Category Archives: Whimsies

Nothing But Blue Skies Do I See

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In November 2014, Colorado’s temperature dropped by 77 degrees in just a couple of days. On November 10, the state was experiencing a lovely fall day with the temperature reaching 65 degrees. On November 13, sprinkler systems were exploding and furnaces were coughing and sputtering as they tried to battle the 13-degrees-below-zero temperature. Bill and I were in Arizona when this weather event took place, but I remember that we were eating lunch al fresco as we called our daughter-in-law and asked if she could perhaps, just maybe, go over to our house and turn on the heater which we had optimistically  left off. She didn’t seem too bitter.

I remember it also because all of the beautiful bushes in our front yard were brown and straggly when we got home, having died from the sudden and drastic temperature change. It took a full two years before they came back and now once again look like this…..

All this is to say that wild weather changes are not uncommon in Colorado, and after 44 years of living here, I should be aware of this fact. That, and the reality that in the mountains of Colorado – especially during June – there is an afternoon thunder storm almost daily. But last week Bec – who was visiting for a few days before embarking on a trip to China — and I took a day trip to Estes Park so that she would have a chance to get a bit acclimated to high altitude before visiting Nepal, being a low-lander and all.

I didn’t even bother to check the weather. The sky was blue and the temperature was warm when we set off towards Estes Park. We headed directly to Rocky Mountain National Park when we arrived in this small mountain community we both love so much, and happily handed the park ranger our Senior National Park Pass. This pass, my friends, is about the only thing good about turning 62 – a lifetime pass to all national parks for a one-time fee of ten bucks. (The cost of the senior pass is allegedly going to increase to 80 bucks by the end of the year, so all you elderly folks should grab your walkers and go buy your passes NOW!)

We had stopped at King Soopers before leaving Denver to pick up a Gloor family traditional picnic sandwich made of salami and swiss cheese. As an aside, when we make ourselves a salami sandwich, we might put on three or four pieces of salami and a slice of swiss cheese; we were therefore astounded when we pulled our sandwiches out of the cooler and saw this…..

My sodium level must have peaked so much following my lunch that I’m surprised my heart didn’t simply stop beating. But it was good, my friends; it was very good.

Anyhoo, after lunch, we made our traditional drive through the park, making our way to Bear Lake, flipping around and going out the Beaver Creek exit…..

A few clouds had appeared by this time, but we didn’t give them a second thought, or frankly, even a first thought…..

We drove back to town, parked our car, stopped at our favorite taffy shop and bought 30 or 40 pounds of taffy (well, maybe not quite that much) before making a decision to have a drink at the new (at least new to us) outdoor bar.

A few more clouds had appeared.

We had just gotten our beverages when we heard the rumbling of thunder (and nothing sounds more beautiful than thunder echoing off the mountains). And then we began to feel a few drops of rain. We weren’t worried, however, because though the bar was outdoors, we were sitting under an overhang, small but certainly sufficient.

Until the few drops of rain became hail….

and then became heavy hail….

We weren’t the only ones who had by that time become cold and drenched, seeings as the overhang wasn’t quite as big as we’d thought…..

The dogs eyes tell it all, friends. You could practically see him thinking about his comfortable doggie bed at home, and wondering just why his master thinks it’s such a great idea to take him everywhere he goes. What the photo can’t show is just how much the dog was shivering. As were we.

Once the hail stopped and the rain became manageable, we scurried to the car and drove to Longmont to meet Jen for dinner. Following delicious pizza, salad, and wine, and lots of conversation and laughter, we drove home to Denver. Our capri pants, ladies and gentlemen, were still wet when we arrived home.

Welcome to colorful Colorado.

This post linked to Grand Social.

 

Saturday Smile: Frosty

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Yesterday I took Kaiya to an orthodontics appointment. When I dropped her off, I asked the kids if they wanted to go out for an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen as a treat from Nana before they left on their road trip to California today. Duh.

