Do You Smell Cinnamon?
There is a restaurant in Fort Collins known for its cinnamon rolls. They really are very tasty, if quite large. During Jen’s kids/grandkids’ recent visit, we had breakfast there one morning. Seven-year-old Lilly requested a cinnamon roll. The restaurant was out of the mini rolls, so she ended up with a cinnamon roll the size of her head…..

She didn’t eat the whole thing, I’m pleased to say. She did, however, do quite a bit of damage to the sticky treat. Great job, Lilly!

Boom, Boom, Boom
Bill has a new project that he’s working on. A recent windstorm took out our neighbor’s gate, and ours with it. We got a couple of bids to replace the gate. They were all surprisingly high. Bill took a look at what work was necessary, and decided he could do much of the work himself. So he has spent the last two days digging holes for posts. This requires some degree of digging out of old matter. From morning until night, he works. From morning until night, I hear BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. That’s my husband for you.

They Say It’s Your Birthday
Bill’s son Allen celebrated his birthday this past weekend. We wanted to have some sort of festivity for him, but there were too many of us to eat at a restaurant. Allen suggested we all meet at Edgewater Public Market, a recently-completed marketplace with many different choices of places to eat and shop. There was both indoor and outdoor dining, and there was plenty of room for the 16 of us to celebrate. It was lots of fun, and Bill and I will definitely go there again. Or perhaps go to one that is a bit nearer to our house, as these public markets are a new phenomenon here in the Denver Metro area…..

Baby Love
I got an invitation to my niece’s baby shower in AZ in August. I won’t be able to attend because we will be in Vermont visiting our grands. My niece is preparing to have her FIFTH child, all of whom are girls. My brother has three daughters (and a son), and out of his soon-to-be nine grandkids, seven are girls. What with his three sisters, you could say the man is surrounded by estrogen!

Ciao!

When I was growing up, it was easy to go to the grocery store. Aside from which kind of steak you should buy or whether you should buy whole tomatoes or stewed tomatoes, there were no decisions to be made.

Even as a young adult, I still walked up to the checkout stand where the cashier manually pressed the price of the item into the cash register, which then totaled up my groceries at the end. While he or she was doing that, there was a pimply high school student putting my groceries into a paper bag. By the way, the bag had no handles. You simply grabbed the sack from the bottom and hoped it would hold. If the wet lettuce had gone in first, there might be a problem.

And then, in the early 80s, plastic grocery bags came on the scene, and grocery shopping as we knew it changed forever. At first they seemed like a miracle — sturdy, with handles that could fit around your wrists and hold a lot of grocery items. But then we all became concerned about what plastic grocery bags were doing to the environment. We sipped our water out of plastic throwaway bottles and wondered if we were ruining the oceans with our Walmart bags. Grocery stores didn’t help, because they began putting fewer and fewer items in each bag. Fewer items were necessitated by the increasingly flimsy bags. Grocery shoppers would buy five items and have three bags to carry.

We were then faced with that crucial question: paper or plastic? Paper killed trees; plastic killed ducks and porpoises. Plastic apparently won, because as of late, if you shop at the big grocery stores — Kroger, Safeway, Target, Walmart — there are pert near no paper bags to be found. It’s plastic all the way.

At least until recently, when a new question is being posed: reusable bags or plastic bags for which you must pay? Starting July 1, if shopping within the boundaries of the City and County of Denver, we must bring our own bag or pay for a plastic bag. Whaaaaat?

I really was up in arms about this new ordinance. I generally bring my own bags to the store, but I often forget because I’ve run out of the house quickly. I also often forget my grocery list and have to walk up and down the aisle and guess what I need. I’m nearly always unsuccessful.

Anyhoo, I was ranting wildly to my husband about the new requirement to pay for plastic bags. After I settled down, he — in his typical manner — gently reminded me that each bag was 10 cents. One thin dime. If I needed to use four plastic bags, it would only be 40 cents. I spend almost $100 on groceries every time I go, so 40 cents would simply be a little tiny drop in the proverbial bucket.

I had settled down until I then heard that the Colorado legislature had passed — and the governor had signed — legislation that will ban the use of plastic bags. BAN. That means my dime won’t buy me a bag. In the case of forgetting to bring my reusable bag, I will have to buy another reusable bag. Maybe two or three. In three months, I am liable to have to add a room onto my house to hold my reusable bags. Shall we have our morning coffee in the kitchen or the Reusable Bag Room?

