Snow Day

As a retired teacher I still go berserk when the possibility of a snow day occurs. My behavior can only be described as manic. And the mania starts the night before when I remain fixed on the TV channel that most consistently predicts snow. It's difficult not to switch back and forth between channels so I just do it. Sometimes two channels predict snowfall at the same time so my excitement leads me to wondering if we should go to the store and get some much needed items such as donuts or deli roast beef.  I check to see if we have some good cheese and maybe there's a can of tomato soup hidden behind the cereal boxes in the pantry. After all, what's a snow day without tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich?

Off to bed.  I get up once or twice to use the bathroom but really I'm trying to see if any flakes are visible. If they are, a little inward dance of hopeful joy begins as I head back to bed.

And what I find to be the most interesting part: I get up way earlier than I have ever done in either my teaching or retired days and once again glue myself to the TV.  I am watching the trailer at the bottom of the screen as it lists the school closures for the day. Oh, please, please, please, and double please.  At least we can have a late start.  Those days make the work day fun and thrilling because the schedule is off kilter and so  many people are absent. I rush to create a lesson that will be enjoyable, teachable, and easy for the absentees to make up,.

OH MY GOOD AND GLORIOUS FORTUNE! The heavily hoped for announcement trailers on the TV! No school!  And I look outside as daylight arrives and stare gratefully at all the white I can see from my living room window. The streets are covered too, so little traffic is heard except for spinning tires trying to get out of driveways. 

Of course, I hate to actually go out into the snow. It's too cold and then too wet and then too exhausting and by noon at the latest I start watching for the snow to melt so I can get back to my regular comfortable schedule. Retired teachers wait just as hopefully as working ones.  We have things to do and we want them completed before the snow day totally upsets our weekly goals and plans. I begin to watch the thermometer in my back yard hoping things will warm up fast enough so I can get to school. Yes, teachers are still weird about snow days even when they are retired. 

Close Out Sales!! Hurry! Sales End at Midnight Tonight!

(Browsing through Craig's List and the newspaper early this morning we found the following provocative ads:)

For sale:  50 sealed boxes of fresh air!  Perfect for when climate change overcomes your personal space!  Half price at $20.00 per
box!

Free to the first 199 entrants! Parents, these are going fast so sign up NOW for your child's 24 hour device free experience. Includes a vegan lunch and a guided tour through the city park.  Adult supervision provided. Plenty of time set aside for free time and creative play at the playground. We will sleep under the stars in cozy sleeping bags stuffed with unprocessed fleece. Again, hurry on this one!

Mary Jane's Main Street Mart is offering 50ml of hemp CBD shots free with the purchase of any bong in the store.

Tickets go on sale this Friday for City Park's Concert featuring Mick Jagger and Yo-Yo Ma performing on the same stage. Ticket prices range from $150-$346.99 with all proceeds being donated to the Save All Sounds of Classical Music Foundation.

. . .and the most curious and interesting ad of all found in the local Arts and Entertainment section--

A truckload of slightly used President dolls will go on sale after the Government Shutdown is over.  These life-like dolls come complete dressed in a blue suit with an extra long coat which helps to hide small hands and a big posterior. No need to style the hairdo since it is permanently sprayed to the head. Press a button on the doll's forehead and hear fake news using the words "terrific," "witch hunt," and "wall" over and over again.

After that last ad, we retreated to the kitchen for one more cup of coffee made with water of nearly the same color. Sigh. We wonder "what next" for 2019.

RED, WHITE, AND GREEN

I am still working on what to choose as a topic for the holiday season.  I can come up with a few ideas and Pat tried to help me out, but all the ideas seemed to be so over-used and trite that I rejected them all. So I've decided to write about a few things I DON'T like about the holidays.

Here's one:  Hallmark movies on TV.  These are predictable and all alike. A young woman lives in a small town or comes to stay in one that is picture perfect and covered with the just the right amount of snow. She has a problem to solve that includes an introduction or reunion with  an unbelievably handsome young man and they solve the problem together.  At the end of the movie they discover they are in love and you see them kiss each other for the first time ever as the bland holiday music plays in the background.

Another thing I don't like about the season are the bell ringers that stand outside Fred Meyer.  I don't want to make eye contact with them because I don't want to drop change into the little black pot and I feel guilty about it. When I leave the store, I suffer from the same guilty feeling.  As the month of December goes by, I finally force myself to make a contribution a couple of times and then I feel a little better. 

Holiday music on the radio drives me crazy.  I quickly get sick of hearing songs such as "I saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus" many times over as I click on my car radio.  What is even more irritating is that I get that song stuck in my head and then hum it all day long until "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or some other jolly tune takes its place.

