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  My blog was filled up. I'm too lazy to clean it out. So I started a new one. |
| My last uncle passed away Monday. He was 81. He was in good health, considering his age, and getting around well. He told people for many decades that I was his favorite niece, then would chuckle every time at his own punch line: I was his only niece. He told lots of stories. He'd remember everything you did bad as a toddler and tell you when you were a teen. He had a laugh all the time. We loved to see him coming. he was a decent cook, and worked in a grocery store his whole life. He was in the navy as a youngster, working in undersea demolition for the big war ships in icy water. That enabled him to travel the world and gain discipline and a good work ethic. He worked a paper route as a boy on foot, until he could buy his own second hand bike. He and my mom were born into a working class family which quickly became poor. My grandfather had a debilitating disease and survived only because a major university hospital was nearby. He was their guinea pig, and after many operations and trial medications, he not only survived, but went back to work. During this time, the family had to move to cheaper quarters and Grandma had to go to work at the sewing factory. Mom and her brother knew what hunger was first hand. The baby couldn't remember such things, and life was a little better when he was older, but not much. They would get broken toys from The Salvation Army for Christmas. One year, their only gift was a piggy bank from the local bank. There were no after-school programs back then, no nursery school or public kindergarten. Mom was his babysitter, but she was only four years older. He grew up criticized by others who had more, and spent a lot of time unsupervised. As a working man, he went through some bad times when the kids were small. My father, who was poor, helped him out. Then his hard work began to pay off. Eventually, he lost a step-son, a son, his parents, his first wife, then his nephews, one only 19, his sister and his brother. But he persevered. He never let his hardships make him bitter or resentful. He kept a positive outlook. He kept on keeping on.Nothing could break him or get him down. He responded with humor and love. He loved children, his own, his grand children, his great grandchildren and other people's babies. Even the customers' kids in the grocery store called him Uncle Wally. It takes a special person to make children love him (or her). Life's circumstances couldn't hold him down. His heart was too big.Now we have one less person to share the joy and give happiness to the world. |
| Maybe senility is not that far off for me. I am becoming more disorganized than ever. I can't find anything. I am currently in an embarrassing predicament. And I'm wondering if my mind is going away a little early. Oh, there might be a bit of laziness creeping into the mixture. I've never been this slow to get things done, have never lost so much, or been so inefficient. I have so many distractions. And I feel overwhelmed a lot.But I'm spending more time watching TV news and texting, which means I'm sitting a lot. So I may just be getting lazy as well as senile. I am a church clerk, which means I take notes at business meetings and other things. Meetings generally occur four times a year, which sounds like a soft deal. But we have special called business meetings which may increase the number to eight times a year, to include selling property, hiring or dismissing a ministerial staff member (secretaries and janitors do not require this) I also have to fill out state surveys at least once a year, and correspond with other churches when people move their memberships to our church or away from our church. Taking notes and learning parliamentary procedure is not difficult. Typing the notes in an acceptable manner and presenting for meetings has become a major issue for me. I have less than a week to produce the minutes from the last meeting. I can't find my notes or any of the handouts from that meeting. I'm sure I have them somewhere, but where? I have gone through my computer/guest room and my bedroom and cannot find them. I am ashamed to let anyone know and have been looking desperately for over a week, less desperately before that. I work on Sundays, so I frequently drop off the notes at home, change and head off to work. I may not get back to them for a while. Sundays are a big day for my dad. His sons and grandchildren, and great grandchildren come to visit and eat. The kids go wild, and their parents don't watch them. My dad can't understand when they speak to him because he can't hear. But they play with him any way. I've tried to lock up my Kindle and papers. I keep my room closed and will close the guest room which someone always manages to enter anyway (to change a baby on the bed, and toddlers follow). The pre-schoolers like to draw and write. They don't understand why they can't write in any notebook they choose. Sometimes it takes me days to realize something is missing or to discover something in another room. When I get off late Sunday night, the house is a mess. Kids are only one possibility. My procrastination is another contributor to