Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? – Lucy Maude Montgomery from Anne of Green Gables
Category Archives: Whimsies
I Blinked My Eyes….
Man, didn’t 2015 just FLY by? While it’s not literally true, it sure seems like time goes by faster as I age. It was just January 2015 and now I’m looking 2016 square in the eyes!
One of the nice things about writing a blog is that, just like when I was 12 years old and kept a diary, I have a record of a lot of what was going on this past year. It was fun to look back and see what my family and I have been up to for the past 12 months….
January
The highlight in January was a surprise visit to Arizona from Court and his family. While they didn’t arrive on my doorstep without notice, they really did only give me a couple of days to anticipate what I expected would be — and turned out to be — a wonderful visit. Time with family, a visit to the Phoenix Zoo, a chance to show them the house in Arizona that we love so much. Read about our visit here.
February
Despite their visit, I was homesick for the grandkids; enough so as to warrant a quick trip home to get kisses (and, to be fair, check and make sure things were fine at the house). Our homecoming welcome is documented here.
March
On March 28, I gave my niece Jessie the opportunity to present her case as to why my blogs on Fridays should be devoted to pizzas rather than books. While she didn’t persuade me, her argument was amusing if not compelling. What do you think?
Bec and I also made a visit in March to a fascinating and wonderful Asian market called Lee Lee’s International Foods in west Mesa. Read about our experience here.
April
I experienced extremes in April, with a visit to the hospital for an obstructed small bowel mid-April, followed shortly thereafter by a trip to the happiest place on earth — Disneyland. Bill completed his weeks-long project of building an outdoor kitchen at our home in Arizona. Nanas Whimsies hit the benchmark of my 500th post.
May
We left on May 1 to head back to Denver for the summer and fall. We no sooner arrived and our youngest grandchild turned 1! We celebrated his day, and the next day I awoke with no voice. I had laryngitis that lasted a couple of days. Read about all of these activities here.
June
In June we had a wonderful visit from my brother David and his wife Sami. It had been a couple of years since they had the chance to come to Arizona, and this time they were by themselves — no kids or grandkids. We had a wonderful visit, including an exceptionally nice night at Bubba Gump’s Restaurant in downtown Denver. There was also a very funny incident that occurred during which Dagny and Maggie were horrified at their Papa’s cradle robbing…..
July
We had awesome visits in July. Early in the month, the daughter of one of my childhood friends spent a night with us. I hadn’t seen her for many years, and we enjoyed the visit immensely. Our daughter Heather and her family from Vermont visited a bit later in the month, and we enjoyed seeing our two Vermont boys, Joseph and Micah. Unfortunately, the month was tainted by another visit to the hospital.
August
Late in the month, school started for the grands and football was finally back. But the highlight of our month was a trip to Montpelier, Vermont, to visit our family. We enjoyed our small town experience very much. Bill also completed his summer project of the kids’ playhouse, and we had the chance to celebrate our stepmother Shirley’s 80th birthday with her.
September
Bec visited us in Colorado, and the three sisters took a trip to Estes Park where we listened to the elk bugle and spent such nice time together. It was a wonderful weekend. Jen celebrated her birthday midmonth and I cooked her a French dinner that we enjoyed together.
October
Much of October was spent moving furniture, as we received our delivery of Wilma’s beautiful living room furniture and the bedroom set that had been Bill’s as a child. The furniture came to us as a result of Wilma moving to smaller quarters. Bill celebrated his birthday with all of his Denver family. Late in October we headed to Arizona to open up the house.
November
Mid-November, we returned to Denver to celebrate the holidays with our family. Heather and Lauren and the boys drove all the way from Vermont to spend Thanksgiving with us. A week later they drove all the way home, stopping at the end to pick up Merlin the Dog.
December
We celebrated Christmas with our kids over a period of a couple of days just before leaving on Christmas day to fly back to Arizona, where we will spend the winter. We took time out of our busy month to celebrate my birthday.
Looking back, 2015 was an action-packed year, full of full, family, laughter, love, and joy!
Let it Be Resolved…..
Every year around this time I begin thinking about my resolutions for the new year. I always give serious thought to this process. Generally, however, I come up with the same things. I want to be more generous. I want to drink 8 glasses of water each day. I want to eat healthier. I want to exercise more regularly. Yada. Yada. Yada. I really could copy and paste my resolutions every year. By February, they have been long forgotten.
