// July 30th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Functional Foodie, Tasty Bites
It’s no secret I love my oatmeal. Steel cut or old-fashioned oats are my breakfast at least half the time. We’re making oatmeal over at Ginny’s Tasty Bites today. Join me!
// July 28th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // Family, My Fabulous Life
Suppose there was this older woman who, on cleaning out her luggage, found a baggie of twistie ties. She stares at them, and wonders where they came from….who put them there….and why.
Paranoia sets in.
Then she gets a visitor, a family member, stopping by her house within a few minutes of finding the baggie of twistie ties. And she totally freaks out.
“I’m losing my mind! Why would I have put those in in there. I told you, I’m LOSING IT!!”
“But Mom older person, I do stuff like that all the time! I find milk in the pantry and cereal in the fridge. Things like that are normal for a busy person.”
“NO THEY’RE NOT!! I TOLD YOU I’M LOSING IT!!”
So you IRL and virtual friends out there, I need your help:
Leave your comments and I’ll share them with her. She doesn’t have “a stupid computer” because they are only for people who have nothing better to do, you know.
// July 26th, 2010 // 11 Comments » // My Fabulous Life
Mary is a patient I cared for many years ago. It’s hard to remember the thousands of patients who have crossed my path, but I can’t forget Mary because she won’t let me.
She was always kind and extremely grateful. She was a model patient. Walk “X” number of minutes, do “Y” number of repetitions. She always did what we encouraged her to, and she never forgot our instructions. When I did her discharge interview she asked me about my birthday.
To this day she remembers it, sending along a sweet handmade hankie enclosed in one of those free-in-the-mail greeting cards. She always includes a personal note. She has never forgotten.
In fact, she never forgot anything.
Well, anything except my name. She never quite got it right.
Sandy? Cathy? Cindy? When I repeatedly told her “Candy” she said, “You just don’t look like a Candy.” Perhaps I don’t. Whatever that looks like.
Last week I got the annual card with a note of apology that she was late. Her shakily-scrawled note said she’d had her gall bladder out and that she had moved. But that she was settled and doing well.
Which explains why she was late for Cindy’s birthday. And mine.
Thanks, Mary. You’re a dear. And you’ve done more for me than I could ever do for you by simply remembering. The name’s not important.
// July 23rd, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Functional Foodie, Tasty Bites
Super Summer Rice Salad
There’s nothing I like better than a light main course meal that’s full of texture and explodes with flavor. This is it! Crunchy, chewy, crispy and tangy, if you’re a cold salad lover, I think you’re going to love this one. Swing on over to Ginny’s Tasty Bites and get the recipe!
For future recipes, any requests? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll see what I can dig up out of my recipe arsenal.
// July 22nd, 2010 // 8 Comments » // Faith, Family, My Fabulous Life
Last weekend Ron Burgundy, our DD, and I made our final trip to the family summer home on the Mississippi River in Wisconsin. Our boys had other plans and couldn’t make it, which was probably for the best as this summer home is actually a trailer on the river. It’s a nice trailer, just not a double-wide which would be requirement for our long-legged family.
At 85, Mom decided that spending every summer on the river for the last 52 years is enough.
She’s tired.
Tired of hauling the summer fare up there every April and back again every September, usually in time for the first Hawkeye home football game. Because that’s the way it’s always been done, or was until she ended her 40+ years of season tickets. She had to do that after she realized that buying 4 tickets when all your football-fan friends are dead is not a very economical thing to do.
Fifty-two years of organizing. Putting everything exactly in it’s place and chastising anyone who dares to hang the charcoal tongs on the wrong hook in the garden house. “Because that’s not where they go.”
Very little has changed from the first time we hauled our kids up there, little blonde heads appearing neckless, all bundled in bright orange life jackets. I used to think they looked like heads on a platter. The 60′s shag carpet is still there. The dark paneled walls. Even the green ribbed bedspreads on the “family bedroom” have not changed. The menu for my birthday dinner has never changed, except for the addition of salmon a couple of years ago when she realized the steak dinner was leaving me sans protein. The spotlessness is still the same.
What has changed is us. We all grew up and out and older, and in doing so, there’s inevitably something left behind. Whether it’s a slab of weathered barnwood painted with a John Deere tractor or the coffee table that housed a mysteriously emptying candy dish or the notes of memories we all left in her journal with each visit, it’s all behind us now.
The people we once were are behind us, too.
I left a little boy up there to visit once – one who quietly slipped back to the bedroom to “rest his eyes” that dripped unmercifully of salty homesickness. It wasn’t something a fresh Twizzler couldn’t cure.
I left a little girl up there to visit – she sat in Grandma’s Jeep pretending to drive, only to stomp (she has never “walked” – has always “stomped”) back in the trailer, tossing Juana Winola the Cabbage Patch doll on the couch and saying “I can’t watch her and drive at the same time.”
