Category Archives: Whimsies

At the Movies

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I’ve been feeling neglected the past few days because Bill has seemingly spent every free minute as of late with the other lady in his life – his pretty red sports car. He has actually worked at getting her running for the entire summer. He’s making progress, because I hear the engine running on occasion, but nevertheless, more packages with parts arrive from Amazon almost daily and every night he has grease under his fingernails. The postman has handed Bill so many packages containing parts that I’m pretty sure he thinks he is responsible in part for any progress Bill is making on the car.

Anyone who knows me would attest to the fact that I have been simply an angel of patience during this entire project. Oh, oops. That would be someone else because I have complained endlessly to the poor man. The good news is that my nagging goes in one of Bill’s ears and comes out the other. It’s why we have survived nearly 25 years of marriage – his ability to ignore my nags.

But he must have felt some degree of guilt, because he announced Saturday night that he had just purchased two tickets to go to a movie the next day that we have both been wanting to see – Sully, starring the endlessly talented Tom Hanks. I swear, Tom Hanks could play a tree and win an Academy Award.

The theater to which we went is a bit of a drive from our house, but totally worth it because RECLINING SEATS. The first time I saw a movie at this theater, I saw Boxtrolls with Addie, Alastair, Dagny, and Maggie Faith. We bought our tickets. We purchased our popcorn and candy and beverages. We moved into the theater and sat down. Suddenly I looked over to my right and noticed that Dagny was reclining.

Wait, what?

“How did you do that?” I asked her. She very patiently got up and before you could say Lazyboy, I was also reclining. I was so excited that I think she rolled her eyes but it was dark and I can’t say for sure.

Anyway, I have been reclining ever since, because RECLINING SEATS. It’s the only way to see a movie.

columtIt reminded me – as it will remind most baby boomers – about how different it was to watch movies in the days of our youth. Our one and only theater – cleverly called the Columbus Theater – got a new movie every week, and I saw every one that the Catholic Legion of Decency would allow me to see. If the Legion of Decency said no, then there was no point in even asking. There was one ticket booth, one concession counter selling popcorn, a few kinds of candy, and Coca Cola. No nachos, no hot dogs, no Sour Patch Kids, no San Pellegrino.  Popcorn, a Coke, and Milk Duds. Take it or leave it.

When you entered the theater, you were looking at a stage covered with heavy red velvet curtains that opened when the movie began. The seats were also covered in velvet. There was a balcony, probably for the people less interested in the movie and more interested in something else that the Legion of Decency would also disapprove of.

It’s true that they only showed a single movie, but it’s also true that the movie ran over and over. This dynamic is the background for one of my favorite Dad stories. As he tells it, when he was a young boy, he and his buddies would sneak into the theater by walking backwards into the exit as people were leaving. I suspect the theater owner, who knew the boys because his business was right across the street from my grandfather’s bakery, knew full well what they were doing. Just sayin….

As for the movie Sully, Oh. My. God. It was so good. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was reclining, I would have been on the edge of my seat the entire time. So worth seeing!

Even though I may never fly again because BIRDS. But I will go to the movies.

And by the way, as I searched for a photo of my old theater, I saw for the very first time (I swear this is true) how spectacular the artwork on the building is. I have never noticed this before….

colum2

Seriously. Pretty nice, even if it didn’t have reclining seats. It’s no longer a theater, by the way, but the city fathers and mothers seem unable to tear it down. I can’t blame them.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Saturday Smile: Gingivitis

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cam-newtonLike him or hate him, you must admit Carolina Panthers Quarterback Cam Newton is extremely handsome. And you must also admit that he has a million dollar smile, doesn’t he? Well, a smile like his doesn’t come easy. To have such a gorgeous grin, one must take care of one’s teeth on a regular basis. And so, to the delight of most dentists everywhere, Cam was spotted doing this on the sidelines of the football game against the Broncos on Thursday night….

cam-newton-flossing

While I admit I wasn’t looking, I didn’t see the outline of a floss container in the back of his pants. It must have come from his equipment assistant.

And he apparently hasn’t heard about the recent report indicating flossing was not necessary.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to floss.