I was curious to see when people began making New Year’s resolutions, so I looked it up on Wikipedia (which has finally stopped asking me to donate money to them; I resolve next year to give them money). It seems resolutions were being made as far back as the Babylonians, who promised each year to pay their debts and return borrowed items. Still, apparently only 40 percent of Americans make resolutions. Of those 40 percent, only one person –Lucille Rose Dudovich of Pleasant Valley, Iowa, has ever actually kept her resolutions. She resolved to pay her debts and return borrowed items, which in her case were four overdue library books which carried a $2.75 fine.
This year, I was determined to be more original than I have been in the past. And so, I present to you my resoutions for 2016:
- Run the Burro Race in Leadville, Colorado, during which I will run 22 miles up and down Mosquito Pass pulling a donkey;
- Start keeping bees and making my own honey;
- Sew sequins onto every shirt I own;
- Ride my 50cc motor scooter to Sturgis for the bike rally in August;
- Start cooking exclusively on a wood stove;
- Crochet business suits for all of the men in my life;
- Finally get my black belt in karate (of course, I will have to start with the white belt and work my way up);
- Instead of the handshake of peace in church, begin chest bumping;
- Swim with the Great White Whales in southern Florida; first I will learn to swim;
- Go to Clown School to become a rodeo clown.
I will have a very busy 2016.
Ma’am, Did You Know the Earth isn’t Flat?
So, a funny thing happened in the midst of my Christmas shopping. I came face-to-face with the way I look to young people.
One evening, I went to our neighborhood electronics superstore, Microcenter. I went for the express purpose of finding a charging cable for my telephone that didn’t have a plug on the end; instead, it had one of those thingamajigs that plugs into a computer. It took some time to find since my cell phone is ancient in cell phone years – maybe three years old. Whaaaaaaat? With the help of a clerk, a boy of around 19 years old, I finally found one buried underneath the Betamax tapes. Baby boomers know what I’m talking about when I say Betamax tapes.
Anyhoo, I looked at the price and it was $7.99. Charging cable in hand, I went to the cashiers’ stations and waited my turn. The cashiers – every last one of them – couldn’t have been more than 20 years old. They had the pimples and greasy hair to prove it. It was finally my turn and I approached the check stand. The cashier told me the price, and I handed him my credit card. As he was ringing up the cable, I noticed a plug adaptor that would allow me to charge my cell phone and my iPad at the same time. (As an aside, POI products were made for me. I simply can’t resist them. I can’t tell you how many tubes of Chapstick I have purchased because they were sitting there as I waited in line.) But back to my adaptor. It, too, was $7.99, the same price as the charging cable.
“Is it too late for me to buy this?” I asked Mr. Pimples.
He told me he had completed my transaction, but that he could ring up the adaptor as a separate charge on my credit card.
“Let’s to that, then,” I told him.
He rang it up and told me a different amount. Not different by a lot, but different by something along the lines of 52 cents more. I gave him my credit card again, but the fact that it was a slightly different amount puzzled me since the cost of the item was the same.
“I’m just curious,” I said to the young man. “Why is this item a different price than the charging cable?”
His answer, my friends, is the honest-to-God truth. I wouldn’t even try to make this up.
“Well, Ma’am, here in the United States we have something called sales tax,” said Mr. Pimples. “In Europe, the tax is included in the price of the product, but here it is added on.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, I PROMISE you he didn’t say this in a snotty way. He wasn’t being sarcastic. He apparently misunderstood my question and thought I was asking why the final price was different than the sticker price. He simply thought the little old lady standing in front of him didn’t understand the notion of sales tax. Because at age 125 (which is likely how old he thought I was), I had never before purchased anything in a store.
I’m sure my mouth dropped open. I was stunned. So stunned that I was speechless. But I took my card and my purchases and went to my car. When I got home, I checked the receipt and saw that the cable, though priced at $7.99, actually rang up at $7.49, which accounted for the difference.
And I’m sure I was the customer that he told his family about when he went home that night.
Sigh.
This post linked to the GRAND Social
Saturday Smile: Christmas Joy
First off, Happy Boxing Day! For those of you who aren’t Anglophiles, Boxing Day is always celebrated in Great Britain on the day after Christmas. Since servants worked Christmas Day, they traditionally received their gift boxes from the family for whom they worked (read, Lord and Lady Grantham) the day after Christmas, and celebrated that day. Not having servants, Bill and I don’t really do much to celebrate Boxing Day. Oh a little tiny boxing match, but nothing else.
Since we leave on Christmas Day for Arizona, our celebration with our Denver family is spread out over a period of days prior to Christmas. Joyful joyful.
Wednesday night we hosted Court and his family at our house, where I fixed racks of lamb, twice-baked potato casserole, oven-roasted asparagus with pine nuts and bacon, and freshly baked rolls. We finished off with candy meringue bars while the kids opened their presents….
