Category Archives: Whimsies

Saturday Smile: The Race is On (Again)

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When I was in the hospital in 2011 — the hospital stay that concluded with me having the surgery from which all of my subsequent problems have stemmed — I had many visitors. I was in the hospital for a full month, so it’s not surprising that lots of people came to see me. Three of my most faithful visitors were my nephew Erik and his two kids Mackenzie and Carter. Carter wasn’t more than 2 or 3 years old. But my main memory of him is that he would bring along his Matchbox cars and race them on my bed. Even as a little kid of 2 or so, he knew all about the NASCAR drivers and cars. He had a favorite. Hmmm. Was it Tony Stewart in the M&M car? Doesn’t matter.

Anyway, yesterday when I was FTing with my sister Bec, she told me a story about Carter, who is now 10 years older. She walked into their house the other day, and Carter greeted her with, “Nana, I have to show you what I’m doing now.”

He commenced to showing her an app that he has on his fairly new phone. I don’t know the name of the app, but you line up Matchbox cars, take a picture, move them a fraction of an inch, take a picture, and so on. You then plug it into the app, and the app creates a car race. Voila! A new use for those same cars.

I’m not sure why, but Bec’s story made me so happy that he found something he loves during this difficult time…..

Have a great weekend.

 

Friday Book Whimsy: Mistress of the Ritz

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If I had a bucket list (which I decidedly don’t), one of the things on the list would be to spend a week at the Paris Ritz Hotel. The trickiest part of achieving that goal would be that I would want to visit the Ritz during the period of time that Claude Auzello was the director of the famous hotel, and his wife Blanche was its mistress.

Mixing fiction with interesting fact is the bedrock of a good historical novel. Melanie Benjamin’s novel Mistress of the Ritz focuses on the period of time during World War II, specifically when the Nazis had taken over Paris, and subsequently made the Ritz Hotel their headquarters.

Claude Auzello fell immediately in love with Blanche, an independent American who now lived in Paris. She soon loved him back, and they married shortly after they first met. Much to his surprise, Blanche wasn’t interested in allowing Claude to have a mistress in the way French men do, at least according to Claude. Still, the two made a good and loving partnership as Claude worked his way up to director of the renowned hotel, stomping grounds of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Coco Chanel during World War II.

Mistress of the Ritz tells the love story of Claude and Blanche Auzello, but also the love story of Blanche and Claude with the Ritz Hotel. As the world was going crazy around them, the Ritz provided a solid foundation.

With Claude unaware, Blanche becomes associated with the French resistance movement, and eventually is discovered. But Claude has secrets of his own. No secret, however, is greater than the fact that Blanche came from a Jewish family in New York City and had changed her name to protect herself.

I loved this book, both for the history and for the romance. I give Mistress of the Ritz a big thumbs up.

Here is a link to the book.

 

Thursday Thoughts

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Took the Plunge
We went to Costco for the first time since this whole coronavirus saga began. We actually tried to go once in Mesa during the seniors’ hour, but there were so many people that we bailed and went to Basha’s instead for a donut. Yesterday, we had to stand in line for a very short while until enough people came out of the store to accommodate us, but  then it was a pleasant experience. There were no over-eager people slamming into our cart or running over our feet in an effort to get past us. It was pretty quiet, and we found exactly what we wanted: toilet tissue and paper towels. Oh, and a couple vitamin supplements. Overall, a positive experience.

The Arches
A week or so ago, Bill got the idea to remove one or two of our iris patches that weren’t really blooming (due to inadequate care, shame on me), and put in a garden arch leading to the back of our yard. The arch arrived from Wayfair day before yesterday, and he spent yesterday assembling it and putting it into our yard. I love the way it looks. I’m just trying to decide whether or not to put some sort of vine to climb up the wrought iron. Will I be sorry to have an out-of-control vine in my back yard?…..

Thanks Uncle Sam
We got our stimulus check this week. Yay! But it was in the form of a debit card, which was quite unexpected. After much checking to make sure it wasn’t some kind of scam, we finally registered the card, and then promptly went to our bank to put it into our checking account before we lost the card and were very sad. Overall, it was a positive experience. Thank you United States Government.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
After a perfectly sunny day, about 7 o’clock in the evening, it started to rain. It was a lovely rain with no thunder or lightning. Since we had just finished dinner with Dave and Jll and the kids (who are leaving Friday for Montana), we decided to move out to their front porch and watch the rain. It wasn’t long before the sun was trying to come out, despite the rain. I knew if we looked hard enough, we would find a rainbow. We did, indeed find it. Unfortunately, my iPhone 7’s camera isn’t awesome, so you will have to imagine that you can see the rainbow in the distance behind Maggie Faith. You can see it if you move it further from your face……

Ciao!