Thursday Thoughts

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Beat Bugs
635906197665478838-beat-bugsSo, one day two weeks ago or so, Court dropped the kids off to stay with me for a bit. “Hey Mylee,” he said. “Tell Nana what your favorite song is now.” Without even looking up from her legos, Mylee told me her favorite song is Help. Now, that caught me off guard. Not because I don’t like that song; in fact, it’s one of my favorite Beatles songs. But I couldn’t imagine how Mylee had become acquainted with it. Well, it turns out there is a show, now appearing on Netflix, called Beat Bugs. The program, starring cheerful computer animated insects, features songs written by the Beatles, with appropriate storylines surrounding the songs. For example, the episode featuring Help is about one of the characters needing his friends’ help to get out of a jam jar in which he fell. When the bugs can’t figure out where to play, they sing Come Together. You get the point. Mylee is constantly surprised that I know the words to every song. I’m equally surprised to hear her singing along with Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. I can’t wait for season 2. It’s a great way to get the theme from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse out of my mind, even if the bugs are annoying.

Can You Hear Me Now?
In a not-very-shocking turn of events, 2-year-old Cole has his own iPhone. Oh, it’s just a cast-off phone from one of his parents, for which he mostly watches You Tube Kids. Still, he knows how to use it like a pro. When I was getting the kids’ stuff ready to take to my house last week for the four-day sleepover, I placed his phone, along with the girls’ iPads, into their suitcase. A bit later, when I was getting ready to close the suitcase, I realized the phone was nowhere to be found. Knowing that four days without his iPhone would be, well, troublesome, I began looking frantically for the phone. Under furniture, in the garbage can, in the bedsheets. It was nowhere to be found. Finally, when I was seriously about to give up, I opened up one of Cole’s dresser drawers and there it was……

phone-amongst-cole-shoes

I placed the phone in the suitcase and just as I was getting ready to close it, my cell phone rang. I spoke to my sister for maybe 10 minutes, and then closed up the suitcase and Cole and I headed over to my house, making a quick stop at Walmart on the way. When I unpacked the suitcase, the phone was nowhere to be found. I began to second-guess myself. Did I really put it in the suitcase or did I lay it on the counter at their house? I couldn’t remember. So I drove back to their house to see if it was on the counter. Nope. I began searching once again. I even made a trip to Walmart to see if somehow I had tossed the phone into my front seat and it had fallen out in the Walmart parking lot. Nope. In desperation, I returned to Cole’s house to take one more look. I was about to give up when a thought crept into my mind. I opened the same drawer in which he had put the phone earlier that day and, yes, you guessed it….there it was. It’s apparently where he thinks it belongs.

Back to School
And because I simply can’t resist, here are my grands on their respective first days of the 2016/2017 school year….

first-day-of-school-2016

Slimy
Finally, I mentioned that we made homemade slime this past weekend, and a few people asked for the recipe. Here it is…

DIY Slime
slimeIn a bowl, mix a 4-oz. bottle of Elmer’s glue with a half a cup of water. Add food coloring if you want colored slime (and who doesn’t?). In a second bowl, mix one teaspoon Borax with 1 c. water until the Borax dissolves. Add the glue mixture to the Borax mixture and stir together. When the slime begins to take shape, use your hands to knead it until it loses its stickiness. Pour out any excess water. Have fun!

Ciao.

Treading Water

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Because my swimming skills rival those of Michael Phelps, I will use a swimming analogy: for the past four days, I have been treading water.

Since last winter I have had it on my calendar. Watch Court’s kids for four days while he and Alyx are in San Diego at her friend’s wedding. For months, I would swallow the foreboding feeling that arose as I anticipated the event. As the date neared, I fought heart palpitations and nausea. Two-year-olds are scawwy.

Don’t get me wrong; you KNOW I love my grands. And I spend as much time as I can with them, and gladly so. But at the end of a busy day, they go back – filled full of sugar and content with a life with few boundaries – to their parents, who then have to deal with the after effects. It’s our revenge for the nights we laid awake listening for their car and all of the bad report cards.

But this time there would be no handing over of children, at least not for a number of days. Bill and I would be IT. Those three children would be our charges for FOUR SOLID DAYS.