The joys of making Christmas cookies are untrue. The only good way to pull this off is to make the cookies when you're all by yourself in the kitchen and nobody's home. I've put in my time having fun with the grandkids making and decorating bells, trees, Santas, and snowmen.  This activity takes up at least twice the time you plan for and ends up with absolutely the largest and most difficult kitchen mess that involves scraping frosting off the oddest places in the house such as on the toilet handle.

And then as the season ends and I spend the hours needed to take  down all the Christmas decorations, I think about all the things I've enjoyed and feel nostalgic that I have to wait another whole year before we get to do it all again. Go figure.

   

I love to read.  I remember when I badly wanted to learn to read so when I was in kindergarten, my teacher Miss Daisy (isn't that the perfect name for a kindergarten teacher?) kept a few of us after school and introduced us to Dick, Jane, Spot, and Fluffy.  Oh. Can't forget Mother and Father. Soon enough I began figuring out how to read words on my own.  My parents didn't seem too impressed but they didn't need to be because I was so proud of myself and so happy to be in this new world of words and books.

The adventures in reading began. In third grade, we got to go to the library and check out books that we could actually take home. Mary Poppins became a favorite grown-up and my cousin Patty read Winnie the Pooh to my brother and me. All those characters became real.

Junior high and high school years didn't lend themselves to much leisure reading but I still made time for recreational reading.  I saw Romeo and Juliet in Ashland when I was 15 and was hooked on Shakespeare. I carefully hid the plays under my desk and read them while my Modern Problems teacher talked in the front of the room about something important.  Her subject  couldn't have been near as intriguing as the spells cast by the witches in Macbeth or as sad as what happened to Lennie in Of Mice and Men. 

College left no time for leisure reading but what we read in literature classes captivated me. Everything from Beowulf to my favorite poet e.e. cummings became reality to me.  

After college, I started teaching literature myself so I got to spend many more hours exploring those other worlds in books. I think I read Hamlet at least a dozen times.  Interestingly, I declared in my early 20's that I wouldn't read  Hamlet until I was 30. I smugly figured I could get by without that famous Dane in my life until I was the age of Hamlet himself. I made it and still received A's in my English lit classes.  

I read everything now but I have to say that I'm glad I don't have to read student essays anymore. The Great Alone was much better and held my attention for hours.  

I highly recommend that you read that last book mentioned. What a story about life off the grid in Alaska with strong characters who battle their way through some ugly life events. I still read the newspaper on the few days we still receive it. And not one back of cereal box has gone unread in this household! 

What I Can't Write About

At first, I thought it might be a good idea to write about something related to grammar use such as it's and its.  In the olden days when people actually wrote letters, essays, and sometimes even poems, we had to know the difference in the use of these two words.  You'd get red  marks on your papers if you used them improperly.  That would be almost certain to bring up some painful memories of some English teacher you didn't like so I decided to leave a grammar lesson alone.

Maybe I could write about Michael Jackson.  Wow! He was so darn cute when he was young but then he went through all sorts of physical changes that are hard to describe except for the one my sister calls "the time when Michael Jackson really wanted to be Diana Ross."  But you can't deny the fact that he danced as if he had magic feet. Remember the fun you had when you tried to moonwalk? That was always great for some laughs at family gatherings.  But rule out Michael Jackson for a topic. You'd be hard put to omit a comment or two about his strange lifestyle. 

Hey!  I've got it!  FOOTBALL!  After all, the season is upon us.  Just try driving I-5 south or north around college game schedules.  You'll see for yourself how popular this sport is as you count the cars flying orange or green flags. And you'll have to remember which cousin likes which professional team so loud arguments are avoided.  I've had football games playing in the background of my weekends all my life but I still don't know what it means when the referee (or is it the umpire?) grasps one wrist with the other using what looks like an up and down motion. And I can NEVER resist mentioning how barbaric and dangerous the game is and how much it reminds me of slaves being forced to fight well-equipped soldiers in ancient Rome.  Boy, do I get the ugly looks from that.  So football won't do for a topic.

Lastly, I can't write about the Supreme Court or any nominees who might surface from the oily cesspool of current politics.

Okay. Maybe just a couple of remarks.  One: Republicans aren't what they used to be when they were a real political party.  Two:  Can two people be lying and telling the truth at the same time?  And, three:  Why do we feel so powerless about what's going on in Washington, D.C?

Maybe I should just stick with the it's versus its rule after all.    

  

KItchen Time-NOT!

