Getting Lost In The Summer.....

We have had a solid two week period of either hosting or being hosted by family, and vacations.  I have gotten to feel like Nana, having company and making pallets and getting clean linen on all the beds.  The Beautiful Redhead has lost the mattress on her old bed to one of her younger brothers, so she has to sleep with me now when she is home, and we have the best talks this way.  My beautiful bonus daughter and her family have also graced us wither their presence lately, and I have happily been slurping on that oh-so-delicious baby.

I have been glorying in just "being home" and what my family is becoming, as the years bring changes both exhilarating and painful to us all.  How well I remember when I got to the age where things changed from "the way they had always been" to "what would be".  It's bittersweet at best, the age where it occurs to you that now it's your job to *be* home, as it feels like all your "homes" are either disappearing altogether or newly vulnerable, in your eyes, to disappearing in the future.  It makes you feel silly because you have been insisting for several years that you are all "grown up" and yet go to pieces as soon as you are called upon to act like one for the first time.  Life is like that all the way through, a series of surprisingly obvious crises and how we find the strength to come through them.  This Song has been getting a lot of play around my house lately.  I used to identify with the child watching cartoons.  Now I've graduated to identifying with being Mam Maw in the kitchen, stirring up some sugar cookies.  It's a song that only gets better the older you get, with a message that is simple eternal truth

So far into the "summer vacation" mode have I been that I got all confused last Saturday morning.  Thinking it was Sunday, I got my coffee and went to Postsecret.com, and they hadn't updated yet.  I started to wonder what in the world was going on with this site.  Had someone died or hacked their website?  Where was my updated Postsecret.com??  Then I realized that it was only Saturday!!!  I was overjoyed!   I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have made a mistake like this, having my weekend suddenly get twice as long as I was thinking it was, and I doubt I need to tell you!  Is there anything better than that? If there is I don't know what it is.

I stopped to appreciate the days, far and few between lately, where I wake up and can't remember what day it is, and it doesn't really matter either way.  Time off is precious, even if you just stay home.

This revelation made the domestic Goddess in me come out of hiding and I started cooking.  I mean, she  started and kept at it and couldn't seem to stop.  I was just along for the ride, really.  The Domestic Goddess evidently has a quota that I had not yet met, so we had to catch up.  Or something.  I try not to question and just "go with it" more these days. ;)  This method has worked wonders for me, and I highly recommend you try it.  No pre-conceived plans at the start of each day may seem terrifying at first, but give it a try and I think you will find freedom and joy instead of resentment and obligation.  These are just the two different sides of the same coin, but a deeply important difference.  When you are feeling really under the gun, check and make sure you aren't the one putting the pressure on yourself.  If you are, give yourself a break.  It's your life, just live it and be happy.

 I had to try Trisha Yearwood's Sweet & Saltines Dessert after I had tried it at a garden party.  This is awesome! And the thing about Trisha Yearwood is that she is one of us.  She doesn't give you lists of things you never heard of or have to buy online from stranger's who you don't think it would be a good idea to trust.  Nope.  Not our Trisha.  When you look at her recipe's, you not only know what all the ingredients are, you actually already have them in your pantry. I had a little bump with my brown sugar, which had the audacity to turn solid on me.  But I just microwaved it and then beat it into submission.  "Oh, come on, brown sugar! You are never going to win this battle!  Not with ME!!" The Domestic Goddess is not one to be trifled with.  And that brown sugar, it crumbled in it's shifting, sugary way into submission.  Mine didn't turn out quite as good as the picture in the link above,  so be sure to boil the syrup for the full 5 minutes, and then don't panic when it looks like it's burning in the over.  It's not burning.  It just has to bubble up so that it will get a little harder.  In this way I give you not only recipe's but I go ahead and make the mistakes you might make the first time, if you lack patience but are long on willfulness. I think this is a worthy service to provide.  Mine was still a bit gooey but I just pressed on as always and it lasted almost 2 days.  It only lasted 2 days because I hid some of it in a Tupperware container in the fridge.  Why boys refuse to examine what might be in these containers is beyond me, but I count on it immensely.  You will love this dessert.  It's easy, cheap, salty, sweet, everything anyone wants, all at once.

Then I had found a crock pot recipe for the Hot Fudge Cake that is always such a hit, so I put that in the crock pot.  And made the Strawberry Cobbler that can be found on the same page in the link above.  I know! It was like a miracle!!  I haven't even made the noodles I planned to give as Christmas gifts last year yet.