We lived, and so did they, but I’m not too proud to say that I am very tired.

It’s rather a blur, I will admit. I had thought we would be doing all sorts of activities and taking field trips that would rival those of a Montessori school. I envisioned healthy snacks and cooking adventures. What I got was four days of keeping them alive, reasonably well-fed, a not-completely-horrifying bedtime hour, lots and lots and lots of laughter, and a few tears.

In the midst of all of the unanticipated chaos, I vaguely recall making several trips to Panda Express for orange chicken and McDonald’s for hotcakes (both for the same meal). At some point Cole fell off one of the kitchen chairs, hitting the back of his head on the ceramic tile below. I immediately began reaching into the depths of my brain to recall Court’s health insurance information. By the time I picked him up to comfort him, however, the tears had nearly stopped. He, my friends, is the toughest kid known to man. Probably comes from being the littlest in the family. He didn’t even have a bump.

Speaking of Cole, by Sunday afternoon, he was calling me Mommy. I guess he figured he could have done worse. Jen came Sunday for the day and spent the night. When I became Mommy she was promoted to Nana. Pecking order in the mind of a 2-year-old.

Bill, who like me, appreciates the predictable order of his days, showed great patience and restraint. He spent quite a bit of time in his office with the door closed. And he hardly grimaced at all when I told him Saturday night that the toilet was backing up. Kaiya and Mylee were a big help as they ran around holding their noses and squealing in horror. Too much toilet paper and it was fairly easily fixed. Says the woman who didn’t have to touch the plunger.  I had a talk with the girls about just how much toilet paper is actually necessary in this first world country.

At various points of the past few days, the cousins stopped by as well. And this was much to Kaiya’s and Mylee’s delight. Cole finds the attention offputting. I’m just a normal boy, he seems to be saying to Dagny and Addie, both who want to smother him with love. Addie, sensing the kids needed something interesting to keep them busy (perhaps seeing the fear in my eyes), at one point set up a little outdoor classroom in which she demonstrated making a volcano using some of my kitchen supplies. I recall corn starch, vinegar and water leaving my pantry. The kids loved it…..

addie-and-zierks-volcano

They also loved making slime. A simple activity involving nothing more than Elmer’s glue, Borax, food coloring, and water…..

making-slime

Then there was the fashion show, featuring an enthusiastic Kaiya, Dagny, and Maggie Faith, and a less-than-enthusiastic Mylee, donning various scarves and other paraphernalia they gathered from my dress-up box. At some point, one of them happened upon my make-up bag and let me just tell you there was lipstick involved. And lots and lots of fragrance. Much fragrance. Fragrance that at some point becomes not fragrant.

But Monday night, I tucked Kaiya and Mylee and Cole into their own beds in their own bedrooms in their own house, kissed them goodnight and reminded them that when they woke up the next morning, Mommy and Daddy would be there.

I would do it again, my friends. Just let me catch up on my sleep and get the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song out of my head. Oh, and finish cleaning up the slime that I still find in unexpected corners.

Reluctant Traveler: Guest Blog: The Long Way Home

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By Rebecca Borman

bec-closeup-twoWhen I was planning my annual Colorado summer trip, I decided that I would like to include a couple of National Parks I had never visited.  To that end, I made hotel reservations for Alamosa, near the Great Sand Dunes NP, and Far View Lodge, in Mesa Verde NP.  So, on a Wednesday morning, I left Kris and Bill’s Denver home for the Great Sand Dunes, and the adventure began.

sandhills 1

I chose not to take the fastest route from Denver to the Park; if the purpose of the trip was to see interesting geography, I-25 was not my first choice.  So, my route wound me through the Rockies, including a drive over Poncha Pass.  Beautiful!   Once I got into the San Luis Valley, I saw some interesting, and unexpected, sights.  At one point I saw a sign for Colorado Gator Park.  I did not stop, as I’ve seen gators before, but I will admit that it was a surprise to learn that Colorado had such a park.  It just seems random to me.  Not as surprising, but very cool, was passing by three cowboys who were clearly driving a herd of cattle somewhere.