What Do I Do With This Powdered Goat Milk?

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Today is May 27, and I will admit something to you. A little over two months ago, mid-March or so, I wasn’t very concerned about the coronavirus. I thought it was just another kind of flu, and lots of people die every year from the flu. I didn’t think it was any kind of a conspiracy; I just thought everyone was getting a bit overwrought about something that I was pretty sure was going to fade away very soon.

Good thing I got my degree in journalism instead of epidemiology. (Although, come to think of it, if I had studied epidemiology, I might have been going out with the rest of the people frantically buying toilet paper.) As it was, I scoffed at those who were stocking up on supplies as though they weren’t going to see the inside of a grocery store for three years. I had plenty of toilet paper.

When we came back from our quick trip to Denver in mid-March, I was faced with some realities.Mandatory shelter-in-place orders were being put in place. No hair stylists; no pedicures; no leisurely dinners out with friends; no sports on television.

And, no certainty about what would be on the grocery shelves each time I went. I will admit to being very glad that grocery stores were available to us. However, grocery shopping was no longer a matter of making a list and going to the store and buying those things on the list. Because those things on the list may or may not be on the shelves.

And here’s the thing: the more empty shelves I saw, the more terrified I got about running out of something I couldn’t live without. Shopping was no longer predictable. You never knew what was going to be on the shelves. The only certainty — at least for quite some time — was that there would be no toilet paper or disinfectant wipes. So, as I walked the stores those first couple of weeks, I admit to being despondent and scared. Not a great mix for someone who doesn’t handle stress very well. I came home from the grocery store once in the early days, and burst into tears. “It’s like shopping in the old Soviet Union,” I sobbed to Bill.

So grocery lists were of little help. I might have some ideas of what I wanted, but basically I grabbed things that I thought might be necessary, and more important, might not be there again for a long, long time. As such, I ended up with random shapes of pasta. I grabbed odd kinds of cheese. I purchased enough Cornish game hens to feed the Cornish people. I was so desperate for ground beef that I might have knicked someone else’s shopping cart, except they didn’t have any ground beef either. Purell? Pshaw. Tissues? Not a sniff of a chance.

You know what I mean. You were all in the same boat.

This past weekend, we went to Jen’s house for an overnight. She has a nice little suite downstairs where we sleep, but I used her upstairs bathroom on a couple of occasions. I noticed that the toilet paper was, well, barely toilet paper. I didn’t know they made one-ply toilet paper. In order to be effective at all, I had to grab about a fourth of the role. I knew exactly why she owned that toilet paper.

That night after we got home, I got a text from her. She was laughing at some of the things that she purchased hastily and in terror. One of the things she purchased early on was the toilet paper. A desperation purchase.

As was this…..

“I couldn’t find Cream of Mushroom, and this was the only kind of cream-of soup that was available,” she told me. As for me, I never knew that Campbell’s made Cream of Bacon soup.

Two things to think about: 1) Any ideas what Jen could make using Cream of Bacon soup; and 2) Tell me about your funniest and most random purchases during the early days of the quarantine.

Memorial Memories

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I have always loved Memorial Day. It’s my favorite patriotic holiday. It even beats out Independence Day because the Fourth of July is usually hot, often rainy, and if you want a good fireworks show, you have to queue up with the rest of the people who want a good fireworks show.

As a kid, Memorial Day always meant School’s Out For the Summer, just as Alice Cooper promised. I still can remember the feeling of cleaning out my desk, throwing away my chewed-up Number 2 pencils, saying goodbye to those I wouldn’t see for Three Whole Months, and making plans with my besties who I would see a lot of over the summer.

Memorial Day also meant our annual trip to the cemeteries where Mom would carefully place the peonies and irises that she had picked from her garden in front of the graves of my grandparents and some of my deceased aunts and uncles. I loved those visits, and I can’t tell you why. Every time we take a trip back to Columbus, we stop at the Catholic cemetery and try to find Grandma and Grandpa Micek’s headstone. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. Then we head over to Rosemont Cemetery where we easily find Grammie and Gramps’ graves.