So then for lunch I made meatballs (the sauce consists of equal parts grape jelly --not jam--and chili sauce--Heinz or the generic in the glass bottle)  and pasta (does it matter? I used Penne) with garlic Alfredo sauce (the generic in the store for about $1) and artichoke hearts (also generic, although more like $2.50).  The boys will eat this but consider artichoke hearts "girl food".  This is just fine with me, being the only "girl" in the house.  The important part is that I had left-overs and was foolish enough to think I wouldn't have to cook anymore at this point, on this day.  The Domestic Goddess knew better, and on I went.

Then I decided to make some potato salad, even though the boys usually won't eat that at all after it's cold.  We have a thing about warm potato salad at my house.  It really is best right then, when it's still warm.  The boys, however, draw the line when it's cold for some strange reason.  By the time I got that done the boys had polished off the meatballs and so I decided to make a meatloaf.  At some point during the smooshing of the meatloaf, which I use my handy-dandy disposable gloves for, The Cyclist finally asked "When are you going to stop??" (I think I was wearing him out, just watching) and I could reply "I think this should just about do it."  I probably spent too much time cooking that day, but The Rock Star was coming with his wonderful girlfriend and we were going to have a fire in the back yard, and I didn't want to have to worry about anyone being hungry.

I slightly misjudged the appetite of boys for meat products, as we ran out of all the meat first.  Luckily this nudged them in the direction of the desserts and all I had the next day was the potato salad, pasta, and a little  Strawberry Cobbler left over.

However you are spending your summer, I wish you days where you wake up and truly cannot remember what day it is, not that it really makes any difference.  Your time is the one thing that will always be your own.  I wish you enough of it that you can squander some and relax enough that you no longer feel the time ticking by in the back of your mind.  Put away the clock and let the slant of the sunlight determine what you do with your time.  I promise it will seem like you have a lot more of it.

Take time to reflect on the changes coming towards you, say what you need to say when you have the chance, have peace with all things, as far as possible, and remember these days.  They will soon be past us and we will have other pressing issues to deal with.  With any luck, our Domestic Goddesses will not forsake us during these times, and we will dine on Meatballs and Hot Fudge Cake, come what may.

If you are still slaving away with the clock ticking down the time in your head, you still have plenty of summer left.  Go float.  Sleep late.  Take some time off and then let yourself forget about what day it is.  Listen to the wind instead of the news, watch the sun transform the sky, and then the moon. You will not regret it, of that I am quite sure.  

Summer Reading. No Regrets.

Some of the great books I have found LATELY for little to nothing at second hand stores.  Books are one of the best buys you will ever find.  I am always amazed at what people are willing to part with when it comes to books.  I think it's the quantity rather than the quality that the prices are based on, and Lord knows there are many who a) do not read and b) do not have what it takes to painstakingly go through a bunch of books when someone dies.  There are so many things to go through when a person dies that I can see where it would tempting, if one did not read, to just box the whole mess up and take it to the Good Will store.  Which is where I come in, and am very rarely disappointed.  I hate to say it, but I am glad some people don't read for purely selfish reasons.

It goes without saying that if you read, you probably always make yourself finish the book.  If these 2 things are true, you will also probably remember a book or two, hopefully not many, that you actually regret wasting the time to read.  There are few things worse than that experience, and the worst part is that you did it to yourself!  Hopefully you only wasted time and not money, but we've all picked up a book in desperation and gotten lured into a relationship for a few days with a loser and ended up with less respect for ourselves than we had before, haven't we?  I hate it when that happens!  It does not have to happen to you, either, I have come to show you the light.  So to speak.

This first one I have yet to find at a 2nd hand  store, but this is one of the best books I have ever read and it's also one of those that you can read repeatedly because you never get tired of it.  If you ever find this book, grab it right off, because it is a keeper.  The name is Peace Like  A River, the author is Lief Enger and the writing is pure magic, miracles included.  Take my word for it, this is a book that will never be forgotten once read.

Books are approx. $1 ea. for hardbacks, $.50 soft covers.  These I have picked up in the last few months.
I should say that I am a book person as opposed to a Kindle person.  Not that I wouldn't read a book on a Kindle, necessarily, just that it's not the same to me as holding that book in my hand.  Seeing evidence of tears, which pages have been turned down, any underlining, knowing that book has been held by someone's hands, especially if you know/knew that someone, or even if you don't.  That is as plain as I can put it. I'm just old school that way.  If you read, however you read, really makes no difference to me. I'm glad you read any way at all, but for me, it's books all the way.

Firefly Lane - Kristin Hannah which I already talked about here, and yes I have already read the sequel, Fly Away, and it is as good as I expected it to be.  She does not disappoint.  At least if you have ever been through grief, she doesn't. 