Before long, I found myself on the road to Great Sand Dunes NP and eventually had to stop and take a picture.  There’s something odd about seeing enormous sand dunes against the Rocky Mountains.  I stopped in the Visitor Center to learn a little about how this phenomenon of nature happened.  The combination of very dry climate, strong winds, and the mountains as a backstop created this amazing place.  One can spend a day there, but I only had a few hours.  So, I eschewed renting a sled to coast down the dunes, mostly because you can’t sled down until you climb up, and I literally wasn’t going there.  But, I did walk up the nearest and smallest dune, just to get a feel for what it’s like to walk uphill on sand.  It’s hard work!  I people-watched for a bit, especially the kids, who were having all kinds of fun in the sand.  Then, I emptied the sand from my shoes, got back into my car, and headed toward my hotel in Alamosa.

sandhills 2

By the time I checked in, it was time for dinner.  Thanks to TripAdvisor, I discovered Calvillo’s Mexican Restaurant, featuring their famous buffet.  Calvillo’s is low-key and very casual.  The food was good, although I admit that I wasn’t always sure what I was eating.  But, it was a bargain and a fun experience.  I try always to eat in local restaurants when I’m traveling and Calvillo’s is an Alamosa institution.

The next morning I drove to Mesa Verde NP, a drive of about four hours.  Lots of road work slowed me down a bit, but I made it to the Park in the early afternoon and started at the Visitor Center there.  I got some advice about what to see, and I purchased tickets to three ranger-guided tours on the following day.  I wasn’t sure I’d take all three, which would have been a lot for just one day.  But, at just $4 a pop, it seemed a good idea to keep all my options open.

The drive into the Park was stunning, and I drove directly to one of the places I wanted to visit, Spruce Tree House and the museum.  While you can’t walk around Spruce Tree House right now, it is close enough to see very well, especially with binoculars.  What an amazing sight!  Mesa Verde is a World Heritage Site, and no wonder.  Spruce Tree House was constructed between A.D. 1211 and 1278 by the ancestors of the Puebloan peoples of the Southwest, and it gets visitors from around the world.  I spent several hours there and in the museum, and then it was time to drive to my home for the next two nights, Far View Lodge, the only accommodations in the Park.

mesa verde

After I checked in and unloaded a few things from my car, I went to the Far View Lounge for a drink on the patio.  I enjoyed the view and eavesdropped on conversations about my fellow visitors’ experiences of the day.  A few stories were a little scary…climbing steep ladders on the side of a cliff, narrow tunnels to get into one of the rooms, strenuous walks along narrow ledges.  But, everyone seemed to be enjoying their adventures.  After a nice dinner, I returned to my room and had an early night, because I had many plans for the next day.

Unfortunately, none of those plans came to fruition, because I had serious car trouble, not a good thing anywhere, but especially not in such a remote place.  I spent the next three days just getting home.  So, another visit to Mesa Verde is a must, and since it’s only a day’s drive from my home, it’s doable.

Despite the way this side-trip ended, I’m happy I made the choice to spend some time in southwest Colorado.  And, I can’t say enough about the beauty of our national parks.  Aren’t we lucky to have these very special places protected?  Happy 100th anniversary to our National Park Service!

And, Mesa Verde, I will return.

Saturday Smile: Helping Papa

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Most every fall about this time, Bill undertakes the arduous task of picking up the apples from the three trees we have in our backyard and throwing them away (the ones that drop are wormy and mealy). If he doesn’t, they begin to rot and make our backyard smell like a cider recipe gone bad.

Yesterday he rolled the big garbage can over near the trees, picked up his rake, and began sweeping up the apples. Cole, who along with his sisters, is visiting for a few days, knows fun when he sees it and ran at a 2-year-old’s pace over to help. Cole seemed a bit more interested in putting fallen leaves into the can than apples, but what the heck. He was enjoying fall weather and time with Papa.

As for Bill, because you can’t ever take the boy out of the man, he was flinging the apples into the can with the rake — or at least attempting to — imagining himself to be a great hockey player.

As for me, I enjoyed watching the two boys all the time hoping Bill doesn’t quit his day job to try out for the hockey team….

cole papa (2)

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: Circling the Sun

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imgresI loved author Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, and so it was with great glee that I dug into Circling the Sun. While it took a while to capture my interest, once it did, I couldn’t put it down.