I wonder what I got?
Christmas magic….
Taylor joined us this year.
Christmas Eve we went to services at Dave and Jll’s church, and then we went to Dave and Jll’s house where I prepared dinner that included New England clam chowder; chili; garlic, thyme and rosemary marinated pork tenderloin, twice baked potato casserole; and salad with dill, dried cranberries, and almond slivers. Addie prepared dessert of cheesecake. We could also choose cookies baked by Alastair. Afterward we opened presents. On a whim, one of the things I bought all four McLains were Boogie Boards — not the things you float on in a swimming pool; instead, they are fancy high-tech etch-a-sketches. I wasn’t sure that they would be well received, but they were a hit!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.
Have a great weekend! Enjoy Boxing Day. Give your servants the day off.
Merry Christmas
Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.
Christmas Traditions
When Bill was newly divorced, he lived for a while in a crappy little studio apartment on Capitol Hill in Denver. He could have afforded more, of course, but anyone who has been through a divorce understands that at first you are filled with such self-loathing that you might as well beat yourself with a whip made of twigs. Instead, he lived in an awful abode.
The arrangement in the divorce agreement was that he got his three kids – Allen, David, and Heather – for Thanksgiving and for Christmas Eve. So Thanksgiving Day, the kids arrive at his dreadful apartment. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but what they got was, well, nothing. He had made no plans for the day, intending to take them out for dinner but not realizing that almost nothing was open. In fact, the only place they were able to find was a truly horrible diner on Colfax where the only other customers besides themselves were grimy men wearing dirty trench coats and pushing grocery carts which contained all of their earthly goods. They ate cold stuffing, instant mashed potatoes and turkey loaf – two-toned turkey is what they called it.
Luckily, being McLains, they could laugh about it. However, Bill regretted the day immensely. So much regret, in fact, that he immediately began looking for someplace to eat Christmas Eve dinner that was so special that it would make up for the terrible two-toned turkey.
By chance, he spotted an advertisement in the newspaper for Christmas Eve dinner at the Peck House in Empire, Colorado. Empire is up in the mountains on the way to Steamboat Springs, about an hour drive from Denver. It was the perfect venue for his make-up dinner. It was decorated in lovely fashion for Christmas. The chef offered amazing entrees. Bill told the kids to order whatever they wanted, and they complied. Appetizers, salads, dinners, desserts, all beautiful and scrumptious.
Not surprisingly, the Peck House became the McLain’s tradition for Christmas Eve. After Bill and I became a couple, Court and I joined them. We probably went to the Peck House for some 15 years, rain, snow, or clear skies. For many years there was just the six of us. But then Dave got married and then there were 7. One year Court asked if he could bring the girl he was dating at the time, and then there were 8. Finally, Allen became serious with a young woman, and we were going to be nine. I called the Peck House early in December as I always did, and asked for reservations on Christmas Eve for a party of 9.
No can do, I was told. They don’t seat parties larger than 8. Whaaaaaaat?
I patiently explained that we had been coming faithfully for 15 or 16 years and that we spent oodles of money each year. I also pointed out that there were always, ALWAYS, empty tables. Can you make an exception?
No can do, I was again told. They don’t seat parties larger than 8. Customer service extraordinaire, right?
So that was the end of our Peck House tradition. We never went back.
Traditions are funny, though. They’re so familiar and comfortable. For the next few years, I tried to find a replacement restaurant. Each year we went to a different place. We had varying levels of success. One year we had reservations at a downtown steak house for 7 o’clock Christmas Eve. About noon, I got a phone call from a man who said he was delivering food to the restaurant and noticed that they were unexpectedly closed. Believe it or not, that very kind man (who must have been let in by an employee who hadn’t gotten the “closed” message, or perhaps Santa Claus) went down the list of people with reservations that night and called them all to alert them of the impending problem.
I was never able to find a suitable substitute that enriched us as the Peck House did.
Eventually, grandkids came along and Bill and I bought a house in Arizona, and it’s not surprising that the whole Christmas Eve tradition has changed. Now I cook dinner for Court and his family on the 23rd so that they can have their own traditions on Christmas Eve. We celebrate Christmas Eve with Dave and Jll and their family, and I again cook dinner. While my dinners are always good, I’m unhappy that I haven’t found a traditional dinner. When I was growing up, my mother made New England Clam Chowder and Chili each Christmas Eve. Maybe something will eventually fall into place.
But it won’t be the Peck House.
All I Want for Christmas
I spent considerable time this holiday season complaining about how the Christmas season started so early this year. Long before Thanksgiving, friends were saying they had their shopping finished. Christmas decorations were up in the stores way before Halloween. Crabby crabby crabby, that was me.