this problem. Granted, I've had a lot going on. I have health problems, but I'm still working. I live with my elderly, hearing impaired father who is getting more feeble and easily confused. I teach adult Bible study, sing in the choir, clerk, and cook for Dad and his company. We've had the death of a young father in the family. My brother has cancer. These things weigh on my mind. Many of the people I go to church with are elderly and are getting confused, too. Perhaps my association with them is making me a little slow. OK, I took a little water break and picked up the notebook by my computer, which I thought for the last month had my notes. I flipped a few more pages and there they are! I'm not a ding bat! Just a procrastinator! I will stop feeling sorry for myself now. I will stop feeling like I'm all washed up. I have some typing to do. Whew!I have a little while yet to worry about dementia. |
| Dad wanted cubed steak and got it out of the freezer. So we thawed it out overnight. When I went to make the breading, I realized my almost full bag of flour in a sealed plastic canister had bugs in it. I had to throw it out and wash the container. I probably should have broiled or baked the steak, but I know the old man likes it fried. So I used cornmeal, which I had packed in zip lock bags inside another plastic canister. It was edible, but I can't say I'd prepare it that way again. The taste is different, of course. And you can't make gravy out of it, which is good for me.I used pink salt, pepper, turmeric, and oregano in the meal. I sliced a garlic clove into the oil, and put some fresh sage leaves in the warm oil before adding the steak. The flavor was pretty good. The surprise was the leaves remained whole instead of wilting. Fried sage leaves taste yummy. I'm getting more liberal with fresh basil, which is still growing nicely. Since I've pruned the sage plants, they're more productive. I weeded the chives and pulled out the dead looking blades. They're coming back, and are blossoming again. The cilantro is overgrown and dying. I didn't harvest enough in time. They all look so nice. And I get a little thrill from harvesting and cooking them and serving them to others. |
| I've been searching for books for children on the subject of death. I've found one that I might order, Someone I Loved Died. I have a librarian searching for books for me. The children in my family are having difficulty dealing with the loss of one of the parents. The various parents of the cousins are dealing with it differently, some by avoiding it. But they have questions and it's difficult, even for adults to accept. So I thought I would do what I could in the time I have with them. We can color while we talk about feelings. I can tell them it's okay to talk about him, to remember things he did. At least one child is afraid to speak of him, and whispers only. At least the widow is dealing with her kids directly. I read somewhere that Charlotte's Web is a good book and a good movie for grieving children. I never thought of it as a movie about death, although certainly Charlotte dies. But she lives on in the babies she never met, and the stories that Wilbur tells. There's a lesson in that for us. It's okay to talk about the one who died and to remember good stories. Dying, although sad, is a part of living. There are no answers to make it easier or to go away. |
| We were watching a Sally Field movie Sunday, which seemed innocent enough. Suddenly the family man who had just been praying over a meal was shot by accident and fell to the ground. We had a four year old in the room who had not been watching TV, but who saw that. He was riveted. We thought the rest was going to be about the grieving and he soon would get bored. His dad tried to interest him in other things to no avail. Then more violence happened, not actually on the screen, but we knew when a car pulled up, and the camera suddenly flashed to a man tied up on the ground behind it, another terrible thing had happened. We changed the channel. But the questions didn't stop. This kid asks a thousand questions a day. His parents are over-protective, but he's pretty smart and tenacious. His dad started gathering their things to go. His uncle just sat not knowing what to say. My father is almost deaf and didn't know what was going on. It fell to me to try to smooth things over. I talked about TV being make-believe, not real. The actors are paid a lot of money to pretend silly things. It was easier than explaining that there are sick and hate-filled people in the world. I'll follow up the next time I see him. We'll play pretend something without violence, so that he gets the idea. It may take some of the fun out of cartoons and other kid TV shows. It sometimes takes the fun out of it for adults. Scary movies aren't so scary. You realize that even in music videos, some of the stunts are done by the subs, not the stars. But the idea here is that you can't always protect kids from what they see on TV or the Internet. They need to know the difference between what's real and what's fake, so that they aren't scared or confused. And when they do see some at a friend's house or by mistake, you talk to them to reassure them they are safe, and to reiterate that they don't imitate the behavior they've witnessed. |
