And how's ol' Whats-His-Name?

My husband gave me a Kindle a year or so ago.  I just love the thing.  I get books from the library and play games on it.  Lately, with age creeping up on little cat feet, I got some of those memory games.  Mom had dementia and couldn’t remember too much, but she was 92.  Not bad, but I figured might as well do the best I can to stave it off for the next 30+ years.

The games really help.  When I first started I could barely score a 14 on one game and now I score a 23.  Not that the score tells you much, but I’m improving.

The Kindle is a great little device to travel with, and since we are down here in Irvine, California this week dividing up our mom’s estate, I brought it along.

I was mighty glad that I’ve been playing those memory games when my brother asked me to go along with him to church.  Mom was one of the founding members of this particular branch, and when we lived here, I was a member.  When we moved to Seattle, I’d attend when down visiting, so I’ve known some of these people since the 1970’s.  There were lots of us who were young moms together, having babies, starting playgroups, sending Christmas cards, and hearing about the families as we went along through life.  Since I am here going through one of life’s passages, it was good to connect and remember old times.

It was great seeing old friends, especially Diane.  We don’t exchange Christmas cards anymore, so I wanted to hear all about her family.  She told me all about her son and daughter, then I got a shock when I asked about her husband.  Foot in mouth time!

“And how’s Steve?” I asked.

“Steve?” she some slightly perplexed.

OMG I thought. She looked so surprised.  Don’t tell me he’s passed away and I didn’t know.  How awkward.

“Steve moved to Texas,” she said.

“What?” I said.  They got a divorce!  I can’t believe it.  They’ve been married as long as I have.  This is shocking.  She seems so calm.  How did I not hear of this?

“Yes, he got remarried!”

“Oh,” I gulped.  “I guess I’m really behind the curve.”

“Yes, he and Carol bought a place there and just love it.  There’s a few others from the church that have moved to Texas too.”

How many others had gotten a divorced and moved to Texas?  What’s in Texas, I wondered.

“Oh yes,” Diane went on, “Steve moved away some time ago.”

I think at that point my brother took my elbow and steered me to the door as all I could do was stammer about being behind the curve and who knew.

“I didn’t realize that you and Steve were such good friends,” Diane called after me.

Really? I thought.  I’ve only known him for over 30 years.

As my brother propelled me out the front door, I was shocked to see none other than Steve himself standing in the bright California sun.  Now I was really messed up.  Was it something I ate?  Was it those new essential oils I’ve been using?  Did I have heat stroke?

“Oh hi Bob,” called my brother to him.

Oh, geez.  Of course, her husband’s name was Bob, not Steve!  How could I?  Thirty years!  That Steve guy she was talking about?  I suddenly remembered him too.

I’m going to go right home and start playing more of those memory games on Kindle.  Now, if I could only remember where I put it…

America: From Rural Times, Through Steam, to World War II—The Guts and Glory Years Discovered in Dearborn, Michigan

It’s tempting to look back on the agricultural years of the past as being romantically perfect.  Yanking us out of the past was no easy task.  It took brilliance and dedication to discover the machinery that would not only change our economy, but change our thought.  As new inventions occurred, they moved us from a nation that used slaves to one with a new character.  The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village depict the change in America from rural times, through the steam era, and through WWII. A trip to Dearborn presented not only a museum full of inventions, but insights into our national character.

The Firestone Farmhouse, demonstrates life as it was in rural years.  Yes, they eat the pigs they raise.  The picture here on the right is of hams they have raised and smoked.  They heat water and launder clothes by hand.  They have a charming little parlor, but also an outhouse.

At the Henry Ford Museum, steam power is displayed, from mighty locomotives that got the nation moving to mine equipment.

My friend Sue by two steam engines.

The textile mills girls stood long hours at their machines, but it pales to the slave labor in the cotton fields.  

Mill girls from 1850.                                                             A replica of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park.


The struggle to move the United States past a slave labor economy has outdistanced the social challenges of race relations, and you can see the chair in which Lincoln was assassinated  as well as the bus in which Rosa Parks defied the system.

 

At Willow Run airport, the B-17 is still available to scare the pants off you and bounce you around in the air until you wonder how anyone could keep their breakfast down.  The sheer guts it must have taken to get in a newfangled machine like this, go up in the air and get shot at.

I asked the man at the Henry Ford museum what was one idea he’d like to see visitors come away with, and he said that change was necessary to development, that stagnation was our enemy, and that new ideas take work and failure, on the road to success.  As a historian, I'm grateful to those who came before us, but find glory in the future.

