A Day Out

My day out was only about an hour; it just seemed like a day. I went to Walmart for the first time in at least a year and a half. That is a really big store! It seemed even bigger than it was before, and I had to walk from one end of the store to another to get the various things I needed.

For the past year or so, my shopping forays have all been in the near vicinity to where I live. Originally, I only planned to go to the grocery store because my milk jug was empty, but there were a couple of things I couldn’t find at nearby stores. The temperature was supposed to move up to about 40 degrees, so I decided it might be a good time to scoot out to Walmart. I could pick up the other things I needed and get the milk as well. [It's funny how a simple trip to the store for one or two items works its way up to $50 to $100.]

The weather wasn’t too bad and surprisingly enough the parking space in front of my villa was open when I returned. That was a plus! I picked up some ‘little drumsticks’ at the deli, which were very good, as well as a pumpkin pie from the nearby bakery department. That made a good lunch when I got back home. I had been home maybe half an hour when it began to snow like crazy. It is still doing so, but not as heavily. The snow is melting as it hits the street, but is accumulating a bit on the grassy areas.

So, what is in store for the rest of the day: Reading, a bit of crocheting [I’m making some pink and white caps for cancer patients and/or cancer supporters.] It is one of the “Do One Nice Thing” projects that I thought I would do, though I can’t crochet too long at any one time. A little work on the computer, and so on, as the spirit moves me.

Double Dipping Chips: In A Word - DON’T!

Do you double dip? Do you pick up a chip, stick it in the dip, doing the same again, with the chip you had just taken a bite from? If so, you really should have seen the last part of the Dr. Oz show this morning. If you didn’t see it, you might try to find the segment on http://www.DoctorOz.com/ That is the problem I have with the web page. I don’t always see the show either, or I see a part of a segment that I want to find out more about. I sometimes have a problem finding the info I’m looking for on the page.

This morning they showed illustrations of the kinds of bacteria produced in a person’s mouth, which was then transferred to dip, some of which can have very serious consequences. They also showed several bowls of dip from a get-together. Everybody loved it and everybody ‘dipped’ in. And spread some not so good stuff.

Do you do your double dipping when at a party representing other households, or when only your own family is involved? Even then, keep in mind that you or your family members probably have been in contact with other places, other people, and other households. Hands have touched other possible sources of bacteria outside your home. Returning family members bring something from their contacts with them, as well as the guests in your home. Scary, isn't it!

Another source of trouble is the kind of dish that holds mini candies, or perhaps nuts, that people stick their fingers into and pick up a few bits, while the next person comes along and does the same. A great possibility for passing along those nasty looking, though unseen bugs waiting to attack anyone they can grab on to.

A couple of common sense things can be done that will circumvent the UGLIES to some degree. Wash your hands when you get home after being out. Remember when your mother said, “Wash your hands before you eat. Wash your hands before you set the table. Wash your hands before you prepare food for yourself or anyone else.” Get the picture.

Hint: Be sure you have small plates by the bowl of chips and dip and the nuts or candies. Put a suitable picker-upper in the chips, so people won’t stick their hands in that bowl. Have a spoon in the dip, so family/guests will understand they need to put the dip in the plate. Also have a suitable scoop in the nuts or candies bowl, with small dishes beside them. Okay! So set them up! Remove the temptation! Such small things to do that can be a big thing on your personal health front.

Errands: Two Day Deal

Yesterday was errand day again. I hadn’t been out and about in the car since New Year’s Day, before the advent of the snow and brrrr cold weather. With today’s weather warnings, we can know in advance when the weather and roads will be bad, so we have a chance to get in the necessities to tide us over. If I don’t have to go out, I don’t. In addition my son called to see if I needed anything, but as it happened I didn't. I don’t see any point in getting out in the bitter cold and cleaning the snow or ice off the car if I’m not going anywhere. As the weather warms up and/or the sun comes out, I let the warmer temperatures do the job for me. The sun took off most of the snow on my car, plus I saw someone brush off some of it on the east side of the car! Much of the snow had melted on the west side.