| I found this healthy recipe, suggested by the Mayo Clinic, for those potluck picnics or summer dinners. Especially, if you don't know what else will be served, you will know that at least one dish will be low calorie and good for you. They called for cherry tomatoes, I used grape tomatoes because they were on sale. They called for red onion and frozen corn; I used regular onion, but cut back the quantity because it was a hot Bermuda type onion, and fresh corn on the cob. They called for basil, fresh and chopped; I used my homegrown young plants and cut them up with kitchen shears. To see the original recipe, look up Mayo clinic corn and tomato salad on any search engine. Three cups of corn equals about 4 or 5 ears of corn. Cutting it off the cob leaves big squares of kernels. I also scrape the cob to get some of the grit you would eat off the cob but that the knife misses. Halve the tomatoes and toss in with corn. Add a tablespoon of chopped onion and a quarter cup of chopped or cut basil. The basil makes it so sweet without the calories. In a small bowl, pour a quarter cup of low-fat or light ranch dressing. Stir in one tablespoon of rice vinegar which looks as though it's going to curdle the dressing, and stir. Add one eighth teaspoon of black pepper. Stir and pour slowly over corn mixture. Toss until it's well-coated. The dressing will be very thin, and the salad will look as though it doesn't have dressing. Let it sit or chill for a while before serving. It is so delicious! The tomatoes are sweet, so the fragrant basil adds to that. The corn makes it crunchy. The vinegar gives it a wonderful tangy flavor. My family ate it up. Once you make it, you will want to try variations, but bear in mind, it's supposed to be natural and healthy. |
| I grow herbs on my back porch, mostly for fun. I've tried preserving them in the freezer, but end up throwing them out unused about a year later. I enjoy tending to them and smelling them. My dad wanted one of my chive pots and tried to recycle it. He felt like we didn't use the chives, he should have the box. I stopped him, but not before he threw out half of them. We have plenty of flower boxes. He just thought the chives were useless and I had too many. I have sage, four huge round pots. They come back every year, but only last about four years, so I've read. I enjoy the purple blooms as well as the smell of the leaves. I like to smell my hands after I've been pruning the plants. I do use the leaves for cooking. Some people can't see the usefulness of something so small. It's not like cooking greens or slicing tomatoes. Yet they enjoy the taste of the food with that little leaf in the pot. Sage is good with any kind of poultry, homemade sausage or other meat dishes. I've used them in vegetable dishes. The bases of the sage get kind of woody, the leaves never get very large. Some of my plants are about 18 inches tall, most less. I now have three and a half boxes of chives. I will try to transplant the half box, since I think it was the particular , pot he wanted, a box intended for other purposes but adapted for flowers. The chives have purple blossoms, too, but they don't resemble flowers. They're more like purple fuzz balls. You can eat the blossom, but unlike the green chive leaf, the blossom burns like a hot onion. The green blade is more delicate. In fact, you cannot cook the chives. You rinse them, dry them, and cut them with kitchen shears onto your fresh hot or cold dish. They have a very mild onion flavor.The blossom could be thrown into soups or chopped into casseroles or meat seasoning and cooked. Chives also come back each year but only for a few years. They look like tall grass when there are no blooms. I have to prune out the dead blades as the summer progresses. I'm growing tarragon for the first time. The leaves are slender. Mine aren't very tall yet, so I don't know how they will look eventually. I have harvested a few leaves. They smell great. Until this summer, I have only cooked with dried tarragon. A little goes a long way. Just a pinch will flavor scrambled eggs or an omelet nice. Two pinches will ruin it. I also have basil that are still young. They do not come back next year. It's a sweeter fragrance. I know from previous years that I enjoy just shaking the plants to make the porch smell nice. There are many uses for basil. I just found a recipe from the Mayo clinic for a healthy picnic salad calling for a quarter cup chopped fresh basil, so I will have that for July 4th. I don't have that many visitors, but some cook and like to take a little basil home with them. Fresh basil is not cheap at the grocer's. I have grown dill in the past. That's a fun one to watch grow, because it looks so different. The fragrance is another pleasant one, and you can add it to almost any salad. I wanted some this year, but couldn't locate the seed in the local stores. I keep trying to grow rosemary and lavender each year. Rosemary is very good in meat dishes. I have used it fresh, but not homegrown. Lavender is just for fragrance. However, each year, I have a different disaster befall them and they die at my hands. Rosemary will become a big planter (with a real gardener) and is worthy of landscape