East of Eden - John Steinbeck   I know, right?  Someone got rid of this.  It should almost be a crime.  And if you have a soul, it already is.  More for me, is about all I have to say about this.  Thank you, you fool that got rid of this, thank you very much. ;)

Sweet Water Creek - Anne Rivers Siddons, this woman is 99% as precious as Joyce Carol Oates to me.  I have never read anything that I didn't like, but this one is very very special, and I think needs a sequel.  I think I may write her a letter begging for one.  You can't tell me Emily Parmenter hasn't haunted her too.  If you have ever read what Larry McMurtry wrote about Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment, he put it just exactly right.  He said she just wouldn't leave him alone, and I have read this story about 4 times before I bought it.  I wonder frequently about the rest of Emily's life.  I can only hope Emily haunts Anne like she does me.  This is a coming of age story with earthly magic, dophins and a dog named Elvis set in the deep South.

The Known World, Edward P. Jones.  Pulitzer prize winning story about the South right after the Civil War, when minds started having to bend around the idea of "free" slaves.  Also, naturally set in the South, and a great representation of a world at odds with itself while it's life depends upon change. Change is never easy but always worth it.  If you are below the age of 40 I highly recommend that read everything you can get hold of about this time in our history.  You may be surprised at what you learn and how varied the stories are with love and loyalty, slavery nonwithstanding. At any rate, read everything you can get your hands on and make up your own mind.  In no way trust what you are being taught in "school" these days.  You may find yourself with a new and encompassing hobby, at the very least, where the history is written down in ink on paper, and cannot be changed or leave you with a message saying "this page has been removed*.  If you know what I mean. wink wink.

A Prayer For Owen Meanie, John Irving.  John Irving has long been one of my favorites, and I have loved everything he has ever written with the exception of the last one he wrote. I forget the name of it and I wouldn't even repeat it if I could, so bad was that load of PC crap that seemed to have no point.  But before that, he was always solid gold for me.  If you have seen the movies they have made of his books, do not think you know anything about the books.  By far my favorite one is the one below, though.  Yes, it's long.  Yes, it could have been shorter, but trust me, by the end of this book you will fighting with yourself to hurry and find out what happens while you are already sad that the story is almost over.  The only way you will be able to stand it is knowing you can read it AGAIN.  I have an old copy that the library got rid of.  It's in bad shape but I don't care.  Until I find this at a great price it's my copy, and after I replace it I will give it a decent send off, because it has earned it.

These are just a few, but they are all solid gold.
Have fun with your summer. We are about ready to go on vacation and there is a BIG SURPRISE coming to a few people I love very much.  That's all I can say but in a few weeks, all will be revealed.
Miracles really do happen every day, if you just recognize them.  Keep that in mind, my hopeful friends, keep that in mind.
And for heaven's sakes, READ something good this summer!

Vacations: Worst is Best

It's been several years since I have taken a family vacation, and I may never to be able to afford to really take one again.  Instead of a big vacation these days, we have a lot more sleepovers and short trips to visit family.

This seems surreal to me because when I was a child we always took a vacation, even though we lived on a very modest income.  Most often we went to places where we had family to stay with, which meant spending hours and days in the car.  At the time I thought it was undoubtedly the most miserable times I would ever have in my life, and that turned out to be both true and not true, but the bigger point is that those memories have survived and become treasured, moreso for the misery they contained.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  My step father would drag out the Atlas and plan our route all winter long.  The morning vacation "started" meant that we would all get up around 3 in the morning, even earlier if we had to cross Kansas.  Living in Missouri, we often had to cross Kansas, and while I love many people in Kansas, I would rather slip into a coma than have to cross it during the day.  It's like the ocean, only without water.  Or trees.  Just endless prairie grasses to the horizon for days at a time.  Occasionally you will see a tree.  You will be able to see it for a very looooongggg time before you pass it.  It was like being in the twilight zone.  But I'm wandering again.  Enough of Kansas.

My brother and I would sleepwalk from our beds to the bed made for us in the backseat of our family car, and proceed to go straight back to sleep.  Only sound asleep would we ever share the backseat without fighting.  We would wake up hours later, never close to our destination, sadly,  but always ready to put up a good fight over our half of the backseat.  Every child who had only one sibling knows about the imaginary line.  There is actually nothing "imaginary" about this line.  It exists.  Your mother teaches you about it and once seen, it can never really be unseen again.  Parents may forget about it after their children turn into teenagers, but make no mistake, the imaginary line is real, and battles will be fought over it until someone leaves home, even after the children who see it are old enough to know how childish and really, beneath them it is.  Nevertheless, the imaginary line remains, and many cars have been stopped and punishments handed out over violating the sacred rule of the perfect half division of the imaginary line in the backseat.