When You Grow Up...

When you grow up, if you become a forest ranger, I will climb up your mountain and visit you.

When you grow up, if you become an engineer, I will drive across your bridge.

When you grow up, if you become a pilot, I will fly on your plane.

When you grow up, if you become a garbage collector, I will put out my garbage for you.

                                           

When you grow up, if you become a concert pianist, I will come hear you at Carnegie Hall.

When you grow up, if you become an oceanographer, I will get in my submarine and go to the SeaLab to visit you.

When you grow up, if you go off to Africa to study elephants, I will go on safari and find you. 

When you grow up, if you become a fashion designer, I will wear your dresses.

When you grow up, if you become a captain on a boat, I will go a-sailin’ with you.

When you grow up, if you are happy, I will dance with you.

When you grow up, if you are sad, I will sit with you.

When you grow up, if you want to call me, I will listen.

For I will love you all my days.

And even after all my days, Memories will come and sit beside you and you will never be alone.

For love is greater than all of these.

How Nonni and Neener Got Their Names

I called my grandma "Grandmother".  Somehow, the name seemed to fit the little woman with golden hair piled atop her head.  She had a Dame Wendy Hiller voice and an archy eyebrow when she was displeased.  We whispered in her house and sat quietly on the sofa with our hands folded in our laps, buh-LEEVE me.

We didn't have a lot of elders in the family, so Grandmother was the only one, and passed away when I was 13.

When we had children, husband's parents became Oma and Opa since they were German, and mine became Granddaddy and Grammy.

So it was a big question what I wanted to be called when I became a grandma.   Grandmother? Grandma?  Grammy?  Granny?  Nana?  All perfectly reasonable.

Having been called "Cookie" on the Sea Scout Ship Odyssey, it is a truth that what is in a name can influence people.  There's a huge difference in the reactions I get when I use different names.  All I have to do is put on huge skirts of my reenactor dresses from the 1850's, put a bun in my hair, go by my given name of Victoria and I'm curtsied to as if I am the queen.  Hang out in the galley, surrounded by heavenly cooking aromas, and everyone wants to hug Cookie.

So I wanted a name that was yummy.  Sweet.  Huggable.  When I was little, I used to call my snuggle blanket: "Nonni".  Sounds like what we used to call sliced bananas with milk on them: nonnies and cream.  It was a comfort food to me, like cinnamon toast and tea on Sunday evening.

My son-in-law said: "You want to be called a banana?"

"Yes, I like bananas," I declared.  "It means security blanket too."

It was only later that I found that the Italian word for Grandma was Nonni.  See?  It was meant to be, even though I have not a drop of Italian in me.  Who cares?  Pretty country.

So when the other set of grandparents were getting ready for the new grandtwins, we asked them what they wanted to be called.  After struggling to find just the right appellation, I was curious as to what they came up with.

"Why, Grandma and Grandpa, of course!" said the other grandma.  After a moment, it occurred to her that we might not have chosen that title.  "What do YOU want to be called?" she asked.

"I want to be called Nonni," I said.

It was then that my husband committed humorous suicide.  It was just too funny to pass up.  Had to do it, caution to the wind, it may stick forever, but he went for it just to see their faces.  "Yeah, and I want to be NEENER," he laughed.

I suspect that Grandmother in heaven and Victoria both arched an eyebrow simultaneously, and that might have had something to do with the fact that our children have decided to stick to formality and have the grandtwins call him Opa.

I think the dog refers to him as Neener though.  Dogs enjoy a good laugh.

Food Foibles

My mother-in-law had a lot of strange ways about her, BUH-LEEVE me.  Seriously, how could you not like Coke?  What kind of person does not like chocolate?  She didn’t.  She liked dogs and horses though, so I dealt her weirdness about the chocolate and Coke.

My daughter, of German heritage, did not like potatoes.  What good little German child does not like potatoes?  She did not like much of anything, really, and like me, had to sit at the table until she ate her veggies.

Now I’m an ancient oldster, I’m realizing all my own food foibles.  When other people don’t foods that I do, they are picky eaters, when I don’t like something, it is because it is truly nasty.  Take asparagus, for example.  Who thought of eating THAT?  Yuck.  It smells.  I’ve made a point of telling everyone I know not to serve it to me, and time after time they say, “I know you don’t like asparagus, but I know you’ll like it once you try it the way I fix it.”  Nope.  I won’t.  Never have, never will.  Blame it on my mom, dear soul, who fixed us canned asparagus and cooked the living daylights out of it so it became disgusting green goo that smelled.  I sat at the table for days because of it.