Memorial Day also always meant a cookout of some sort. Mom might pack a picnic of fried chicken and cole slaw, or Dad might cook steaks or pork chops on the grill. I can smell them cooking as I write this blog.

Memorial Day 2020 will be one for the books, that’s for sure. The reason, of course, is our friend the coronavirus. Yesterday felt about like every day has felt for the last three months. Actually, that’s not exactly true. I think people are starting to carefully come out of their dens, sort of like Punxsutawney Phil coming out of his hibernation home to see if the sun is shining so he can tell us how many more weeks there are in winter.

We went over to visit Court and his family on Sunday. For the first time since this all began, they felt comfortable letting us into the house instead of visiting them outside, responsibly distanced. Not only that, but I got to hug all three kids for the first time since we returned to a Denver. Admittedly, Cole looked at me suspiciously before he accepted the hug, asking me if I had been around people who were sick. I assured him that I always wore a mask outside. And then he not only hugged me, but sat on my lap.

I hope that everybody behaves themselves so that we can continue to move back to normalcy this summer. I’m looking forward to lots of time with our family, many picnics and cookouts, and lots of hugs.

And, by the way, Bill and I did make it out to the cemetery to place my own irises and snowballs by Mom and Dad’s headstone. No coronavirus is going to stop that tradition. ….

 

Saturday Smile: Sharp Eyes

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I was able to spend a little outdoor time with two of my grandkids this week. Dagny and Maggie Faith accompanied me geocaching. This is, of course, one of my favorite activities, and they are two of my favorite partners. I hit 200 finds on Thursday, and those two found a lot of them while geocaching with me. On Thursday, we went four for four — 100 percent success. And when I say we, I really mean Dagny. She was on a hot streak, and Maggie and I were ice cold. Two of the caches were ordinary tubes hanging from the branch of two different trees. But one was called Woodchuck, with the hint suggesting cachers be careful to not “chuck” the cache accidentally. Dagny spotted a piece of a log under a tree. She turned it over, and found the cache…..

See the little hole drilled into the wood hiding the piece of paper that we sign?

But her real success came with one called Skullduggery. The hint indicated that the hiding place was something that had once been alive, but could no longer hurt you. We looked and looked, to no avail. Suddenly, Dagny’s voice rang out….”I found it.” She had literally lifted part of a tree that had fallen, and uncovered the skull of some kind of small animal in which they had inserted the paper to sign. I admit that Maggie and I were equal parts impressed and horrified…..

It was a good day, and we ended it as we always do with a trip to Sonic for a cold treat. It made me smile.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: The Sun Down Motel

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Those who follow my reading choices know that I’m a big fan of mysteries. What most people don’t know is that I have developed somewhat of an interest in scary books. Not horror novels like Bring Me Flesh; I’ll Bring You Hell, a book by an author named Martin Rose, of whom I’ve never heard, and whose books I will never read. But a good ol’ gothic mystery novel with a side of ghosts can bring me satisfaction. The Haunting of Hill House, by writer Shirley Jackson is a good example of the type of scary book to which I’m drawn. Hauntingly scary, but no Freddy Krueger popping out of the closet.

So when a book called The Sun Down Motel, by Simone St. James, an author noted for her creepy novels, comes across my computer screen, you can understand why I was immediately hooked. Last year I read The Broken Girls by the same author, and was suitably impressed. And I have stayed at enough motels with signs that looked just like that illustrated on the cover to be drawn in.

Carly Kirk is at loose ends. She misses her deceased mother. She isn’t finding satisfaction in college. And she has always wondered what happened to her Aunt Viv, who went missing 30 years earlier, before Carly was born. So she drops out of school, and heads to the upper New York town of Fell to retrace the steps of her aunt, and make a true effort to find out what happened and why the police were never able to close the case. All she knows is that Viv ran away from home and found work as the night clerk at The Sun Down Motel in Fell, NY.

Carly arrives in Fell, and begins renting the apartment in which Viv lived.  Soon she accepts a job as the night clerk at The Sun Down Motel. In the course of retracing her aunt’s steps, Carly faces some of the same challenges faced by Viv. The challenges include nightly visits from the victims of the serial killer the police and Viv’s family think murdered Viv.

The Sun Down Motel is part ghost story, part romance, but mostly a mystery with an ending that might take you by surprise. I found the novel to be a great escape from the trials around me.

Here is a link to the book. 