I've spent 50 years preparing food first by helping my mother with her family cooking and following up with cooking for my own family. I just have to share a few examples and some random thoughts about what food means to me.


First of all, I'll just come out and say it:  I'm tired of the kitchen. Every evening I put  together a simple protein meal accompanied by a fruit and a vegetable. It's fairly easy and if Pat wants anything else, he prepares it himself. 

Furthermore, I am no longer interested in fixing holiday meals.I broke the news early in the year that we are going out for Thanksgiving, joining close friends (thanks, Penny!) for a Christmas morning brunch, and planning other holiday events around easy potlucks. Such a plan will avoid the sticky discussion about who will join whom for the special meal and I won't have to ever again try to make the Norman Rockwell scene of the family being served the just perfect turkey. Too, my house will stay uncluttered with crumb free counters and the ugly dead carcass in the refrigerator. No  more turkey soup for days on end.

In my early years of working with food, I pored over recipes in women's magazines and began collecting cookbooks until I couldn't fit them into regular kitchen space.  My first cookbook was The Hate To Cook Book  by Peg Bracken. It is now held together with rubber bands and paper clips and I can't give it up. I kept a few others such as Peg's other books and one or two others with titles like Five Ingredient Recipes and 100 Crockpot Recipes. I also have a 3-ring binder loaded with recipes I've received or stolen from other people. That's it. The whole collection fits on one slim shelf in my pantry.

And here's my cooking confession:  I fed my kids baby food from jars found at the grocery store, bologna sandwiches and Doritos for lunch, and dinners with iceberg lettuce salad or even the horrifying "fruit" salad made from Jello! All I really needed in my pantry was instant rice, a can or two of cream of whatever soup, some frozen vegetables and an occasional banana or apple. I served all this with fried cube steak, fried chicken, or spaghetti made from sauce that included fried ground sirloin (read hamburger). Guess what. . .we're all alive and successfully passing by organic foods with each visit to the grocery store.

So here's a little test for you. And if you can get 100%, I'll share a box of See's Candy with you.  

Identify and/or describe the following: 
1. kohlrabi
2. pomegranate molasses
3. castelvetrano olives
4. piment d'espelette
5. cotija cheese

I found these items in a local paper and a woman's magazine so don't think I've gone all snobbish and read one of those gourmet magazines. I still prefer one pan meals that can be on the table in 20 minutes.

P.S. Just sayin'- my family all sat together for the evening meal and were often joined by the kids' friends who marveled over this ancient eating custom wondering where we kept our TV trays. 

Another Health Journey

The journey has lasted over a year. It began with heedless changing of anti-depressants and, I hope, started to end yesterday.

All of my readers (I think I have as many as eight) know that I was diagnosed late in the Spring of 2017 with major depressive disorder after seeing a slew of doctors. I finally ended up with a reputable, solid, and most likable psychiatrist who was the one who offered the diagnosis. Then we were off to figuring out which meds would provide the most relief.

We carefully tried some combinations of a pinch of this and a a dab of that and ended up with two different anti-depressants and one mood stabilizer. So along with my heart medications, I have a handful of pills that I choke down morning and night. I began to feel some better but am still working with some depression and a boatload of anxiety.

 My world has diminished to a very small comfort zone just as I started to contemplate a thrilling trip to somewhere fun, beautiful, and exciting. Ireland? Italy? Maybe one of those scenic river cruises where you can float by fancy castles on the nearby hills and take a cooking class along the way as well? Truth is, my travel radius has narrowed down to about five miles, ten on a good day.

Then the trembling and shaking and overall weakness along with stiffness and a new and unsightly walking posture made getting around even my own house began. And so did despair. Mornings became nearly unbearable and I didn't really relax until late afternoon or evening.

Last week my psychiatrist threw her hands up in the air and declared there would be absolutely no more med changes until I saw a neurologist. She found me one who specializes in movement disorders. Have you guessed yet?
                                  Parkinson's disease!

I saw the neurologist yesterday. We were with her for well over an hour and she did several tests and eventually she shared her diagnosis of  Parkinson's disease. It is not curable but it is treatable. I have lots to learn about this oddball disease. You can ask Google about it yourself, if you're interested in details. I've already ordered books. There's even one called Parkinson's Disease for Dummies!

And, yes, I am shocked.  But I feel more relief than anything else. 
I started the new medication yesterday and the doctor expects that I will feel better within two weeks. My household feels as if a triumphant celebration is occurring even though we are certainly aware of the seriousness of this disease. I will not die from this; I'll die WITH it. Strange words and a strange way to end this blog but I feel happier and more encouraged than I have in months and months.