So we all piled into their family van, as my yellow bug won’t fit three, and drove the few blocks to the nearby Dairy Queen. All the way there, Kaiya talked about wanting a vanilla ice cream cone with spinkles, and Mylee talked about wanting a vanilla ice cream cone dipped in chocolate. Cole was pretty quiet about his choice, but both girls were certain he wanted a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. So that’s what I ordered.

Not unexpectedly, as soon as Cole spied Kaiya’s sprinkly cone, that’s what he wanted. And bless Kaiya’s little heart, she immediately agreed to exchange cones with him.

He was entirely satisfied with his cone, and it didn’t take long until this happened, and it made me smile…..

By the way, Kaiya gave herself the ice cream nose on purpose. Cole’s was entirely the work of a 3-year-old digging into a vanilla ice cream cone with sprinkles.

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

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Workin’ Man
When Bill McLain decides to be a workin’ man, he goes all in. We (and when I say we, I mean Bill) have been working on demolition of our family room in preparation for putting up drywall to replace the 70s paneling that has lined the walls since the house was built, and then painting. After that, he is going to embark on installing wood floors. To say it’s a lot of work is to put it lightly. Trust me when I say that Chip Gaines makes it look a lot easier than it actually is……

Do Not Tuch
Amidst all of the demolition, Mylee had built a variety of items out of Legos. When I went to clean up after she had left, I found her legos on top of this note….

Trust me. I didn’t tuch.

T-Rex
I’m pretty sure it’s official. I take the worst selfies in the entire universe. And this selfie, I’m afraid to say, is particularly bad. I took it during our trip yesterday to Rocky Mountain National Park. Bec thinks it’s just because we have short arms. That may be so, but from the looks of this photo, I have the arms of a Tyrannosaurus Rex…..

My goal, by the way, was to get a photo of us with the mountain in the background. Selfie fail.

So the Mountain Came to Mohammed
So, what the heck! I just took a photo of the mountain, which is very beautiful. And much more beautiful than it looks with our mugs in front of it….

Ciao!

Day at the Zoo

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As I write this post, it’s 9 o’clock at night, and I’ve been up since 5. Nothing is wrong; that’s just how I roll. But I’m telling you this because the truth of the matter is that I’m tired. Plain and simple. Why? Because I spent a day in the sun with the lions and zebras and gorillas and elephants at the Denver Zoo.

So instead of writing a lengthy blog where I spell out the pros and cons of zoos, I will just tell you that the day featured awesome weather, and a trip to the zoo with my sister Bec, and Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole was nearly perfect.

Thinking we would only be there for a couple of hours, the reality was that we were there until late in the afternoon. We meandered our way through the sizable zoo, stopping for a lunch of sandwiches that I’d brought from home. We took a carousel ride…..

We watched a large cape buffalo gleefully roll around in a mud puddle that he kept making even larger using his large horns. We observed the zookeepers feeding a 47-year-old male elephant named Groucho a snack of oranges, corn on the cob, and lettuce, tossing it in the water so that he got some aquatic exercise along with his snack. We (at least three of us) ate Dippin’ Dots, a frozen confection that I have yet to quite understand the draw….

Mylee made a game of finding the hidden animals around the zoo….

After our zoo experience, we had dinner and playtime at Dave and Jll’s with the cousins — at least the ones who aren’t camping with Aunt Julie (Alastair) or on a mission trip with her church youth group (Addie)…..

Following a dinner of steak, salad, veggies, and a couple of desserts, the kids went home with Court, and Bec, Bill, and I fell into our respective beds like a trio of old folks.

Fun day.

Straining for Religious Freedom

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The other day, I was driving home from having breakfast with Court, when my cell phone rang. It was my sister Bec calling to just say hello – or so I thought. She, in fact, had something astounding to tell me.

As background, recall that Bec lived 30 or so years of her life in northern Virginia in a suburb just outside of Washington D.C. When you live in our nation’s capital, your local news is the national news. She was used to hearing her local newscasters talk about the national deficit or what the president had signed into law that day. So, she is adjusting to Local News:  Arizona Style, where you are liable to hear stories about exorcisms, cats stuck on top of saguaro cacti, or rattlesnake activities.