The temperatures were in the thirties, there was no cold wind to contend with, and six stops had accumulated. Since one of those stops was the grocery store, I decided to cut the stops in half because that one alone tires me out. There was an open parking space in front of my villa, so I didn’t have to park at the curb, carry the bags in, and then find another space to park, down the block. I still have three more errands to do, so that means I have to go out again. The rest of the week is supposed to be even warmer than yesterday, so that’s good.

I’m grateful that I can still get out if, and when I want to, or need to. And for the fact, that in Missouri, we know the temperatures will change for the better. I’m also grateful for children who are willing to help if, or when I need them to.

Errands - Part Two: Temperatures are warmer, but damp cold. I went back out to try to finish the second half of the three erands I didn't do earlier this week. Meanwhile, three more jobs cropped up. While out today, I did two of the errands I didn't get done on my earlier foray, pushed back one task yet again, and did one of the newer things that had cropped up. So, I'm still three errands behind. Maybe no new things to do will pop up before I go out again, and on my next trip out I can cross the current three jobs off the list, and end up with zerio errands to do - until the cycle begins again.

Cold Weather Idea

What am I doing in this super cold weather? Making a hat. Why? The above occupation was inspired by the extremely cold temperatures we’re now having and the fact that the two knit hats I own, have chosen to keep themselves hidden from me when I actually need them.

I don’t like to wear anything on my head, and usually don’t, except that I did in the dim, distant past when everyone wore a scarf if it was windy, cold, raining etc. And even in this cold, if I were just dashing [if an almost 84 year old can be said to dash] across the street for the mail, I probably wouldn’t bother. But walking down to the end of my block to the trash dumpster, and especially walking back with that wind out of the west hitting me head on, I really wouldn’t mind wearing something on my head. But, alas there was no hat to be found.

That led me to look in some of the ‘closet bags’ to see if I could find enough yarn to make a hat. For the most part, I stopped crocheting years ago when my hands became too painful after only a few minutes. I gave away almost all of the yarn I still had on hand. But a hat shouldn’t take too much time. I didn’t find any complete skeins of yarn, but did find some already crocheted swatches that I had intending for an afghan at one time. So I thought, what can I do with that? I had some small balls of yarn in a contrasting color, so began putting the swatches together to see how it would work out. The swatches have been ‘whip-stitched’ together, and the bottom is finished. All that is left now is to decide how I want to finish the top and sides of this weather-inspired hat. So far, it is working out fairly well, but I would have chosen a different color if I had begun it from scratch.

Within minutes my forefinger became numb, which occurs with pressure on my fingertips since the advent of the shingles last year. Even have to watch out for overuse of the computer mouse. Restrictions! Bah, humbug! So, I probably won’t be going back to crocheting much, but maybe I can get this small project finished without aggravating those nerve endings too much.

Note: The hat is finished now; it will be warm, and doesn't have to stretch to make room for your head/hair. How will I look in it? Welll! That reminds me of what I heard a woman on an MSNBC news show say a couple of days ago. She had said something about the cold in Chicago, and her male partner on the show made a remark about looking cute. She said there is no such thing as cute in the cold in Chicago when you're trying to be warm. These previous words are not verbatim, but the gist of what was said. Children are cute when they're all bundled up for the snow and cold. The rest of us just do the best we can.

A New Year - January 1, 2010

What about this new year? Do you feel a renewed sense of purpose at the beginning of a new year? Do you feel hope? Do you feel disappointment? Are there some old thoughts or prejudices that should be jettisoned? Do you think, “Oh boy, I have another chance to reshape a part of myself with which I am not 100% happy?”

How about New Year’s resolutions? Do you make them? Do you keep them? I’ve heard people say, “I don’t make New Years’ resolutions, because I just break them.” Perhaps that’s true, and perhaps some of them are not realistic. But – if they have a good purpose, aren’t you better off for having done them for whatever time you did keep them? Sometimes I make resolutions, and sometimes I don’t. I have made one so far, which has three parts to it. Will I fail? I don’t know, but I will certainly try to maintain it. It’s like being on a diet and breaking it, then giving in to old habits. You don’t have to do that, you can just revert to it again the next day.