planter or actually going in the ground. It, too will last for years. I have a small batch of cilantro, my first attempt. They are growing fast and need more harvesting. I've done parsley before. They're similar, but cilantro is distinctive. If they're still growing when the local tomatoes come in, I'll make salsa. I love fresh homemade salsa. It kind of ruins you for the store bought stuff. I recently fixed potatoes for my father, both made up recipes. The first I sliced the potatoes and onions and boiled until just tender, with two sage leaves. I drained them, added shredded cheese, fresh tarragon, basil, a spoonful of milk and just cooked on the stove top until the cheese was melted. Then I added chives! He liked it. Another night, he had been asking about mushroom soup and how it would taste. I told him it was like gravy, and that most people use that kind just for casseroles. (There is the beef broth variety which is good as soup, but we didn't have that one in the pantry.) So I boiled potatoes with just a little onion and sage leaves. I mixed the cream soup with basil, a little milk, garlic powder, and cilantro--no tarragon. I mixed in the potatoes carefully, then put it all in a casserole and baked. Fresh chives went on top! He liked that, too. So, I check my plants almost daily, and tend to them. Whether I use them or not, I enjoy them. I can feel domestic and in touch with nature at the same time. |
| It's very hard still. We tear up easily. It still feels unreal that someone so full of life is gone. Tonight at dinner, the four year old wanted to go to the hospital to visit her daddy. Her mommy told her, "Remember, he's not there any more." And the child even started talking about Heaven, and that God is in Heaven. But she doesn't understand any of it. The boy is too young to talk. We know he misses his daddy, but he can't say anything. We reassured my niece that she's not alone, although I'm sure she feels lonely. We promised to babysit, and reinforced that she should not be afraid to ask us for what she needs. The four year old wants me to come to her house and see her chickens again. I promised her I would take some vacation days, and she and her girl cousins could come stay with me for a girls night at my house. Their daddy's sister is putting together a book of pictures and stories for the kids, so that when they are older, they can see who their daddy was and what he was like. They have lots of family and friends, a poor substitute for a doting stay-at-home dad, but family nonetheless. The four year old is our greater family wild child. Pregnant, and alone, my niece has her hands full with this child and her brother. It's almost like we need an intervention for this child who bullies her mother already. Somehow, we will get through it together. I want my niece to have her privacy to mourn, but she also needs rest and an occasional break from responsibilities. She feels she needs to be strong and do it all. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to lean on others once in a while. I had to learn myself that no matter how independent you are, you have to allow people who love you to feel useful. It's still a sign of strength to lean on someone else. |
| I thought at my age, when we've seen so much sorrow, loss, disappointment, and disasters, that we couldn't cry very easily. We're supposed to be tougher and take it all in stride. News Flash: It never gets easy. I have cried more in the last several days than I have in years. And I still have trouble accepting the truth. My niece's husband, who suffered cardiac arrest last Thursday, died Monday night. He was 35. An army veteran, he left a four year old, an 18 month old behind. He died with the knowledge that a third baby was on the way. He had so many plans. He was clearing off the 25 acres they currently occupy, an old farm that has been allowed to grow up into woods again. They had just made an offer on a 75 acre farm, contingent on the sale of the current farm. That can't go through now, because my niece, an RN, can't run a farm and take care of three children alone. Despite living near me, his memorial service will be held at his mother's church, over three hours away. My dad can't take the long car ride without suffering in his back and one hip. So I'm taking him this afternoon,so he rest overnight and be fresh for the service. Then we'll come home tomorrow. I'm cat-sitting for my next door neighbor meanwhile. It's an outdoor cat. I'm getting worried because I haven't seen her since early Sunday morning. She has been known to disappear for up to 48 hours, but nothing like this. My neighbor's step-daughter came by yesterday and did an extensive search through the neighborhood. Now I feel bad that something may have happened to her during my watch. I won't be looking for her tonight or tomorrow morning, but hopefully will be home before dark tomorrow to try to feed her again. Billy was good guy, a cherished member of the family, and his absence will be felt. I like to picture him fishing with Jesus. He was an outdoor guy, so it suits him. |
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. Isn't it funny how we take things like electricity and plumbing for granted... until we don't have them. Happy for you!