But the morning news had offered a news story so bizarre that it resulted in her telephoning me to do a reality check. You know, just an opportunity to make sure that I too thought this particular news story was, well, odd. I did.

It seems a man in Arizona was threatening a lawsuit because the Arizona Department of Transportation wouldn’t allow him to wear a spaghetti strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo. The questionable headgear is apparently an essential element of his religion. He is a Pastafarian, a religious sect that calls itself the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He believes he is being discriminated against based on his religion.

Heck, his religion is probably no stranger than those that encourage the handling of poisonous snakes. The reality is, more than likely, they (the Pastafarians, that is) likely have their tongues firmly placed in their cheeks when they talk about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Still, it begs the bigger question: No matter your beliefs, who wants to wear a spaghetti strainer on your head? It’s simply not a good look on anybody, perhaps me least of all…..

It would, perhaps, come in handy in some situations. Like if you are cooking a spaghetti and meatball dinner for your family. I always have to scrounge around in my bottom cupboard looking for my spaghetti strainer. If I was a Pastafarian, I wouldn’t have to scrounge. I would just reach up and, voila! And the strainers these days come in all sorts of bright colors, so you could change up with your outfit for the day…..

If the rules aren’t too strict, you might even choose one with a perky-looking handle on the side……

 

This particular man chose a strainer that has a handle under the chin, thereby lessening the chance that he would lose it in one of Arizona’s famous haboobs.

I’m sure that the Pastafarians are trying to make a point that is important, at least to them. However, whatever that point is might be beside the point for me. Because the story made Bec and I laugh to the point of tears, and that’s always a good thing.

And, by the way, do you suppose there is a religion that would require the wearing of a dead animal skin on one’s head? If so, I have it covered….

All in the Family

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In the Catholic community of Columbus, Nebraska, (and elsewhere of course), large families were not unusual when I was growing up. Actually, large families – whether Catholic or not – were not terribly unusual in the 1950s. It probably had something to do with the effects of having lived through World War II and seeing all of that death. Making new life probably sounded pretty good.

I had friends who had families ranging from five or six kids all the way up to 11. Eleven kids. Imagine. I’m pretty sure I’d forget their names.

I come from a family of four kids, and so did my dad. Bill also has three siblings. Compared to some of my friends, that was a smallish family. But when I had Court, four kids was nearly unthinkable and two was the conventional number. At some point, however, three and four kids has apparently became the new two. I say this because we have two children with four kids, a niece with three kids, and a nephew with four kids. I’m still sure I’d forget their names. Of course, I forget everyone’s name these days.

I have no idea as to why we had four kids in our family. I don’t know if that was my mom and dad’s ideal number or just the number God gave them. I don’t know if we were planned or unplanned. Frankly, I don’t care. What I do know, however, is that my mom was the youngest of 14 kids.

Imagine that. Fourteen.

It’s true the eldest in her family was born and died on the same day, but still….14 kids.

Here are the years they were born: 1904, 1905, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1924, and 1926. Do you know what that means? It means that my grandmother was pregnant and/or nursing for 22 years.

From things my mother said as I was growing up, it appears she was not close to her mother. For one thing, Mom was a very young woman when my grandmother died. What’s more, I think Grandmother was sick with heart problems for much of the time after my mom was born in 1926, making her perhaps physically, but certainly emotionally, unavailable.

She was, however, close to her siblings. Her eldest sibling – named Clare —  and her next eldest sibling – named Vickie – sort of took over the role of mother to my own mother. Clare was 21 years old when Mom was born, and married to boot. Vickie was 20ish, and she married a year or so later. So, the age difference accounted for the fact that Mom had nieces and nephews that were her age or older. More like siblings than nieces or nephews.