Thursday Thoughts

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Let Them Grow
I say this about three or four times every year about this time, but I think I have the last of my planting completed. The last things in were my petunias. Once they get settled, I’ll have a better idea if I want to plant a few more. I have a couple of tomato plants, some herbs, and a couple of pots of Swiss chard. I also have a pot of red geraniums in honor of my mother, and some dahlias in the front mailbox pot. If one comes my way, I might do a potted grape tomato plant as well.

Puzzled 
Thanks to all of you who gave me suggestions and links to puzzle makers who seem to have a few left. I have three unopened on my dining room table, so I think I will be busy for a while. Maybe by time I finish those, the puzzle companies will be back in business.

Vroom With a Buddy
The other day, it was so nice out that I wanted to take a ride on my scooter. I didn’t really have any place to ride TO, however. I was just going to buzz around for a while and see where it took me. As I pulled out of my driveway, I decided I might stop over at the grands’ house to see if Maggie Faith was looking for something to do. “Want to go on a scooter ride with me?” I asked. Before I could say Bob’s Your Uncle, she had shoes on and her helmet in hand. Off we went. We were taking my favorite drive through the rich neighborhoods when I realized that we were three-quarters of the way to Trader Joe’s. “Would you be willing to go to Trader Joe’s with me?” I asked her. She was, so off we went. We arrived, parked the scooter, and got off. “Oh, oh,” she said. “I didn’t bring my mask.” No problem, I assured her, because I had two. We put on our masks and headed to the door. We were quickly stopped by a Trader Joe’s employee, who pointed us to the end of the line, which was in a galaxy far, far away. I didn’t need olive oil that badly. We got on the scooter and headed home. My sister Jen assured me the line moves fast, so maybe I’ll try again next week.

I Heart You 
When I walked yesterday morning, I came upon a sight that lifted my spirits…..

For no other reason than to lift people’s spirits, a wonderful neighbor had placed hearts all over their yard. It made my own heart happy.

Ciao.

 

Puzzling Problem

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I read an article recently that was fed to me from one of my various social mediums. Probably Facebook, which is about as close as I get to news these days. That’s scary, I know. Anyway, according to the article, the purchase of puzzles during the coronavirus crisis has gone through the roof. In fact, according to the article, the chance of finding an available puzzle is about as possible as the chance that we will be driving hover cars in our lifetime.

They didn’t have to tell me that. Once I got over the shock of being told that I must remain in my house for the foreseeable future — sometime mid-March, I guess — I went on Amazon to buy a puzzle or two. Ha! There was not a single puzzle of any brand to be found. Well, that’s not exactly true. You could buy a puzzle from a second-hand seller for somewhere in the neighborhood of the cost of your first car. And the price is only that low because there are three pieces missing.

I’m a addicted puzzle constructor. I have been for much of my adult life, but in the past couple of years, I have really taken to it in a big way. I started because I believed (and still do) that it’s good for our brains. I’m spatially challenged, so figuring out just where to put a puzzle piece really makes me think. And thinking is good.

For a while, I was posting a photo of every puzzle I completed. Then it occurred to me that people were likely as interested in seeing my finished work featuring puppy dogs frolicking around peony bushes as they were in seeing my photos of every pie I bake. I stopped posting puzzle photos; I’m not sure I’m going to be able to stop posting pie photos. They’re just too beautiful.

About three weeks ago, I wandered on to White Mountain Puzzles website. I had been routinely checking Amazon’s, Springbok’s, and White Mountain Puzzles’ websites on the off chance that there were once again puzzles available for purchase. Though Amazon and Springbok could offer nothing, White Mountain had some puzzles available. Even in desperation, I have some limits. They have to be in the range of 500 pieces, and I won’t put together a puzzle of a train. I don’t hate trains. I just don’t want to look at a picture of one for the two or three days it takes me to put the puzzle together.

But White Mountain had some kind of cool puzzles. And so I ordered three of them. I got the warning that it would perhaps take a few weeks instead of lickety split like they usually take. No problem, White Mountain. So I have been waiting to receive my puzzles.

In the meantime, Bill and I have put together some of our old puzzles. They get me by, but I was so looking forward to getting my three puzzles in the mail. They didn’t come until 7:30 last night. I was like a little girl waiting for a Santa Claus. Three fresh, new puzzles. Heaven.

As an aside, just for fun, I looked at White Mountain’s website yesterday, and once again, they have no puzzles available. This quarantine has to stop. I can’t live without puzzles.