I should like fish, I suppose, but it smells too.  Not all fish.  I like fish sticks.  There’s enough breading on them to make them palatable.  I like fish with loads of sauce on them.  Hubby says that fish is really a vehicle for sauce anyway.  Seeing how lots of breading and sauce isn’t really good for you, I chose to eat other things.  Expensive and smelly fish is at the bottom of the list.

Then there are eggs.  Took me until collage to like them.  I like the taste but not the texture.  Still can’t eat them without toast.  Bite of egg, bite of toast.  Put some bacon with them and I’ll get through it.  But a naked fried egg on a plate is never going to make it to my mouth.

That’s the glorious part about getting old.  We can push away things we don’t like on our plate and no one is going to make us sit at the table until we eat it.  Although these days, I don’t mind sitting around.

But I came to the realization that I was truly weird when I finally figured out that I dislike maple syrup, or anything maple.  What is with that?  What weirdo does not like maple syrup?  Ah ha! So this is why I could never get warm to pancakes or waffles.  I love sweet things, how is it I don’t like maple?  That’s just inexplicable. 

Turns out my mother-in-law and I are two of a kind. 

Dwight's Drafty Drawers

Wedding bells!  Fun times, wedding are.  This story is about groomsmen.  Have you ever noticed how so many of them clasp their hands in front of themselves while standing up there in front of the world?  My dad called that “The Fig Leaf Stance” and warned our groomsmen about it.

There is one groomsman though, that had good reason for using The Fig Leaf Stance. 

My friend Rox and her brother Dwight were headed to a wedding in Wisconsin.  Headed was more like speeding, because Dwight was a groomsmen, and they were late.  Late, late super late.  The country roads through dairies and fields seemed endless.

Dwight started squirming considerably in the passenger seat of her rather new car.

“Stop squirming” she asked.  “I’m doing my best to get you there on time.”

“I know.”  But he continued to squirm.

“What’s wrong?” Rox asked.  She’s a nurse and considerably older than her brother.

“Nuthin’.”

“You sure?  You gotta pee?”

“No.”

“Did you eat something that upset you?  Do you want me to stop?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Ten minutes later, Dwight said they were going to have to pull over.  Something was biting or burning his crotch.  There was nothing between them and the wedding but farm roads, so they pulled off and opened both the passenger door in the front and back.  Dwight said she was just going to have to look and see what the problem was. 

Dwight took off his suit coat and dropped his pants and underwear, kicking off one leg of his trousers.  Rox bent down and looked.

“Good grief,” she said.  “I gotta ask you, have you had any sexual encounters?”

“No!”

“It looks like you got a burn.  A bad one.”

“How would I get a burn THERE?”

“What happened to my car’s upholstery?” Roxane cried.  A big hole had been eaten into it where Dwight was sitting.

“Forget the upholstery,” Dwight said, “What is happening to my crotch?”

“Was the upholstery like that when you got in?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I think you sat in something caustic, but I can’t imagine what has been in my car.”

“Just get it off, get it off!”

Dwight could barely stand still while Rox got some water and attempted to slosh it up in Dwight’s crotch.  His underwear and pants had a hole burned into them, and they were getting later and later for the wedding.  Water dripped down his legs into his socks and shoes.

He took off his shoes and socks, and his trousers and underwear, pouring water over himself where he was burned.  Meanwhile, Rox found some tiny scissors in a sewing kit in her purse and carefully cut out the burned section of his trousers and underwear.

“What do you know about this?” she finally asked.

“Well, some of us were fixing a tractor battery and might have put it on your car’s front seat,” he muttered. 

“Great!  Look at what the battery acid did to my upholstery.”

“Look what it did to MY upholstery!  What are we going to do about the wedding?”

“I don’t think the hole I cut will show.  Put your pants back on.”

“These holes are huge!  They can see me on the moon.”

“Maybe your coat is long enough to cover it.  Put it on, let’s see.”

Dwight put the coat on.

“I can’t see anything.”

Dwight looked at himself from all angles, then tried checking himself out in the side mirror.

“Walk up the road a bit, let me see if anything is dangling out.”

“You didn’t just say that.”

“C’mon, we’re late, just walk up there.

Dwight marched, was pronounced in compliance, and hopped in the back seat.  They attended the wedding, he walked up the aisle, and stood in the fig leaf stance the whole time.  At the reception, he scooted waaaaaaaaaaay under the table and wrapped the tablecloth around himself.