Once, when my younger brother was about 8 he, brilliant strategist that he is, figured out a way to get his revenge without bringing the imaginary line into play.  Picture a trip to Colorado and New Mexico, an eight year old boy with a pretend plastic machine gun, and 3 other irritated people, two of whom are trying to read and one of whom is trying to drive, listening to the constant rolling of the plastic mechanism that makes a pretend plastic machine gun a gem to any 8 year old boy.  When he got in trouble for pulling the trigger and making us all want to scream, he simply turned it around and tooted it like a trumpet, to the tune of Rhinestone Cowboy, a big hit that summer.  Big enough to have been listened to on every station we could bring in, and to have already worn out it's welcome without it being tooted through a pretend plastic machine gun.  But you know what?  I can still remember the resigned look on my mother's face, and the way I intuited that instead of arguing on and on, she would wait him out.  He couldn't toot forever and he wasn't the only one with the patience to make a subtle but full blown assault.  Eventually he fell asleep.  And someone may have stepped on his pretend plastic machine gun........It may not surprise you to know that the boy grew up to be a soldier.  I know it wouldn't surprise you to know that I grew up to have 4 children, and a van that played movies!

The year we went to Galveston I was about 10.  It was the first time I had ever seen the ocean.  It was also the year that I got such a terrible sunburn that we spent a bunch of money on bottles of pop out of a machine at the motel for (glass) bottles of pop (remember that? Glass bottles of pop out of machines?) for no other reason than that I could lay on them, so burnt was I.  I always got hurt.  It's always been what I do.  Turned out the bottles hurt too much to lay on, or to have laid upon my back.  I also learned that jellyfish are much, much prettier in the water, and will sting you regardless of where they are.  Sigh..............

There was the year we visited my Papa in New Mexico and he thought I was old enough to drive a little scooter he called a Tote Goat.
"Just don't get out of the yard, see if you can handle it, " he said.  I was old enough to drive it.  I was not old enough to remember how to stop it, which is what caused me to shoot right out the driveway and down the blacktop road that he lived on, scared out of my mind and able to think of nothing but "Just try not to wreck!!!"  I managed not to wreck long enough to remember where the brake was and by the time I got pulled into a driveway a couple miles down the road, there my Papa was, on his motorcycle, coming after me.  Once he saw I was all right, he stopped and laughed until he cried, bent over at the waste with his hands on his knees, until I was ready to cry I was so embarrassed.  He said that was nonsense, I hadn't wrecked and was fine, and for a first lesson he thought it has been just fine.  My mom was PISSED at my Papa!  I did not get back on that scooter, something my mother and I agreed on, for once.  Oh, and that was the year I caught me arm on a barbed wire fence feeding a horse and had to get a tetanus shot.  Fun, fun, fun!  OK, not fun, but you have to admit, memorable.  What I would not give for footage of the look on my face, not to mention Papa's, when I shot out the driveway and down the road!

We had very memorable vacations.  I think everyone does, and let me tell you this: it matters not where you go, as long as you are together, even if you are miserable.  In fact, the more miserable you are, the more memorable it will be.  Just wait and see if I am not right. 

Every year we spent time at Nana's with all or at least most of our cousins around.  Heaven.  We did nothing more than walk up the lane to get the mail, or sit in the porch swing, drink tea and visit.  We ate constantly.  Nana should have probably run a Bed and Breakfast full time.  During my teenage years we all compared and discovered that we all gained an average 5 pounds per week, at Nana's.    This is probably why I rarely spent two weeks consecutively.  If I had it to do over, I would care less about the weight gain and write down every thing she ever said to me, especially the recipe's.  We never wanted to leave Nana's and I never did it without tears.

One year Nana's husband wanted to drive my uncle's new motor cycle.  It worked out just about exactly like my first time on a Tote Goat, but with the added hilarity of him running straight at the trash barrell, which went straight up and vomited a shower of ashes over him, my poor uncle, and the motorcycle.  The motorcycle and Nana's husband were both driven into the ground and covered with debris, several yards from each other.  My uncle, true to form, laughed until he cried, bent over at the waist with his hands on his knees.  It's how my family rolls.  To this day, when that memory is recalled my uncle still laughs until he cries.  We all do.  So the next time you do something really stupid that you KNOW no one is ever gong to forget, take heart:  You have added a memory that will live on through your family for what, at least for you and probably your children, will be the equivalent of "forever".  Don't be embarrassed.  That's how memories are made!