I left another little boy up there one weekend to walk through the woods with Grandpa, delightfully announcing on his return that he had no idea that “squirrels barked.” Thanks, Dad, for giving animal descriptions to our bodily functions.
I left three little fisherkids up there on various occasions to cast their lines off the dock and either tangle them in the trees above, or bounce back up the hill ahead of Grandpa, grinning with their catch of “wallyfish, blue girls, and normans.”
With aging comes the inevitable loss of control, and it was quite apparent that Mom is grieving this loss. A bit on edge (may I say bossy?), Mom wanted everything exactly her way even more than before. The way she sold the place, the way we will move her back home, the way the table is set, the roads we take to church. It must stay exactly the same. Never, ever change.
Yet deep down she was obviously feeling that things are changing, especially beyond the muddy shores and bluffs of the Mississippi. As frustrating as it was, I understood quite clearly that she’s grieving her loss of control. The slipping away of youthful strength that had become a rather eclectic combination of Martha Stewart, Martha of Bethany, and Frank Sinatra. Hanging in the kitchen, making it perfect, her way.
The irony in this (or shall I say “Godwink”) is that the message we heard at church Sunday in Prairie du Chien was about Martha. And as we walked out of church she said, “I’m a Martha and I’m not going to change now.”
Yep, Mom, I knew that.
Yet I see her grieve the realization that her world will not quite be the same again. I hope soon she’ll be as OK with that as I am.
This whole idea of having control is such a useless fret. It serves no purpose, other than to draw our hearts away from the One who really is in control. The One who allows time to pass and hearts to change and tears to fall. For a purpose.
Time to give it up and move home.
To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven….
Ecclesiastes 3:1
// July 21st, 2010 // 6 Comments » // Functional Foodie, Tasty Bites
Hmm, last weeks’s recipe that somehow went unposted here. Better late than never….
Do you know what’s in your granola? You will if you make it yourself! Though the ingredient list may seem (a little) long, it’s so good! Take the jump to Ginny’s Tasty Bites and try your hand at home made granola – your way!
// July 9th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Functional Foodie, Tasty Bites
I’ve been on a gluten-free kick for a little over a month now (another post, another time) and in doing so, I’ve had to get creative with my meals. Take the jump to Ginny’s Tasty Bites and check out a spontaneous tasty meal…
// July 2nd, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Functional Foodie, Tasty Bites
I have two large tomato plants this year, and they are loaded with fruit. The best thing is, I don’t have to wait until they ripen because my very favorite tomatoes are green and fried! Follow me over to Ginny’s Tasty Bites and see what makes them so good!
// July 1st, 2010 // 26 Comments » // My Fabulous Life
I stopped by to see my FINIRL (formerly imaginary, now in real life) friend Sara yesterday. I had a great excuse, even though she says I don’t need a reason to barge in on her peaceful day and be that annoying visitor. A special day it was – seedless watermelon was really, really cheap at The Walmarts, and if the truth be known, Sara and I could probably take on the whole internet in a watermelon eating contest. And win.
Knowing I was going to stop by after work, I sent her a message on Twitter and asked her if she had a large, heavy knife, to which she replied:
“The biggest knife I have is one that has an edge like for cutting a loaf of bread. Will that work? Are you laughing at me?”
To which I replied “Yes, I’m laughing. I’ll bring my own.”
So stop I did, with a few weird foods for her to try like mango peach salsa and organic crystallized ginger. I suppose some time I should just bring a Russett potato or a bag of Wonder Bread so she doesn’t think I’m totally food-crazed and whacked out in the head.
When I went to leave, Riley escorted me to the door. (Definition of escort: bark incessantly, leap on back legs in true Riley-bar-the-door fashion). At the last second I asked Sara if the boxes on the table needed to go the garbage, so I grabbed them, along with my purse, my water bottle, and yes, my cherished 16 cm Wüsthof watermelon Classic Cook’s knife, and lumbered out the door.
That’s when this little white motorized fur ball bolted between my legs out the door, into the hall and greeted a young man returning home to his condo in the same building. Barking incessantly. (Riley, not the young man). Not wanting Riley on the loose, I ran after him, dropped the boxes, but still had the knife, so when the gentleman looked at me as Riley had stopped to err… sniff….his leg, he sees the the glint of well-honed steel and a manic look on my face.
Me, a stranger, chasing a small white dog. With a shiny knife. And cardboard boxes. Not an ounce of suspicion there.
I did some Riley Rangling to get him back into his condo safe with Sara, and profusely apologized to the young man. He held the door open as I carried the boxes out to the dumpster. He stood much further than knife-length from me and was quick to shut the door and let me depart.
Only two watermelons were harmed in the process. Destroyed, actually.
Nom. Nom.
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