(L-R) Ann, Vickie, Clare, and my mother

I’m taking you on a walk down Memory Lane in which most of you are wholly uninterested. But this dynamic of being the youngest of 14 kids has always fascinated me. There is always a lot of research done about family placement, but I would guess family placement theories go out the window when you have 14 kids.

Youngest kids are supposed to be highly social (Mom was quite shy and solitary), confident (she was afraid of many things), and adept at getting others to do things for them (only us kids, who wouldn’t even consider saying no to her requests). They are also supposed to be spoiled and risk-takers (no and hell no).

Despite Mom’s age difference with about half of her siblings, I have always found it remarkable (and awesome) that she made it a point of being close to every one of them. And making sure that we all knew and loved our aunts and uncles on both sides of the family.

These photos were taken at my sister Bec’s wedding in 1971. While looking at old photos I came across as I was cleaning my bedroom, I came across these, which is why you are reading this blog post today…..

(L-R) Leonard, Mom, Ann, Ted, and Elmer

While four kids might be the new two (and believe me, I’m making that one up; I didn’t go out last night and get my sociology degree), families of 14, while perhaps not unheard of, are certainly rare. In fact, in Italy, people are having so few kids that numbers of people are alarmingly decreasing.

You’d have to buy a bigger car…

This post linked to Grand Social.

Saturday Smile: To Be Continued

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When I moved from St. Bonaventure Elementary to Scotus Central Catholic Junior High, and then on to Scotus Central Catholic High School, there was no continuation ceremony. I just cleaned out my desk, said goodbye to my school friends, waved adios to my teacher (who waved back and told me not to let the door hit me in the butt on the way out), and left for the summer. Apparently that’s not the way things roll anymore, at least not in Denver, as evidenced by the fact that we attended not one, but two, continuation ceremonies on Thursday.

Dagny is finished with elementary school and moving on to middle school…..

…..and Addie completed eighth grade and is continuing on to (say it ain’t so) high school…..

Addie and Maggie Faith, along with their (count ’em) three grandmothers.

Addie was recognized for being an honor roll (with distinction) member. Good girl. She’s smart as well as pretty…..

And this is what she looked like the day after the continuation…..

By the way, the reason Papa isn’t in the grandparents’ photo is that he had to miss Addie’s ceremony to take Alastair to the airport where he will spend a week with his Aunt Julie camping at Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

My grandkids never fail to make me smile.

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

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Play Ball
Tuesday evening, Bill and I watched Alastair play in his final baseball game of the spring season. His team — the Dodgers — sufficiently annihilated their opponent. Not that I was keeping score. We were able to see him do a nice job of playing catcher for a couple of innings, and then third base. We saw him at bat twice, and both times he was walked. A walk is as good as a hit, or so they say. And one of his walks did actually end with him scoring a run, but he was thrown out at home the second time. It was a nice night, and we were glad to get a chance to see him play, green shoes and all….

Edelweiss, Edelweiss, Every Morning You Greet Me
The above-mentioned song from Sound of Music is one of my favorites from that movie. In fact, I speak the truth when I tell you that I can’t hear it without tearing up. The reason? It’s the song I sang to every one of my grandkids when they were little and I was trying to rock them to sleep. I don’t know what I sang to Court when he was a baby, but I do know, whatever it was, it didn’t work. My grandmother once told me that the reason edelweiss flowers are so special in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland is because they only grow up in the mountains, so if your boyfriend brought you a bouquet of edelweiss, you knew you were something special because he climbed a mountain to get them. I wonder if my grandpa ever gave them to my grandma. Kids, ask your parents and grandparents questions NOW. Though I can see the mountains from my front yard, I don’t live in them, so no edelweiss in my garden. However, I think my columbines are very pretty this year. Columbines are Colorado’s state flower…..

Colorado’s state tree is the blue spruce, and there is one that was the size of a Christmas tree when we moved into the house 25 years ago that now towers over our back yard. The state dinosaur, by the way, is the stegosaurus, and there is not a single one of those anywhere in our yard.

