19 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
There is no rant in me today, because the sun is shining and the doors are open and life is good. I could find something to bitch about if I wanted to, but I haven’t found the want to. I hope you don’t want to either, because look at this tiny green beast that reminds me of my little dog. If you happen to have either one, you know exactly what I mean!
17 Jan 2015 4 Comments
Are there dishes from your childhood you’d give your right earlobe to duplicate? (Don’t fear it, Stephen Colbert’s doing okay without his.) I finally came across my mom’s potato pancakes when we moved here — miraculously, they’re made every morning by the nice folks at The Roost, just up the street — who knew?
Still looking for a few things, most of them cooked up by one of my vimmens … the collection of interesting females who shaped my concept of personhood, for good and ill. My grandmothers, my mom, my aunts … they’re a warm honey-pot in my heart, part perfume, part tears, part crazy, part food. Like peach cobbler. I have my grandma’s recipe, but not her homegrown peaches that I helped pick and blanch and slice. So there’s that, but it’s fixable, except for the grandma part.
Still-warm lemon-meringue pie that’s at least four inches high, baked from scratch with my mom’s recipe. Actually, somebody I know might have that recipe …
My Aunt Bette’s meatloaf. That one could probably be solved, too. The list gets really long, though, once I open the Food Memories file folder — might have to leave the rest of the salivating and crying for another day. Meanwhile, here’s a thing I’ve looked for and tried to whip together and just happened across today because that’s how the universe works sometimes … the clone of my mom’s tapioca pudding, which, trust me on this, is equally incredible warm or cold. But I like it warm.
Notes from 12 Tomatoes, where I found the recipe:
“A dessert that’s a favorite among many is tapioca pudding. It’s similar to other sweet puddings like rice pudding to a degree, however there’s something unique to the taste of tapioca. What exactly is tapioca, though? It’s a starch harvested from the cassava plant.
Far too many tapioca pudding recipes call for an instant mix or come in the ‘instant’ variety. So much of the creamy, delicious flavor is lost this way. Instead, our recipe calls for small, pearl tapioca. This wonderful, sweet dessert is a great way to end a meal, or even as a night-cap before you head off to bed. Some tapioca requires soaking overnight. If that is the case, soak overnight and reduce the milk to 2 1/2 cups.”
15 Jan 2015 6 Comments
… but here’s a Thursday Throwback while we wait — my Great-Grandma Cummings holding little me. That, of course, was my I-am-so-done face, which may or may not resurface from time to time. I love my GG’s wonderful outfit and her sweet face. And after seeing this photo a kazillion times, I all-at-once get who she reminds me of — Mrs. Doubtfire! I love that. I love it so much.
26 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
My blog just texted me that it was lonely. (And it spelled out each word because it’s, you know, my blog.) I feel awful — less than 24 hours after the kindest, splooshiest day of the year I wander off and forget the ones who mean the most.
But I’m back with a vengeance, launching bizarrely-benign torpedo-thoughts … configured sort of like my old paper airplanes … into what’s shaping up to be 2015. For my Faithful Facebook Friends, today’s post will be an instant rerun. Whatevs — can’t get there today, hope you didn’t have to work either!! (And sorry, because I know some who did.)
22 Dec 2014 6 Comments
My tolerance for whining is minimal, so I try not to do it.
Just the facts then.
If you’ve never experienced an auto-immune disorder there’s no way to explain it to you, but I’m willing to try because at least a dozen people on my Facebook feed, including me, deal with fibromyalgia and/or other auto-immune malfunctions on a daily basis. If you’ve somehow formed the opinion that we’re lazy, unmotivated, hopeless weenies, at least scan the information below. Most of us, like you, have dreams and plans, if only our bodies would get in the game.
Part of the frustration that comes with fibro is its unpredictability — one day you’re flying high, the next you can’t get out of bed. More often, the transition takes place between one hour and the next. A second frustration is that, plan as you might, there will be social opportunities missed and projects that never really get off the ground. A third, if you can call it a frustration, is that when flares hit they’re fairly relentless and the prolonged pain and hypersensitivity in bones, joints, muscles, tendons and other soft tissues let you know that everything is on hold for a while. A fourth is that while researchers are on the brink of several breakthroughs, the root causes of fibromyalgia remain elusive, ergo no effective treatment yet.
I’m blessed that my husband gets it and doesn’t see me as dead weight to haul around, but not all are so fortunate. It can be a lonely walk, so for friends and family who have to carry the burden of all we DON’T know about the auto-immune spectrum in general and fibromyalgia in particular, here are the fruits of my highly-personal, mostly-unscientific research into the disorder known among the ranks as “the invisible beating.” (Click pics to enlarge.)