The above is looking ahead. Now, let’s take a look back. In one of my Christmas blogs, I told you about our custom of setting out our Christmas shoe boxes again on New Year’s Eve. Now to New Year’s Day: Irish superstitions abounded in our household in the old days. I don’t know if that is where the following came from or not. The saying was that whatever you did on New Year's Day would set the pattern for what you did all year. So, we did the necessary work we had to do to be clean, warm, fed and clothed. Then we crowded in as many things as we could that were fun to do. We were keen on setting that part of the saying in motion.

In my own household, I pretty much did the same, doing what needed to be done, then rest, relax, play games, call someone I hadn’t talked to in a while,doing whatever appealed at the time. After my children left home, whenever else I may have talked to them, I made a point of calling them on the phone on New Year’s Day. So that is one of the things I will be doing later today.

What about today? I cooked food yesterday that is more than enough for dinner, so I won’t need to cook much, and it’s too cold to go out just for fun, for this person. However, if I want the light bulb replaced in my dining area, I will need to go out and buy more, but may put it off another day or so. There are four of these flood lights in that area, and one of the bulbs went out about Christmas. Harold changed it for me after they got here. Maintenance does it, but with the extra work on the icy/snowy street and walks, I figured it would be several days before he got to it. Usually, when one of these bulbs goes out, the others follow suit, with maybe a week or two in between. They are high enough that I can’t begin to reach them with my two-step ladder.

I don’t keep a lot of these bulbs on hand, because of the limited storage space.I thought I had two of them, but if so it is eluding me. As luck would have it, the second light went out about a half hour after Barbara and Harold left.

Let’s hope 2010 will be a better year than 2009 for everyone. One of the things I would like to see is a lessening of the kind of opinion emails I get by the dozens, which are presented as fact. Many are full of distortions, sometimes outright lies, which generates, or perpetuates angry and bitter feelings,may and sometimes does, lead to improper conclusions or actions.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to any and all who may read this.

Trimming the Tree – Christmas Past

When I was growing up our tree was usually a cedar tree, which grew in abundance in the area surrounding out house. Dad, or the boys, just walked out until they found one of the desired size and symmetry. As to specifics, I recall only one year, when I followed my oldest brother as he walked through the snow to choose a tree that grew between our house and the state road. This would have been either 1933 or 1934, when we lived in that first house on Hwy No. 8.

For decorating the tree, the store-bought items we had were red and green roping [garlands] and icicles [tinsel]. We may have had some commercial ornaments too; I’m not sure, but we also made decorations. In the weeks before Christmas, we made chain links out of strips of colored construction paper, pasting them together to make a chain, or chains, long enough to drape around the tree. We also drew, or traced Christmas symbols on light cardboard [another use for shoe box material]. Then we colored them with crayons, or pasted colored construction paper over them, or perhaps decorated them to our individual inclinations. The angel or Christmas tree on top of the tree was usually home made also.

We did not keep the trees up too long. It was put up a couple of days before Christmas and was taken down a day or two afterward. As I recall, cedar trees were bad for dropping their needles, and required a sweep-up of the fallen tree needles each morning. Perhaps that was why they didn’t stay up very long.

In my own household after marriage, we had to buy a tree from the local lot, and usually bought a pine or fir tree. Years later we bought an artificial tree. Everyone in the family wanted one but me, so we bought one. Later the other family members decided they liked a real tree better, but we continued to use the artificial tree, until Melvin set a heavy box on top of the box containing the tree and smashed it flat. I think that was thoughtless rather than deliberate – really. I bought another artificial tree because I had discovered I preferred the no-mess, no-watering feature of the artificial tree. We continued using that tree until after Melvin’s death.

We put the tree up a week before Christmas, Melvin putting up the tree and all of us taking part in the decoration. On New Year’s Day, I took off all the decorations and packed them away, and Melvin carried the tree out to the curb for the local pick-up.