What Time is It?
Time to get a new watch, I’m afraid. My watch is probably six or seven years old. Maybe older. It’s an inexpensive Timex. Nevertheless, I love that watch. It’s comfortable and for an inexpensive watch, it keeps really reliable time. And when we are moving from one time zone to another, I watch Bill work with his fancy dancy watch to get it to the right time via technology, while in the meantime, I just turn the little knob to the correct time. Yesterday, I was spending an enjoyable morning paying bills (do you recognize sarcasm?) and I glanced at my watch. It said 8:45. I was kind of surprised, because it seemed later than that. But, I said to myself, when you get up at 5:30 a.m., it’s not surprising that it would seem later than it actually is. So I went back to paying bills. A short time later, I heard Bill holler up to me, “Kris, I’m leaving for lunch. See you later.” Surprised, I glanced at my watch to see what time it was. As you might have guessed, it was 8:45. Ooooo boy. I had plans to meet a friend for lunch at 11:30. I looked at my cell phone to find the correct time, and was relieved that it was only 11 o’clock. Happily, I was dressed and mostly ready to go, but plans to ride my scooter went out the window. The always-helpful Bill pulled the battery out of the watch later, and I purchased a new battery, which he installed. No dice. The minute hand just stayed put. Bill said, “Well, the good news is that even a broken watch is right twice a day.” Hardy har har. Looks like I’ll have to dig deep in my pocket and fork over $36 for a new watch exactly like this one…..

It’s All Good
Last night my niece Maggie sent me this photo of her kids Austin and Lilly Marie settling in to watch a movie with a popsicle and the blankets I made them. Life is good…….

Ciao!

The Red Menace

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Many years ago, when Bill’s sons were still in high school, Bill decided (in that optimistic way characteristic of most parents) that he was going to buy a little sports car in need of repair, and that he and his boys would work on it together. You know, a project. Kind of like Andy and Opie Taylor working on a car when the good sheriff wasn’t bringing down bad guys in a totally nonviolent way, a big goofy smile on his face, and a guitar in his hand with which he would sing You Are My Sunshine.

Bill began looking at car ads, and one in particular stuck out. It was for an old Ferrari – 1959 250 GTPF – in Auto Trader magazine. He bought the car in Longmont for a surprisingly good price, drove it home to Denver, and set about tinkering on the car in order to get it running like a top.

Ferrari 250 GT PF II Coupe

The thing is, the boys weren’t particularly interested in helping work on the car. They were interested in girls and music and hanging out with their friends. Of course, they were totally interested in getting the car running so that they could drive it to prom, but not much in getting their own hands dirty.

Eventually, Bill sold that old Ferrari, and bought a newer old Ferrari – a 1982 308 GTSi…..

What a pretty car! Oh, and the red one’s not bad either….

He actually drove that car around a bit for a while. In fact, at one point he drove it to Phoenix and let our nephew Christopher use it at his wedding.

Eventually, however, the car started having problems, and eventually stopped running. Bill parked it in our two-car garage, something I told him was fine with me as long as the other car in the two-car garage was my yellow bug. So, for over two decades, he has parked his own car (the one he actually drives on a daily basis) out in the driveway, and never once complained.

And the red sports car has been a very expensive placeholder for that regular car for all of this time. Until last summer – the Summer of the Ferrari – when Bill tinkered and tweaked and took out car parts and replaced them with new car parts until he actually got it running.

This is quite a long story when the point of my story is simple: I don’t get it. I don’t understand the fuss. I can’t figure out why he can just stand and look at his red car in a way that I’m pretty sure he never looked at me.

And it’s not just him. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s anyone with testosterone in their DNA. The other day, for example, the garage door was open. A perfect stranger out walking his dog spotted the car, and he and Bill spent a half hour or so talking about cars. Like conversations at a book club.