I had never watched the movie Out of Africa, which is the story of Karen von Blixen-Finecke (portrayed by Meryl Streep in her early years) , the time she spent living in Kenya, and her relationship with Denys Finch Hatton, hunkily played by a youthful Robert Redford. In that movie, there is a brief plot element dealing with Finch Hatton’s unfaithfulness to Blixen with a young woman, called Felicity in the movie.

The novel Circling the Sun is the story of that young woman, who in real life was Beryl Markham, a fascinating woman in and of herself.

Markham moves with her family from England to Kenya, where her father purchases a horse farm. It isn’t long before her mother and her brother bail, moving back to London and leaving Beryl with her much-loved father.

Markham grows up wild and independent, strong and willful, and spends the rest of her life living that way. In this novel, Markham’s relationship with Denys Finch Hatton is much more prominent and impactful on her life. Since it’s a novel, I’m not sure where the truth lies.

Circling the Sun, nevertheless, is an engaging novel about a woman who was way ahead of her time (just before, during, and after WWI. Her mother’s desertion had a deep impact on her life and her ability to trust people who love her.

McLain opens the novel with Markham’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, she being the first woman to make that flight. At the end of the first chapter, Markham is spiraling down towards an apparent crash. The rest of the novel leads the reader toward that moment.

Quite frankly, if all I knew about Markham was what I read on Wikipedia, I wouldn’t like her at all. McLain’s portrayal is much more sympathetic. I wonder what I would think if I had actually known her.

I highly recommend this book.

Here is link to the book.

unnamed

Thursday Thoughts

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Parlez vous Francais?
Bill is a faithful reader of my blog, and occasionally (and helpfully) points out grammatical or spelling mistakes, for which I’m always grateful. While reading yesterday’s post about our experiences in Montreal last week, he pointed out that I had perhaps misspelled the name of the beautiful and colorful cookies we got at the patisserie. I called them macarons. He suggested it should be macaroons. Being dedicated to good spelling and grammar, or at least efforts towards that end, I am confirming that I spelled the word correctly. Macarons are meringue-like cookies made basically from sugar, almonds, and egg whites. They are generally brightly colored and have a filling. Macaroons, on the other hand, are more cake-like and almost always include coconut. They originated in Italy. What I purchased were macarons so light that they almost floated by themselves. Yum.

macaroon tree

Michelangelo
You will recall that my grandson Alastair won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair in the butter carving competition recently. I was somewhat puzzled as to how on earth he came to compete, and received my answer yesterday. It seems all of the four siblings put their names in the box from which the competitors were drawn, and he was one of the lucky ones chosen. There were several competitions, and he was in the third round. He therefore, being Alastair, had plenty of time to think about it and make plans in case he was one of the lucky draws. His mother told me it was quite funny to watch. He competed against three girls about his age, whose unfortunate artistic style of choice was to approach the butter like Play Doh and smush it into shape. This, of course, resulted in melted butter from which very little design could emerge. Alastair, on the other hand, looked, according to his mother, like Michelangelo, carefully sculpting one thing, backing up to see his work, approaching it from the other side. He is quoted as saying, “I saw the car in the butter and carved until I set it free.” Oh wait. That might have been Michelangelo who said something like that…..

image

Bad Things Happen in Threes
The day before we left on our Vermont vacation, we noticed that the roof of our covered front porch has a great crack and appears to be buckling. Bill also noticed that one of the sprinkler heads in our back yard was leaking. In trying to fix the sprinkler head, he accidentally cut a line that allows us to have internet. It was not a good day. We turned off our water, and committed to handling the other two problems when we returned. And when I say we, I of course mean Bill. Since we returned on Sunday, he has fixed the cable wire, determined that the sprinkler system is working again, and placed a phone call to a roofing company to look at our porch. The roofing company, by the way, laughed at Bill’s request for urgency when it comes to getting someone out to look at it. “Because of the hail storm, roofers are busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest,” Bill said. I love my husband.