Well, Monday I learned an important lesson. Though many are shopping earlier than ever, and many are shopping on the internet, there are still a HUGE number of people who leave their shopping until just before Christmas.
When I think of last minute shopping, I never fail to recall that very hilarious episode of the always-funny television show that ran throughout most of the 1980s – Family Ties. The show featured Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton, the conservative Republican son of two hippie parents. In one of the episodes, Alex had neglected to do any of his Christmas shopping and he found himself on Christmas Eve without a single gift purchased. Long before the days of Amazon or stores being open 24 hours, Alex ended up doing his shopping at the only store that was open – 7-Eleven. So he bought things such as Bic lighters and beef jerky. Maybe you had to be there. I thought it was very funny.
As for me, I have mostly been finished with my shopping for quite a while. I even got all of my gifts wrapped a couple of weeks ago, something very unusual for me. I knew that I would be unable to keep the grandkids from snooping in my office where the gifts were being kept. That face was good incentive to keep them from prying the only almost-foolproof way – by wrapping them. Not completely foolproof, but good enough.
Not only is my shopping long completed, but I also managed to do the great bulk of my shopping without entering a store. Yes, friends, I was one of those internet shoppers this year. Only three out of my many gifts were purchased from a real live store, and all three were bought long before we were in the throes of the Christmas season.
There was an exception, however. A few of the people with whom I exchange gifts receive a gift card from me. One is my step-grandson, who is 21 years old. I knew exactly the store from which I wanted to give him a card – MAC (the cosmetic line, not the computer). I know very little about make-up since the only time I even make an attempt is when I put on some mascara for church. My all-out effort to look good for the Lord. But I knew that I had seen a MAC counter within a Macy’s store at some point. And since I’m frequently down near a Macy’s store when I have my weekly breakfast or lunch with Court, I figured there was no hurry. I would just get it when I was in that area.
Well, Monday I was in the area, and ran into the Macy’s to purchase the gift card. After unsuccessfully searching for the MAC counter, I asked a salesperson if they sold MAC products. Nope. Not every Macy’s has a counter, she told me. The nearest one? Park Meadows Mall.
OMG. As hard as I tried to avoid having to go to a mall during the Christmas season, I was going to be forced to go to one of Denver’s busiest malls four days before Christmas. Well, I told myself, how bad could it be.
This is exactly how I felt (photo courtesy scarymommy.com)
It was bad. Very bad indeed. Worse than I imaged. Not only was there not a single, solitary parking space available out of the literally thousands that exist, once I admitted defeat, it took me a full 45 minutes just to get out of the surrounding area. It was enough to aggravate Santa Claus.
When I got home, I went on their web site (where I should have gone in the first place) only to learn that you can purchase gift cards online and have them delivered directly to the recipient’s email.
Which is what I did.
Christmas shopping – DONE.
Full of Grace
Nine or 10 years ago, Bill and I went to a movie and dinner with one of my friends who was newly divorced at the time, and very broken. The movie we saw was The Nativity Story, the fairly biblically accurately-told story of the birth of Jesus, and the events before and after. My friend is a cradle Catholic who had been a bit tepid about her faith for a while, but following her terribly ugly divorce, she was nothing short of put-a-fork-in-it-it’s-done when it came to religion. She was asking that age-old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
We sat down after the movie at a restaurant for dinner. As one would expect, we began talking about the movie. I remember clearly that my friend said something like “You guys really believe that story, don’t you? To me, it’s just a fairy tale.”
Well, while as far as I know, no legal documents exist stating that Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, was born on December 25, 0 A.D., there is literary evidence that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea. Read the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew. And I guess you are either going to believe their writings or you’re going to assume they were big fat liars. Many historical scholars take their writings seriously. And I believe.
As all good story tellers, the writers tweaked the story a bit. I’m pretty sure the shepherds didn’t come that same night, nor did the three kings come a couple of weeks later. But I believe the Son of God was born to Mary in Bethlehem, and I’m sure he had humble beginnings, perhaps born in a stable. It is true that Mary and Joseph needed to go to Bethlehem to register, and it’s likely that there wouldn’t be a lot of places to stay, especially if you are a poor carpenter.
Anyway, I’m no biblical scholar, just a believing Christian. All that aside, every year around this time, I begin thinking about Mary, a poor Jewish girl not much older than my eldest granddaughter, going out to gather water or do some chore or another and suddenly being greeted by an angel with the astounding news that she was chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. She was going to bear a child even though she hadn’t been with a man.
