down notes to myself. As the first day wore on, Mike saw me do this several times. Finally he was unable to contain himself any longer and asked, “Just what are you doing in that notebook you keep writing stuff in?” My answer had to be, “I’m making notes of every time you do something annoying so I can remember and bring things up at an appropriate time in the future.” “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was afraid of!” Are those not the words of a man obviously feeling guilty, knowing his annoyance potential when focused on driving a long distance with his long suffering wife by his side? When he starts the car the schedule is set and unalterable (annoy...

I have finished reading two memoirs recently: Lit by Mary Karr and Lucky by Alice Sebold. I read Mary Karr's The Liar's Club a couple of years ago and really did enjoy her perspective on her childhood years growing up in a dysfunctional family. (Have we all seen the cartoon of about five people in a huge conference room, attending what a banner across the back wall proclaims to be the annual meeting of The Children of Functional Families?) Anyway, I thought I wouldn't mind having a cup of coffee with her and discussing childhood memories and life in general. Then I read Cherry , about her rebellious teen years, and now Lit, about her adult life struggles with alcohol and her religious conversion, and I got over any fascination with Mary Karr as a person. She's a good writer, but true stories about trading one addiction for another have begun to bore me in my old age. Lucky is an older book that I never got around to reading before. It is Alice Sebold's memoir of h...

My step daughter has four active children. About ten years ago they decided they all needed a puppy and they found Gracie, a female boxer. She was a great choice as their family dog. Boxers, as a breed, seem to genuinely like children and enjoy being active and playful. They require little in the way of grooming, but they need a lot of exercise, something four active kids who really wanted a puppy could easily accomplish. Gracie has grown into quite the gentle lady--quiet, obedient, well-behaved, intelligent, sweet, gentle, loving, loyal, and trust worthy. Then there is their second boxer, Buckwheat. Buckwheat is a male boxer the family took on in his adolescence five or six years ago. He'd belonged to a couple with a new baby. They just did not have the time or energy to give him the attention and activity that he needed. I don't believe he was physically abused, but his emotional needs were definitely neglected. Buckwheat is playful, loving, gentle and sweet. He can act dumb,...

We arrived in Venice on New Year's Day at around 2:30 p.m.--having made exceptionally good time on the road even with the infamous route 301 Florida speed traps. That was nice as it gave us some time to unpack the car and get a bit settled before crashing into bed and sleeping for ten hours straight. For Mike, "settling in" means quickly hanging up his shirts and then hooking up the lap top. His eager hopefulness is a bit sad to witness since history tells us quite clearly that an easy and immediate hook-up is just not going to happen--and it didn't. Once again we have spent out first five or six days in Florida without our internet security blanket, but I have to say we are developing a more Zen like attitude of acceptance as time wears on. Tech support at Comcast came through, we just had to wait our turn. Now that we are here, we are enjoying the "new" house that we rented. It is in the same neighborhood as the house we used to rent (which went into forec...