Waitin’ All Day For Sunday Night
I heard that they have written a new song for Carrie Underwood to sing for Sunday Night Football on NBC. I’m kind of sad because I find the old tune catchy, and it makes me happy. But I reckon I will learn to like the new tune. I haven’t heard it yet. I’m glad that Carrie Underwood is still the performer. As for me, I’m ready for some football, and mostly ready to be done with preseason.

Ciao!

A Taste of France

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Bill and I had planned to go to Montreal last year when we visited our family in Vermont, but weren’t able to do so because we were inept in the whole renewing-our-passports thing and they didn’t arrive in time. This time we happily held them in our grimy little fists to hand to the border guards as we passed from Vermont into Canada.

The most notable thing was that you could immediately tell that you were in a different country. And I’m not just talking about being greeted by the border guards, who didn’t seem terribly concerned about us. The landscape changes almost immediately from the woods of Vermont to farmlands of Quebec. I seriously would have thought I was in Nebraska except for the fact that the architecture was also quite unique.

Juliette & ChocolatKnowing us as well as they do, the first thing that Heather and Lauren did was to take us to a chocolate shop, featuring all manner of things chocolate. Bill and Joseph thought they had died and gone to heaven for sure. In fact, they both ordered the same thing – a chocolate lava cake with a side of, yes, chocolate.

And the second thing they did was take us to an outdoor market, probably the most beautiful market I have ever seen, even in Europe. While there were shops featuring seafood and meat and patisseries and boulangeries, it was the vegetable market that amazed me the most…..

vegetable market montreal

micah joseph nana market (2)

This photo is notable in large part because it’s about the only one taken this trip of Micah in which he doesn’t have his tongue out or is making some sort of face. He’s 4, donchaknow.

Being me, one of the things I most wanted to do while visiting Montreal was to experience local food. Lauren, who grew up in Vermont and has spent a fair amount of time in Montreal, told me that there were a few food things for which Montreal was known – mussels, smoked meat sandwiches, and poutine. Poutine? I had never heard of it.

So on Friday night we went to a restaurant appropriately called Poutineville, featuring all sorts of options for poutine. Poutine is basically a dish consisting of French fries covered in cheese, some sort of meat, and some sort of gravy. I had the house specialty, which was French fries smothered in a red wine gravy, cheese curds, and braised beef…..

poutine

We arose early the next morning and went to yet another market, where we quickly spotted a beautiful pastry shop. Lauren and I agreed to wait in line while the rest found a place to sit. The shop was extremely busy, and Lauren and I stood in line for probably 15 pastries montrealor 20 minutes before we realized we should have grabbed a number. Have you ever seen the movie Beetlejuice? You remember the scene where Beetlejuice grabs the number – something like 1,032,587 – and looks at the screen and sees they’re on number 6? We were Beetlejuice. Nevertheless, time passed quite quickly once we grabbed our number and in short order we all were eating croissants so fresh, warm and crumbly that it brought tears to my eyes. And, yes, also a second visit to the patisserie and another 20 minutes in line. I also bought some of the beautiful macarons for which the French are famous. They deserve their fame as they are light and delicious, as well as so very pretty…..

macaroon tree

Macarons

Our final Montreal food treat was a visit to a brasserie at which we got our mussels. Well, actually, Bill shockingly ordered a steak, but Heather and Lauren and I each ordered a different kind of mussel dish and shared. I’m not sure when I’ve ever tasted anything so very good. And also beautiful…..

Lauren Heather Kris mussels

Montreal musselsI will admit that perhaps the highlight of our brief trip to Montreal was what probably would rank among the top three tourist attractions – a city tour on an amphibian bus. Yes, my friends, we toured Montreal from the bus, which then drove into the St. Lawrence River from which we were awarded with another view of Montreal. Joseph, Micah, and Nana all had eyes the size of quarters as we drove into the water. It was a grand treat.

amphibian bus

And we had a wonderful visit of Montreal, without a doubt. I loved hearing the beautiful French language spoken by the people around me and experiencing the feeling of being in Paris, and yet, wasn’t. I am motivated to return, and to add Quebec City to my itinerary. In the meantime, I’ll get my fix by reading the Inspector Gamache books by Louise Penny.