Eventually we would make grown up memories there together also, we would bring our babies and stay up all night talking and eating.  To this day, I get a certain yearning in the summer to be drinking a Rt. 44 Sonic drink in a car with a bunch of my cousins, at night, all the windows down, headed to see the Spook Light, headed to 43 bridge, headed anywhere in the warm night with the trees and the bluffs all around us, our feet stuck in running water over a rock bottom creek and confessing our hopes and fears to each other, safe with each other and never alone, no matter how dim the future may seem.  One year a bunch of us got drunk, a cardinal sin to Nana, who either knew through her psychic abilities or just forgot we were there and locked us out. I think our average age was 40 at the time, and if you've never dealt with Southern Baptists, I could not possibly explain what a sin this was. I laugh until I cry remembering my cousins trying to figure out how to break in without hurting anything and me waking up my best step mother ever, who was peacefully sleeping after taking care of her very active grandchildren that night, poor thing.  She took it well, as she takes everything.  Nana never know FOR SURE we were drinking, but we are sure she suspected because she said we had it coming if we weren't home by the time she went to bed and locked up for the night.  

I have been yearning a lot for these old times lately.  It's summer time, and just to get my own children together between working and school vacations is a pretty neat trick.  Add to that the fact that we are all in the same boat now, with our children and grandchildren, (grandchildren?  Is that really possible?  Yip.  Sure is.  We are OLD!)  and I think we are going to have to start an annual tradition where you have to show up or pay a fine.

Kidding again.

We are old enough to want to show up.  

It's the kids we have to put in the backseat only to do battle over the imaginary line that we have to convince.

At least we don't have to go through Kansas.....

Busy Summer

I have been gone a long time, I know.  So much for making myself do something everyday, beyond what I feel I 'have" to do. 

Oh, well.

I have been to lots of cemeteries, and I apologize to those following who had all those notifications.  It seems that in trying to send pictures to an email address to be used in the blog, instead they all showed up as new posts.  Which would have been ok, had I at least put a caption with them.  Someday I hope to put them all into a post.  Barring that, I will at least add a caption to each one of them.  Obviously I do not know what I am doing.  However,  I have gotten through most of my life in just that way, so if you were expecting anything else, you should get used to this. 

Acceptance.  It's a quality that makes life easier.  For everyone, if you must know.  wink wink

Last weekend I took the Grand Finale over to see one of my friends who was visiting her folks.  They have a lake in the back with an island.  The boys immediately got in the water, then decided to take a canoe to the island.  They were warned before they started that the boat only had one paddle, but this did not slow them down in the least.  The next 45 minutes were spent with my friend and I laughing hysterically at two 14 year-olds trying their darndest to paddle a boat with one paddle.  I had measured them that very day, and one is 5' 10" and the other 5' 11".  I didn't weigh them but they are well over 100 lbs. each and wear size 11 and 12 shoes.  The one that was paddle less at the time (this changed periodically) would either use their arm as a paddle in the front of the boat, or sit in the back and kick.  Finally one jumped out, the better to push, and then they both jumped out.  So they are now trying to "swim" the boat to shore.  I don't know how long they tried pushing the boat before they discovered that they could touch, but we were laughing especially hard during that time.  Luckily they were so far away they couldn't hear it and I'm sure they didn't look back.  They had other things on their minds.

By now they were pretty far away, and our eyes are pretty old.  The boys were fine, the boat was safe, and they seemed to be playing some kind of game where they were taking turns diving into the water on either side of the boat.  We wondered what they were doing, but who knows what kind of games twin 14 year old boys might dream up?  We continued to enjoy the time uninterrupted, which is still hard for me to get used to, even though my children are practically grown men now.

When they finally made it back, we learned that they had thrown the anchor in and too late, discovered that the anchor was not, as it should have been, secured to the boat in any way.  So the diving "game" we had witnessed turned out to be them frantically diving to "save" the anchor.

We laughed extra hard at that.  It was a great afternoon and so good to see her.  She also finally got to see the twins for the first time since they were babies.  I do not know where the years go, only that they do, and they go very fast at that.

In other news I have had a few "high energy" days.  Don't ask me how, but I actually got through some closets and they are in order! 

Now, I have proof of my labor in the form of a big pile of clothes on the living room floor, carefully separated into sizes and in order by item.  I fervently hope that the high energy wave hasn't completely left the shore.  If  I don't get them sold or hauled away they will still be sitting there at Christmas, which just may be when I post next!

School is back in session.  Whether you view this as good or bad, if your children are out of the house all day at least there is food left when you come home at night, so take heart!  Take what heart you can and prepare to be five and ten dollared to death in exchange for food that no one is eating in your house all day.

This is as good as it gets these days, and it's not all that bad.