I recently mentioned in one of my Thursday Thoughts that Bill was getting his car ready to drive. (I actually should say his Ferrari ready to drive, but I’m too embarrassed to use that word). I got a comment from an old high school friend with whom I am connected on Facebook. He’d read that blog post and actually commented on the post, saying in jest that he would be happy to take that old piece of junk off of Bill’s hands for 500 bucks. I responded that Bill wants to drive it to Nebraska in August when our class will be celebrating our 45th high school class reunion, but that I was horrified at the thought. I think my friend Larry was horrified that I was horrified. Nevertheless, the car will not be taking a trip to Nebraska if I have anything to say about it.

Perhaps it’s not just testosterone, however, because the other day he gave Addie a ride to the park where she was going to meet up with friends, and, well, she was mighty happy. And last summer, Mylee couldn’t stop beaming as she got a chance to sit in Papa’s red car…..

Neither Addie nor Mylee – or any of my other grands for that matter – look that happy when they are in the yellow bug. Go figure.

This post linked to Grammy’s Grid Link Party.

Memorial Day Memories

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Well, yesterday was Memorial Day. Kick off to summer. However, tick tock, tick tock. Countdown to Fourth of July, when summer’s half over. That is how my mother would have looked at the day. I come by my Glass-Half-Empty mentality honestly. To be fair, she wasn’t negative about all things. But when it came to summertime, she simply thought it went by too quickly.

Any more, I think all seasons of the year go by quickly. Time flies even faster as you get older.

Enjoy every day. And I have to tell you that we did, indeed, enjoy our Sunday celebration. The springtime weather has been pretty unpredictable so far, at least in my Glass-Half-Empty mind. A lot of rain (which Glass-Half-Full people would say is good for the crops), and temperatures chilly enough that my heat was still going on in the morning. Yesterday I just turned it off, thereby taking away our thermostat’s option of turning on the heat. It’s almost June, for heaven’s sake. If our thermostat doesn’t like it, it can take it up with Google Home.

But Sunday’s weather was simply beautiful. The sky was blue all day long with not a raincloud in sight. The temperature was a perfect 70 or so. Jen arrived on our doorstep around 10 and she and I made our quick trip to Fort Logan National Cemetery and were home before noon. A short time later, Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole showed up with big smiles on their faces, and their daddy had an even bigger smile because he got a few hours of time to himself. The kids fully intended to spend the day with Play Doh. Because, as you recall, they do love Play Doh…..

Instead, I made lunch for them and they ate it outside, and that’s pretty much where they spent the rest of the day – outside. They caught roly poly bugs, they built a village in the sandbox, they spruced up Papa’s horseshoe pit (if you call adding sand to the pit sprucing it up, and by the way, don’t tell Papa).

And they ate watermelon. And then ate more watermelon. At one point, Jen said she doesn’t think she’s ever seen a single human eat as much watermelon as each of them ate. Kaiya informed me well into her fourth or fifth slice that the first bite of the point of the watermelon slice is the best, because it’s sweeter than the rest. I’m pretty sure there is no science to back that up, but she would not be dissuaded.

While my ribs were roasting in the oven, I made ceviche. I followed my nephew Erik’s recipe in which I cut up tilapia into cubes, added red onion, cilantro, jalapeno, and salt and pepper. I then squeezed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 or 15 limes over the whole dish…..

…..and let it cook….

It was delicious….

When growing up, Mom always made baked beans for any summer gathering. At some point, she gave the assignment to me. In hindsight, I recognize that she was very smart, because she always told me (probably making sure to whisper so that no one else heard) that I made the best baked beans and that’s why she had me make them. Every single time. Given that her beans recipe consisted of a couple of cans of pork and beans, some ketchup, some mustard, some brown sugar, and some worcestershire sauce, I’m pretty sure a 5-year-old could have made them. Nevertheless, I proudly made the beans then, and I proudly made them Sunday to accompany my ribs. No recipe needed.

And, by the way, Kaiya likes a little bit of pie with her whipped cream….

Late in the day, Allen and Emma stopped by to say hi, and to bring a dozen Voodoo Donuts….

At the end of the day, before the kids headed home, we put them in the bathtub to clean up before they put on their pajamas. As you can see, they were just a bit dirty…..

Just a sign of a really good day.