There are no thin ice signs in Cincinnati that I am aware of! All these sings boasted of Moose, but they never got the memo to show up for us to photograph!
My best friend in childhood, Dana!
Love the moss growing on the edge of the pine needles atop the granite!
Seemed like such tiny state boundaries after traveling west earlier in the year! We criss crossed state lines so often there were times we were not certain what state we were in!!
1798 to 1880 Eliza was a young child!
And then the humorous produce store I would have shopped at had I lived there!
Free range tomatoes, free range bees and cage free tomatoes! Sound tasty to me!
See the lady in the white dress, white shoes and white gloves? That was my mom!
At my wedding in 1970 I never noticed until now that my mother wore white gloves to our wedding in Live Oak Park, Berkeley, California! As I came toward the groom, trust me when I say, at the time I never saw anyone but him.
My mother died five years later, in her sleep, at our apartment in Lexington, Kentucky. Her death was sudden and somewhat unexpected. Her blood pressure had been high and the doctor was having difficulty controlling it, but there was no indication that she would pass that particular weekend. Today is one day past her birthday.
Mildred Ann was a wonderful cook. When we realized how few of her recipes she had written down, I was furious. To this day I save recipes on my computer and print a card for each of my children (and sometimes for friends, too). Recently I made her chicken and dumplings. It took me several years to find a recipe that approximated hers. Finally found it in James Beard’s American Cookery Book which my sisters-in-law gave me when we were expecting our first child.
This year we celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, so Mom has been gone 45 years. And yes, there are times when I still miss her. I believe she would delight to know I am still trying to capture her essence in the kitchen. When I made the chicken and dumplings recently I did not use a deep enough pan when it came time for the dumplings. Oh my. I should have taken a photograph. They boiled over magnificently on the ceramic stovetop. I also forgot HOW MANY the recipe feeds. With just the two of us at home now, we had dumplings coming out of our ears. And no, we tried it, they are NOT very good warmed as leftovers! The first meal was tasty though. And I made it in memory of Mom, my best role model as a good cook.
Forced Hyacinths by GARDENPHOTO.com
If your Mom is still around cherish her, even if you rarely get along. There are times after she passes when you will miss her terribly. For years I could barely go in the grocery stores that have floral departments. This time of year they sell forced bulbs to remind us of the hope of spring. As a child my mother once made me an Easter corsage with hyacinth blossoms. Shortly after she passed the fragrance of hyacinths would have me weeping in the grocery store. Now I grow them in the front garden and when they bloom in late spring I delight to bring them in the house.
Moms, memories, grief all roll up into delight, pain, and after they go a void that nothing but God can ever even attempt to fill. One meaning for El Shaddai is “many breasted One.” Yes, God can be both father and mother to each of us.
Not certain my image of God includes dentures, but I know He certainly has a sense of humor. Last Tuesday when I might have been writing, instead I took my Darling Husband to have his knee repaired again. He was stopped on his bicycle last summer and forgot to take his foot out of his toe clip. Taking a photo for his one photo a day project, he fell and tore the meniscus again. He made me have my toe surgery before he would get his knee repaired. So I did not write the usual second day last week. BTW: He is doing well now, though not without swelling and some discomfort.
I had an appointment with the dermatologist to see about getting a small growth taken off the back of my hand this Monday morning. So I had already set my mind to another project, assuming I could not write this day either. Early this morning they called to reschedule the appointment as doc had a family emergency. So my morning spun out in household projects (toasted coconut in the oven, took a walk with hubby, planned dinner and thawed it, etc.) and I started re-writing what I had begun on that other project.
The Grammarist at https://grammarist.com/proverb/best-laid-plans/ states that “The best-laid plans refers to something that has gone awry, something that has not turned out as well as one had hoped. The expression the best-laid plans carries the connotation that one should not expect for things to always turn out to plan. Like many proverbs, the best-laid plans is usually quoted by itself, though it is not the full proverb. The full proverb is, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. This is a passage from the poem To a Mouse, written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1786.”
So I will publish tomorrow what I wrote for my friend. Perhaps it will inspire a different Lenten discipline for you?
So we drove past a woman and man setting up their harvest decorations in front of their house. Now tell me if you think this is strange? Maybe it is just me, but the Wizard of Oz confirmed, for those of us brought up in the city, that a scarecrow is stuffed with straw. The craft stores for the past decade or so have sold ready made scarecrows stuffed with pretend straw, but they hope it will look like straw to you.
How weird is it that an item built from human looking clothing and filled with straw is then seated upon a bale of straw? Isn’t that like go to the morgue and get a bunch of organs, pile them up and then have your photo taken while sitting upon them? We are such a weird society.
I love candy, but halloween is just weird overall.
Once I was invited as a room mother to attend the halloween march in costume where the kids paraded through the elementary school. When I got there all the other room mothers were dressed as witches. I was dressed as the Holy Ghost, complete with a white sheet, white face, white keds and wooden cross around my neck. As we went room to room I invited the kids to touch the least scary ghost EVER and told them about my role in God’s plan. Needless to say, I was called the following week by the principal. I almost asked if she called the witches representing everything reprehensible to my faith. I was encouraged when we went in one room and the teacher had donated New Testaments to the kids. They were proudly displayed on their desks. Wonder if that is even allowed these 36 years later?
When we travel I find things that amuse me. Here are a few from our recent trip to the Northeast.
There was a sign for “Maple Springs.” Gosh! I thought, they must not just tap sugar maple trees! They actually have a place where it comes out of the ground from a spring.