Omigosh, you’re still here? You are either a really caring soul or you have a vested interest in the subject, or both. We can all help make things better for each other — that’s the truth. I’m glad you’re a part of that …
18 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Say hello to two of my great-grandmothers. Of the four I was blessed to have, the lady on the right is the only one I remember. Great-Grandma Cummings was the mother of my WWI soldier grandpa, and she was as sweet and wonderful as they make them. Great-Grandma Somerville on the left was a midwife and ran a boarding house and she too was amazing. The grandbabies they’re holding may be my Uncle Bob and Aunt Bette — waiting for Baby-Aunt Barbara to weigh in on that.
Great-Grandma Somerville used to tell her new mothers, when she helped them bathe, “I’ll wash down as far as possible and up as far as possible, and you can wash Possible.” She makes me think of Rose Kennedy without all the money.
16 Dec 2014 3 Comments
So I noticed a weird little goober on my lower eyelid, oh, months and months ago and when it started to resemble an expanding snot bubble I made an appointment with a specialist — I’m not one to rush into things unless it’s something I really want. Anyway, today was as much fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp needle — biopsy done and now we have the inevitable wait. But even if it’s basal cell, as Dr. Specialist surmises, it won’t be a biggie — Dr. Specialist #2 will biopsy the whole thing in layers and if I end up with a divot in my eyelid Dr. Specialist #1 will Bondo it for me and my eye will be good as new. Also basal cell carcinoma doesn’t metastasize or send out runners. Yay!
Hey, it’s Tuesday, the day we dahnce, dahlings, and I say we get on with it. Choose your libation — I’m having NZ Starborough Sauv Blanc — and distract me while the anesthetic wears off and reality hits. That’s what friends do.
11 Dec 2014 6 Comments
Remember the story about my grandfather last week, and the fact that he and my grandmother raised nine children? (Link below.) Here’s a photo of their eldest and youngest, just two of their six sons. This is my Uncle Bob, home on leave, holding his baby brother Roger, probably around 1944.
https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/12/04/a-fairytale-for-throwback-thursday/
08 Dec 2014 5 Comments
Not BOOGA-BOOGA pants-crapping scared, where your skin crinkles up and makes little screeching noises with sparklers on the ends. More like what are you AFRAID of … that fundamental sense of dread that a cog will drop into a random sprocket somewhere and life will change. Fear of loss is a keen motivator — what else drives us with that same force?
But what if life changed and you lived through it? And what if that happened over and over ’til you realized how brave you were and then you just started doing things and saying things you didn’t know you could do and say? What if people didn’t get any of that at all and you didn’t care? What if you just started kicking ass, including your own, and life really did change and you wouldn’t change it back if you had the chance? WHAT IF? Not the question I want to be asking myself when I’m gearing up for the choir eternal. What if I’d done all those things I knew I could do? What if I’d let myself be who I knew I was? And to quote Captain Obvious, what if I’d just been nicer? Regret, let’s not go there.
Holy balls, I’ve survived too long to let fear force me back into the box, and by now he’s like an old friend anyway, sort of. You know, keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your powder dry.
“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.” ~Dawna Markova
04 Dec 2014 6 Comments
Once upon a time, there lived a handsome young man of steel who told a little white lie about his age, joined the Army at seventeen, fought at the front during The War to End All Wars on many fields of battle, came home intact in mind and body, swept a lovely fifteen-year-old store clerk off her feet, married her straightaway, and started a dynasty. Thus reads the CliffsNotes version, you may thank me after the test.
But before that, a lot of other things happened.
And while those things were happening, the young man was growing steely because clearly he had good genes plus a step-father who was certifiably unhinged. When the lad in our tale was less than twelve years old, his step-dad took him to the barren plains of eastern Colorado to “prove up a claim” and homestead it, worked him like a dog, left him there and went home to Kansas. But not before taking a pot-shot at him off the porch that put a hole through his hat and knocked him flat in the hard Colorado dirt.
The boy lived out there in that little shack by himself, with the heat and the wind and the wildlife, until somebody came for him. Whatever steel he wasn’t born with must have crawled into his bones in those months, and it never left him. I know this because he was my grandfather and I know he never lost his metal, his discipline, or his looks. He and my grandmother raised six sons and three daughters, all worth knowing in their own right. Grandpa knew how to do everything and Grandma knew the rest, so there was always food on the table and a good roof on a house full of voices laughing, crying, arguing, singing, talking, yelling, but mostly laughing. Smart funny people, this dynasty.
It’s my favorite fairytale to slip into on cold gray days because it’s all true. And a thing to love is that with everything Grandpa survived in his years, he never got smelly and mean-spirited and old on the inside. He and my grandmother both figured out how to stay alive and BE alive and how to pass that on. Pretty cool.
02 Dec 2014 2 Comments
So Tuesday around here is evolving into a day for thankfulness and dancing, but will one day a week be enough? I think not! And on that note, I hope you’re making only HAPPY LISTS this winter.
28 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
you couldn’t let go
didn’t know how
so freedom is extracted
at the price of tears you cannot shed.
don’t grovel
reject mawkishness
you had time to get it right
density is no alibi.
you built this
don’t even think of crying
hot tears ice over
if they can’t be shared.
all good just late
but
better late than never.
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