After our children were grown, living elsewhere and if none could come home for Christmas, we didn’t put up a tree. That first year, none of our family would be home, at work we got to talking about ‘have you put up your tree yet?’ I said I wasn’t going to put up a tree. All were appalled and one of the women said I was going to have a tree, and she was coming to my house and put it up herself. She never did understand, but I finally managed to convince her that this was my choice, and so be it. A few times, I did set out a tiny table top tree, but not always.

In our present world, many families don’t live in the same area, and they can’t always get together. That was the circumstance of our lives. I refused to be sad about it and accepted it as the way it was, though I admit that first Christmas with only the two of us did seem a bit strange. But when you can’t sail into the wind, what do you do? You chart another course.

Christmas Past

The Christmases I remember all occurred in the nineteen-thirties. I don’t remember any before that and I don’t remember the Christmases of my teen years, except for the small gifts given to me by the young man I later married. I do remember one toy from pre-school days: a small old fashioned cook stove like the ones you see in old pioneer/western movies. It had a small coal bucket and tiny shovel. I had it for many years.

Nearly everyone has heard of the depression years, when most people didn’t have a great deal of money, and sometimes none. But, as I have expressed earlier, Dad did have a job all during those years, for which I am thankful. Our Christmases and the gift-giving of the time no doubt were shaped by economics and our parents own beliefs and backgrounds: something for everyone, but non-extravagance. I doubt if they would have been much more extravagant in gift-giving, even if they had had less children and more money.

As children usually are, we were all excited about Christmas, and awaited it eagerly. We didn’t hang stockings at our house, but during the year we each saved a new shoe box. On Christmas Eve, we set the boxes, with our names on them around the tree.[The names really weren't necessary as we all got the same thing, but afterward you would definitely want to know which box was yours.]

When morning came, the boxes had been filled with hard Christmas candies plus bon-bons and haystacks, nuts, an orange, and a whole pack of gum. Except for a special treat like this, gum was usually divided up by the stick, except when we could save up our pennies and buy it for ourselves.

We each got one special toy, with perhaps some smaller items of the 5 & 10 cent store variety, and maybe a game or two that we could all play. I got a doll until I was age seven. That year my mother said that if I didn’t play with this doll, she wasn’t buying me another one. I loved the dolls, but I thought they were so pretty, I didn’t want their beautiful clothes and themselves to get mussed up. I just wanted to enjoy looking at them. Apparently my mother didn’t understand that. Even so, I enjoyed that pretty doll, and kept her for many years. My mother was true to her word; I never got another one.

My one sister during those years was several years older than I, and apparently had decided she was past the playing with dolls age, by the time of my memories. The boys usually got a truck of some kind, with other small items. When they got a bigger toy, such as the famous “big red wagon,” a sled, and later a bike; those were share playthings. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that there should be one for each.

A week after Christmas came the New Year holiday. The shoe boxes were pretty much, if not all, emptied by that time. On New Year’s Eve these same empty boxes were set out again. They were once more filled with much the same thing as they had been for Christmas. In this case it was “Granddaddy Long Legs” who filled them. It seems that Granddaddy Long Legs, or Daddy Long Legs is the name for a mysterious giver, but I don't know the exact origin of this. [Perhaps I'll try to find out one day soon.] I believe this custom came from my mother’s family, where she, her brother, sister and widowed mother lived with their maternal grandparents until my mother was age nine. Granddaddy Long Legs in this case being Pa Ivie, her grandfather.

I didn’t know anyone else who practiced this custom until about 15 or 20 years ago I wrote about our Christmas custom for a newsletter. The publisher of the newsletter shared the custom with a group she met with, and one of the women told her that her family had done the same thing when she was a child.

You might wonder why I only mention the one doll I got when I was seven, if I tried to keep them looking the same way I got them. It’s like this: in addition to my older sister when I was growing up, I had two older brothers, and SIX younger brothers. Those little boys didn’t mind at all dragging the dolls around, if they could get hold of them when no one was looking. It didn’t take long at all for the dolls to look bedraggled.

After I was married, my parents had two more girls, for a total of twelve children. The older kids and the younger ones are a generation apart.