Of course, I can’t help but laugh at poor Dwight’s drafty drawers whenever I attend a wedding and see groomsmen standing there clasping their hands in front of themselves.

I think he had to pay for new upholstery in the car, too.

Mrs. Giddy and the RV Flood

Being a new travel trailer owner results in hearing all sorts of misadventure stories from friends.  This is great, as Mr. Bumble and I realize we are in great company.

When Mr. and Mrs. Giddy were first dating, and rented a huge RV to drive down to the Burning Man festival.  The as-yet-to-be Mrs. Giddy was not at all shocked in accepting an invitation to go to Burning Man in an RV.  She was so truly enamored in her new beau.  She couldn’t do enough for him.  Their RV was huge and comfortable, as Mr. Giddy spared no expense.  They had a great time at Burning Man and managed to come through it all fairly sober and sane.

Heading home up the highway, and the future Mrs. Giddy decided it might be wise to make Mr. Giddy some coffee, as he had been driving for hours.  However, she had to first use the lavatory, and then she tried to wash her hands.  She turned on the faucet, and…nothing.  Like we have found, the water doesn’t just gush out.  There are systems to be aware of.  But Mrs. Giddy believed herself to be no airhead.  She knew there was a pump to turn on and set about finding the switch and turning it on.

“Hey, beautiful,” called Mr. Giddy.  “How about that coffee?”

Knowing that if she ever was going to be successful in landing the thirsty, cute, and well-heeled Mr. Giddy, our young and beautiful lady was oh so pleased that she had been able to turn the pump on to get water for Mr. Giddy’s coffee.  She measured the coffee beans so carefully, ground them in his jazzy grinder, and she got the water in the pot.  All it took was a push of the button to start the coffee maker, then she turned to see a rubber duck floating in a slick of water coming from the bathroom.

When she had gone to turn the water pump on, she’d forgotten that she’d left the faucets of the bathroom sink turned on.

She dashed in to turn them off, and found the water was even deeper in there.

Mr. Giddy rounded the corner, and the future Mrs. Giddy slipped on the water and knocked herself out on the counter.  When she came to, the coffee was done and the water was up to her ankles.  She didn’t want to tell the very cute Mr. Giddy about the water issue.  She quickly poured him a cup, sloshed up front where the water was shallower, and gave him his coffee.

He wanted to chat, and she sweetly sat down to listen, casting longing glances at the mop and the bathroom door, where water was getting even deeper. 

Finally she excused herself and waded back to turn off the water, looked for a mop.  Unfortunately, all she could find was a Swiffer and a wet wipe, and it wasn’t doing much good. 

In a flash of brilliance, she realized that all she had to do was open the back door and the water would gush out.

She unlocked it and opened it a crack.  However, Mr. Giddy rounded a curve, the door swung open with the hapless, hopeful bride clinging to it with all her might.  The water did indeed gush out, as well as several socks and pieces of underwear that had been lying on the floor.

People honked and shouted, but Mr. Giddy just flipped them off and called them names, not realizing his date was trying to reach the doorjam to pull herself inside.

Fortunately, a kindly trucker maneuvered his truck closer and our heroine reached out with her leg, kicked against the truck, and got the door to swing back where she could get a fingernail on the inside and pull herself to safety.  She blew the trucker a kiss and slammed the door.

Once the wet floor was dried with a towel, a fresh cup of coffee poured for Mr. Giddy, she plopped down in the front seat.

“What were you doing back there?” asked Mr. Giddy.

“Just washing the floor,” replied the future Mrs. Giddy.

Mr. and Mrs. Giddy have celebrated their sixteenth wedding anniversary.  But Mrs. Giddy tells me that Mr. Giddy always offers to mop the floors.  She’s not sure why.

Easy Cucumber Appetizers

I’ve got some monster cucumbers in the backyard, the result of being gone to various fun spots this summer, and the cucumbers have languished.

But they are just the right size for appetizers.  Sliced ¼ inch thick, one can top them with all sorts of things.

Mango Coconut Pepper Peanut Chips

 

Slice cucumber into 10 slices, each ¼ inch thick.

Top each with 1 Tbsp. cottage cheese.

On that, place 2 tsp of mango coconut pepper sauce (from Costco)

On that, sprinkle chopped peanuts

Feta Cheese, Balsamic Dressing and Kalamata Olives

Slice cucumber into 10 slices, each ¼ inch thick

Top with 1 Tbsp feta cheese

On that, place ½ tsp of balsamic dressing

On that, place ½ Kalamata olive, cut in half

These look really pretty on a colorful plate.