This law, my friends, doesn’t go into effect until January 1, 2024. I have three years to prepare. Living in Denver, I will have an edge up on my non-Denver friends and family members who will go into it stone cold. Maybe I will invite them to tea in my Reusable Bag Room and send them home with party favors.

Bill bought a tiny projector way back when we were still in AZ. He brought it home, with the intention of having a movie night or two with the grands. That finally materialized on Thursday. We gathered many of our children and grandchildren to our yard. Bill put up the projector. People technologically more savvy than us (our grands) figured out how to connect Bill’s iPad to the project. Voila! We watched The Mitchells vs. the Machines out in our backyard. I didn’t get a photo of the gathering, but I did get a photo of the setup…..

It was a night to remember, and it made me smile.

Have a great weekend.

Chicken Dinner
Last night, I had my visiting brother Dave and niece Brooke over for dinner. They were joined by his other daughter, Jessie, and her boyfriend Rob. Court and Alyx and the kids came as well. I fried up a whole chicken and some extra thighs and legs. I mixed some cucumbers with sour cream and chives from my garden. I rustled up some macaroni and Swiss cheese just like my mom and grandmother used to make. We did a dang good job of finishing up almost everything. I had a couple of pieces of chicken left, and a few beans. There were just enough macaroni left for lunch today. It was tons of fun.

Visiting Grands
I got a text from Maggie Faith yesterday morning. Joseph and Micah and I are heading over to your house. Shortly after, I heard the front door open and the sounds of grandkids filled the air. We really didn’t do much. They watched a movie on Netflix. We ordered food from Noodles & Co. Micah isn’t fond of noodles, but he was excited to eat the leftover cold pizza from the day before. “I like my pizza cold,” he assured me. “Don’t heat it up.” Afterwards, they settled back down to watch a few episodes of Death in Paradise before heading back to their home. It was fun to spend some time with the Vermont grandkids, even if they were somewhat distracted by technology.

Puzzled
I’ve been somewhat stumped by a puzzle that I thought would be easier than it seems to be. But as soon as Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole arrived yesterday evening, Mylee went straight to the puzzle. “Nana,” she said. “I’ve already found four pieces.” “Good enought, Mylee,” I told her. “Go ahead and do as much as you can, because I’m getting nowhere fast.” I’m starting to get used to being bested by a 10-year-old.

Picasso-in-Waiting
And while Mylee was working on the puzzle, Kaiya got ahold of the sidewalk chalk. She worked for quite some time. This was the result…..

Not too bad for freehand art.

Ciao!

I saw it yesterday for the first time. It’s as predictable as the pumpkin spice Cheerios appearing on your grocery shelves come September. I saw the first Back to School sales ad.

The smell of sulfur from fireworks is still lingering in the air, and we’re talking about our kiddies — whose feet bottoms are not yet summer-seasoned from going barefoot — going back into the classroom. Of course, my mother was ahead of the curve. Every year on the 5th of July, she would cheerfully remind us that summer was half over as she swept up the firework remnants. Over the years, I have given a lot of thought to why my mother would say those dreaded words. I don’t think she was eager for summer to end. On the contrary, I think she dreaded the coming of getting kids ready for school each morning as much as we dreaded going. I learned my glass-half-empty mentality from her. If you know it’s going to happen, you might as well start getting yourself mentally ready.

Even a summer-lover such as me must admit that the first half of the summer is a tad more cheerful than the last half of the summer. In May and June, you are planting your gardens, the grass is greening, the flowers are blooming, the nights cool off, and you can sleep with your windows open. Sometime around late July, the petunias start getting leggy, the grass is tinged with brown, darkness is appearing sooner every day, and the air is still and warm, requiring the constant hum of the air conditioner.

But the good news about July and August is that we often have summer visitors. It’s true this year, as Heather and Lauren and their two boys are in town for a week. And my brother Dave arrived yesterday with his daughter Brooke to spend the week. Her husband Alexx was unable to come, so this is the first separation for the newlyweds.

I intend to make the most of the weeks ahead. We have a trip planned to Vermont in August, there are some birthdays to celebrate, and, of course, there are always the late summer tomatoes and Palisade peaches to anticipate.

Last year pools were closed and restaurants were silent. The best news, of course, is that we are able to enjoy each other without masks, even if summer is half over.