In Boston they do not have manhole covers, but “raised casting ahead.” I had to watch to see what it actually referred to. I guess in this day and age the sign at home would be reworded “Worker hole cover ahead.”
On Peter Pan bus line do they sing “I gotta crow” and serve peanut butter?
Peter Pan
And they must kill lots of pigs though I saw not one pig farm up there. Everything is this ham and that ham. Chatham, Eastham, Hingham, Dedham, Waltham, Framingham and last but not least wearing pig skins at Wareham!
At home the engineers are installing “Roundabouts” to replace intersections. In New England they are called rotaries. Go figure.
I learned that “Plows use caution” means there is a bridge overpass coming up on the road.
How about this one? Took me a long time and Bob’s help to figure it out!
Refers to dump trucks in construction area. Who knew? Not me! Actually the sign we blew past on the freeway in Massachusetts only said “Body down” and had me totally stumped!
I heard about this one on Science Friday. Not my favorite animal but certainly not my LEAST favorite! Did you play Hide and Seek as a kid? We certainly did!
I do not remember playing Jenga, though I might have once or twice. Saw this video and thought you might want a review of the rules.
Obviously the human had to do this part! “A classic Jenga game consists of 54 precision-crafted, specially finished hard wood blocks. To set up the game, use the included loading tray to create the initial tower. Stack all the blocks in levels of three placed next to each other along their long sides and at a right angle to the previous level. Once the tower is built, the person who stacked the tower plays first.”
Then the dog goes into action!
Moving in the game Jenga consists of
taking one block on a turn from any level of the tower (except the one below an
incomplete top level), placing it on the topmost level in order to complete it.
Players may use only one hand at a
time; either hand may be used, but only one hand may touch the tower at any
time.
Players may tap a block to find a loose one. Any
blocks moved but not played should be replaced, unless doing so would make the
tower fall. The turn ends when the next player touches the tower, or after ten
seconds, whichever occurs first. The game ends when the tower falls —
completely or if any block falls from the tower (other than the block a player
moves on a turn).
When my husband took me to Paris I went alone into a linen shop to try to buy us some washcloths while Bob went to a different shop. I could not make the men in there understand what I was shopping for. I had extremely limited French in my memory bank. Finally my husband joined me in the shop. He explained to them in his many years of French lessons what we needed. He has laughed every since at my pantomimes in that shop. When we checked into our accommodations, the desk clerk tried his best every morning to get me to greet him with Bonjour! or other phrases. From the time I exited the shop, I was French language numb (and dumb). Could not pull out a single expression I might have known. Using public transportation I realized I could not determine what they were advertising AT ALL. I just shut down.
Now I am learning the Chinese game Mahjong online. I saw women playing it in a Satellite Coffee shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When I recently got bored with Scrabble I decided to try it for free. Turns out it is a matching game.
The challenge in my mind comes in trying to name the tiles I am matching. My mother used to use La Choy chinese canned foods and we especially liked the fried noodles. So I call one tile green noodles!
Do you remember these?
Then there are red noodle piles with what I call Running man, North, South, East, and West. There are tiles like dominoes only marked with six logs, or dots or dashes. Even six logs bent in their stacks. The same with two, three, etc. One game has owls. The one on my iPad looks like peacocks or phoenix.
There is a banner with an arrow. An arrangement of circles with crank handle up or crank handle down. Season and flower symbols. I am probably not even close to their original meaning, but hey! a girl has to do what a girl has to do.
I have no idea how the women gathered in that coffee shop were playing it. The online version has the tiles in differing patterns and layers. Fun game! and the levels are challenging. Give it a try.
Perhaps I ought to write to that hotel manager/desk clerk and let him know my made up language for Chinese! Nawh, probably not!
I watched a man at the ATM. He got an ATM slip but walked away with no cash. A few moments later when he entered the bank I noticed his shirt said “Denier.”
In the city of Columbus, Ohio there are no U turns allowed. My husband loves making U turns! He was not enjoying driving there. And then I saw a sign that said “Traffic Calming Ahead.” Well, that was just what we needed right then!
Turns it out that message actually means driver should be aware of a “change in the ‘geometry’ in the road surface.” What? I never did understand geometry!!
I read some place that you should explore FTD before age 60? What?? My mother worked for years in a flower shop and FTD stood for Florists’ Transworld Delivery. Now FTD is better recognized as ” Short for frontotemporal degeneration, FTD is the most common form of dementia for people under age 60 (young onset). FTD is frequently misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s, depression, Parkinson’s disease, or a psychiatric condition.” A far cry from roses!
One more bank story. My husband likes to count out brand new dollar bills that are in sequential order into the hand of a grandchild celebrating a birthday. He also likes to make a money roll of singles for each grandchild as a Christmas gift. Lately he has had difficulty getting the bank to sell him a new stack of dollars, even at the larger downtown location. His bank now has a fancy ATM that will dispense your cash in whatever denomination equals your available cash as requested. In order words if you ask for $37.00 you can request one $20, two $5s and seven $1s. He began noticing that the $1s that were dispensed were mostly spanking new and in sequential order! Oh what a happy man he was that day! Guess how many stops we will be making at the ATM close to the CHristmas holiday?!
Fort Collins has a neat district called Old Town. Found these two sculptures there that made me laugh out loud. So descriptive of some of my friends and I. Instead of making lemonade, “You Might As Well Dance!”
Only wish I had taken a photo from the other side where her petticoats showed! ;-D
And if in Old Town for lunch you might as well have a cold one, too! Mine was the stout, in more ways than one!
Treasures in Plain Sight, A Christian Blog 