Think about that. Think about small towns anywhere. The inevitable gossip would never end, no matter that Joseph agreed to marry her. Think about the fact that her child would never really belong to her. I don’t know if she knew about his inevitable end and I doubt she even came close to understanding what taking on this commitment would entail. Nevertheless, she had to be terrified.
And yet, she said yes. Neither Luke nor Matthew mention a word about Mary saying, “Give me just a minute, I need to think about this.” But I bet she did. Who wouldn’t? In the end, Mary made the ultimate sacrifice and basically gave up her life so that Jesus could fulfill the words of the prophets.
It’s interesting to think how things would be different had she said no.
This past week, I came across these two beautiful nativity prints on Facebook. Gari Melchers is the artist for the first painting. Unfortunately, I don’t know the artist of the second.
Every depiction I’ve ever seen about the nativity shows Mary and Joseph kneeling over the manger worshiping the Baby Jesus. Anyone who has given birth knows how absolutely exhausted Mary would have been, and how terrified Joseph would feel. Doesn’t this depiction of Mary and Joseph right after she gives birth look more accurate? Mary looks totally spent and Joseph looks absolutely stunned and terrified…..
And words can’t express how much I love this depiction of Mary and Jesus…..
Santa’s Elves
I think we baby boomers have a way of reinventing the joy and purity of our youth. We remember that we were able to walk to and from school each day, but forget that we would likely have preferred a ride, especially when it was 25 degrees or snow was falling. We think nostalgically about the rotary telephones, but forget that it was hard to get ahold of anybody or to get access to your family telephone, especially if you had two sisters as I do. And though card catalogs worked fine at the library, isn’t it so much easier to use a computer?
Having said that, I’m convinced that our Christmases were less stressful in 1960 than they are in 2015. Of course, I may be convinced of this because in 1960 I was 7 years old. My mother might have a different take on the whole thing.
Nevertheless, I know we got fewer gifts than our grandkids, so shopping wasn’t as chaotic. There were usually no visits to Santa Claus, at least not in Columbus, Nebraska (perhaps Columbus was the original town that Santa forgot). There were no Christmas family photos to take because Christmas cards featured the nativity scene or the Angel Gabriel, not photos. Other families probably baked Christmas cookies, but our mom didn’t. She simply brought yummy things home from Gloor’s Bakery.
I’m not actually criticizing the activities of Christmas in 2015. I like getting the photo cards and enjoy the pictures of the grandkids on Santa’s lap. I just notice that everyone seems so, well, stressed. I think there is just too much emphasis on creating the perfect Christmas. We all forget that the only perfect Christmas was some 2000 years ago in Bethlehem.
And just when it seemed that Christmas couldn’t possibly get any more stressful, someone – certainly a marketing GENIUS – came up with the idea of the Elf on the Shelf. One more thing to add to the already frenetic busyness of the holiday season, at $29.95 a pop.
For those of you who have no small kids or grandkids, or perhaps live on Mars, the Elf on a Shelf (which actually has its own Wikipedia page) was born out of a book written by Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell. A parents (or someone) reads the book to the kids somewhere around Thanksgiving. Then an elf (in the form of a plush toy) comes to the children’s house where it lives until Christmas. Each night the elf flies home to the North Pole to fill Santa Claus in on the kids’ behaviors, returning later that same night and moving to a new location in the house. In our day, we called such a person a tattle tale. Now it’s Christmas fun.
As far as I know, the elf doesn’t bring gifts, at least not yet. Certainly that is a probability for the future. But it is incumbent upon the parents to remember to move the flipping elf every night. And if they forget, they’ve got som e ‘splainin’ to do. I know. It happened to Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole. And Kaiya’s just on the edge of believing the whole magical Christmas stuff anyway. She grilled her mom and dad about their elf’s lack of movement that particular night. If waterboarding wasn’t so anti-Christmas, Kaiya would have used that method to ensure she got the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from her parents about the elf’s immobility.
As far as I know, the Elf on the Shelf is no more successful at getting children to behave than the notion that Santa Claus is coming to town. While we all probably recall hearing threats about getting coal in our stocking, the only person I know who
St. Nicholas
actually got coal in his stocking one year was my dad. Those Swiss immigrants don’t mess around.
Perhaps if the Elf on the Shelf had been around in the 1980s, I would have fallen into the trap. As it was, St. Nicholas visited Court each year on December 6 by ringing the doorbell and leaving a small gift to remind us where the notion of Santa Claus began. As far as I know, however, he didn’t run back to the North Pole and tattle.
This post linked to the GRAND Social.
Nana's Whimsies 