Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
Once upon a time, my daughter received a couch and coffee table from the youth group leaders at the church we were attending at that time. And since both my son and daughter still lived at home at that time, moving furniture wasn’t an onerous task. Fast forward to our empty nest plus two Rottweilers and you get the canine couch.
I received a call from my son Thursday evening. This is a somewhat unusual occurrence as the last time I spoke to him was on the occasion of his 31st birthday back in early February. In our defense, we are both busy professionals working much more than your typical 40-hour work week, so we don’t have a lot of spare time for idle chit-chat.
We exchanged pleasantries and got caught up on the latest antics of their new pet Rottweiler, Ton Ton, when he popped the question. You know, the one you always expect when your offspring call you because they never call you unless they … wait for it … want something. But this time, my son surprised me. He wanted my Italian Herb bread recipe.
Seriously? This was too easy and too good to be true.
Today is my last day of my 51st year on this planet. It’s been a quiet day. I woke at my usual time of five o’clock in the morning, before sunrise. I didn’t walk either dog this morning. I did take several closeups of Porthos, despite his not wanting to hold still or look at the camera. Afterwards, I started reading my next book club read and wrote a review on a television series I finished watching on day 18,991.
I did walk up the hill to the Lansing Community Library to volunteer for a couple of hours at the circulation desk. I do this almost every Saturday and have for most of this past year. On the return trip, I picked up my mail and found two birthday cards, one from my aunt and uncle and one from a long time friend who now lives back east in Virginia.
Later, I’ll make a run to the grocery store and maybe finish mowing the side yard. I’ll leave the back yard mowing for tomorrow or Monday. I’m on call for work this weekend and have had only one call from the help desk, which I took care of earlier this afternoon. I might be on call, but I decided to take Monday off to make my birthday weekend a three day event. And besides, I don’t do Mondays this time of year. Whatever vacation I have left by this time of the year goes to taking off every available Monday until New Year’s Eve. Use it or lose it.
Tomorrow, for my birthday ‘treat’ I’m dragging my husband and my dad to the Nelson-Atkins Art Gallery for the last day of their exhibit of ancient Roman luxury items. The return trip home will involve a stop at Olive Garden.
Halfway through day 18, 992.
Probably a good time to take a nap.
I should have scheduled this post to publish just after two o’clock this afternoon, which would have been thirty years to the hour marking the birth of Derek Randall Moss. But, I couldn’t wait that long to welcome my son to his third decade.
As you can surmise, this blog post will be a trip down memory lane for me. And unfortunately I don’t have many photos of Derek from his first decade. It was the age of film cameras and I owned a very cheap almost disposable 35 mm camera that I took a few snapshots with. I later scanned a few of them to create digital copies, but many of them still languish in shoe boxes in the storage room. Oddly, I have more video footage of both kids on old mini-VHS than I do still photos. At least until we reach the mid-90s when digital photography really started taking off.
I won’t go into the gory details but some interesting trivia from the night before. Continue reading “My Son Turns Thirty”
We made a double batch of this wonderful potato soup on Sunday. I had both grandchildren of Marie Hodge present as taste testers to confirm the authenticity of the recipe.
Back in 2001, I contacted my then living grandmother, Doris Andrea, for recipes and stories to be included in a local church anniversary cookbook. This was one of the recipes she provided me. The story she told me to accompany this soup hailed back to the hard days of the Great Depression and making simple hearty meals that stretched ingredients.
Addendum (updated 8:15 am 11/09/2015): Some specifics on the double batch version of this recipe we created in my kitchen yesterday morning include using two 3-pound bags of organic russet potatoes, about half of an organic yellow onion and a few stalks of organic celery. The rest of the ingredients, with the exception of the bacon, were non-organic. Instead of a quart of milk, we used a quart of half-and-half (store brand).
The bacon was an uncured natural version from Farmland. To bake bacon in the oven, cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil (makes cleanup easy) and place the strips of bacon so they just barely touch. I can usually get an entire 12 ounce package of bacon on my largest baking sheet. Place the sheet in a cold oven and set the temperature for 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Set the timer for 20 minutes and check the doneness of the bacon when it dings, adding more time if you want it more done and/or crispier.
So my dad calls me on my cell phone this morning, soon after I arrived at work. He called to wish me well on the last day of my 50th year.
How Sweet!
(Can you hear the sarcasm dripping from my lips?)
In other news, welcome to October!
My wallpaper on my work computer displayed a photo I took several years ago of my great-grandfather’s grave in Easton, Kansas:
When I saw his date of death on the headstone, I realized that this summer was the 40th anniversary of his passing. So I went searching for his obituary, which a relative had posted on the Find A Grave web site. Continue reading “Remembering My Great Grandfather”
“Happy Birthday” to my Aunt Jan in Ohio. She’s shown between her two older brothers in the photo below taken a couple of years ago at my dad’s 70th birthday bash:
Incidentally, all of the above are born in the same month — November — as is my husband and my daughter-in-law. I’ve blogged about this before. Here’s a photo from their early days (circa 1953):
I have many fond memories of my Aunt Jan. I remembering spending a summer or part of a summer with my grandparents (her mother and father) in St. Paul, Minnesota, when I was about six (circa 1970) and Jan was still in college (she was probably about 20).
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!”
For the first time in years, Terry and I were not hosting Thanksgiving nor were we dashing 500 plus miles south to North Texas to join our children for the holiday. Our daughter has moved to the northwest and is no longer within easy driving distance. Our son and daughter-in-law had hoped to drive up north from Texas to join us, but the weather was uncertain so they spent yesterday with close friends near them. I phoned my dad on Wednesday night and told him Terry and I were going to take it easy on Thanksgiving day and not have any set schedule. I did promise him one of the two pumpkin pies I planned to make (the recipe makes two pies and Terry and I will not need to eat both of them). The sticky buns, on the other hand, would not survive to be shared. I urged him to spend Thanksgiving with his step-daughter’s family.
