My first (and only) bike!

 

   Christmas 1952.  It looks like I got alot of nice gifts, including a new bike.  But I’m not smiling.  Maybe I had just gotten up and didn’t have my “game face” on yet.

Orrrrr maybe . . .

   I wasn’t as excited about getting a bike as my parents were!  I think that’s my sister Martha Lou steadying the bike while Daddy tries to convince Mama to ride on the handlebars.

    Well, I see why he wanted her to sit on the handlebars — they aren’t going to get very far with her riding “side saddle”! 

By the way, we called the flat piece that she’s sitting on the “toter” because if someone rode on it, you were “toting” them!  But when we moved north to Indiana I was told by the kids here (besides that I had a funny accent) that it was called the “carrier”.  They had never heard of a “toter”.  But, I still always thought of it as the toter.     

From my first memories, I don’t remember any of my older siblings having bikes.  I guess as teens maybe they were already “too old” for them by then.  So, this was the first bike that had been around for a while, and it looks like it was a hit — at least with Mama and Daddy!  (and at least for one afternoon when the weather got warmer!)

I do remember wanting to have a bike, for the times when the other kids in the neighborhood wanted to ride bikes together.  But, I just don’t remember using it all that much.  Maybe because I was never allowed to go very far from home, so I didn’t need it for transportation.  All of my friends were within close walking distance.

It was baby blue and white and it really was a pretty bike.

Pandora’s Box

 

Television changed our lives, and we had no idea how many ways it would do that.

  Mama and Daddy with our first television in 1953.  It was a Zenith-brand  ”console” which not only had the TV in it, but also a radio and a turntable for records. 

   Mama looks happier than Daddy.  Maybe he’s worrying about how much it cost!  (I’m sure I’m on the other side of the room dancing with joy and telling them to hurry up with the pictures so that we can watch it!)

Who could have guessed how much influence TV would exert on all our lives today, when Mama and Daddy were admiring their first set in 1953?

Definitely a Pandora’s Box that can never be re-closed.  All we can do is use the remote control to “edit” what we allow it to bring into our homes.

Curiosity may have killed the cat . . .

 

but it only slightly wounded me . . . in the pocketbook.

   This is, for you less curious sorts, a horned melon.

“Why on earth would you buy something called a horned melon?”, you would ask.

And I would answer, “I was taken in and dazzled by the slick perveyors of exotic fruit at Christmas-time at the super store!”  I can picture that when the produce manager was making an end-of-day inventory and realized one of these had been sold, he chuckled to himself and thought, “I can’t believe some poor schmuck actually bought one of those!”.

But, in my mind, it must be good, or they wouldn’t sell it, right?  When you look at it, can’t you just picture natives on some tiny, isolated island where this is the main edible vegetation, enjoying roasting these over campfires or simmering them with some native grasses and a few grasshoppers for a hearty stew?  Me too.

So, I took my horned melon home thinking, while I wouldn’t do any roasting or stewing, I would eat some of it in all its freshness with a sandwich for lunch.

A little background:  When I was little and we ate watermelon, there were lots of seeds in it (back then they would have just laughed that someone would even try to grow a seedless watermelon!).  So you learned very young to do some sorting in your mouth — you sorted out the seeds, spit them on your plate and then savored and swallowed the delicious pulp.

So, while I could see the seeds were plentiful in this fruit, I was undeterred.  I would simply apply what I had learned in childhood and do some in-the-mouth sorting and spitting (in a very ladylike manner, of course) in order to enjoy this exotic new fruit.

Unfortunately, as I believe I have mentioned before, my mind tends more toward the creative side and not so much to the analytical/mathmatical side.  So, there is a ratio thing going on here that hadn’t occurred to me.  When I attempted to eat this fruit, it was practically all seeds, with just a bare minimum of melon holding them together.  I only ate one slice.  And ate probably isn’t the appropriate word.  Because by the time I spit the seeds out, there wasn’t anything left to eat!  The horned melon went in the trash.

And now, when I walk past the horned melon display in the produce aisle, I smile a knowing smile and keep on walking!  That slick produce manager has put one over on me for the last time!

“Oh, wait a minute, what’s that ugly brown thing with wrinklely skin over there on the next aisle?  I wonder how that tastes?”

Curiosity may not have killed this “cat” yet, but hopefully she’ll learn her lesson before she uses up all her lives!

Snowflakes

 

I was browsing my blog roll early this morning and Jen at Cake Wrecks, after doing one of her normal, hilarious posts about cake decorators’ attempts to do snow flakes (see “Total Flakes” here), directed her readers to a site where real snowflakes have actually been photographed.  Amazing!

If you would like to take a few minutes to be awed by God’s handiwork in the intricacy of a snow flake, go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fwwidall/sets/72157603415282264/

You can even read about the details of how the photographer does it, like what camera, lenses and settings he uses and the challenges he faces — like keeping the room cold enough for the snowflakes not to melt but not so cold the photographer freezes!

Thanks to Jen at Cake Wrecks and fwwidall for giving my Saturday a great start!

Drop Dead Diva

 

    Brooke Elliott stars as Jane.

I don’t watch many TV series any more, mainly because they tend to promote low morals (and IQ’s) and tend to have lazy scripts that just depend on raunchy words or situations for their very predictable storylines.

So, I have to tell you about a new series I am watching called Drop Dead Diva.  It is on the Lifetime channel at 9 p.m. on Sunday night.  And it is different.

The very original premise of this show is that Deb, a young, blonde, somewhat shallow model dies at the same time as Jane, a 30-something, plus-size attorney.  When Deb gets to Heaven’s gate and talks to Fred the admitting angel, she reaches over and hits the return button on his computer in hopes it will send her back to Earth.  It does in fact do that, but into the body of the attorney, Jane. 

So, the story line is a sweet one about her dealing with her new, bigger body and her new higher intellect, and, as Jane, ending up working in the same law firm as Deb’s attorney boyfriend.  Sometimes seeing her look at him and long for what might have been is sad, but just when I wondered if that story line was going to keep the show from “moving on”, a love interest has started developing between her and another attorney!  (This  is one more role that I think is cast perfectly.  He’s just been introduced, but I find their attraction for each other very natural and believeable.)  Hurray for Jane!

I think this is just a very well written, perfectly cast and well acted series.  And I recommend it because it sometimes makes me smile, and many times makes me think, and then sometimes is poignant and brings tears to my eyes.  The characters are ones I actually care about, especially Jane. 

Brooke Elliott and the writers do a wonderful job of making Jane a smart, attractive, interesting person, and also a clever, caring and successful attorney.

I remember my fiction writing professor told us that the true test of an excellent book is if it makes you want to turn the page to see what happens next. 

Well, if you apply that rule to TV series’, this is an excellent show.  Because at the end of each episode, I am not only glad I watched but I look forward to seeing what happens in Jane’s life next. 

A well-spent hour.

Hard to work into casual conversation

 

When was the last time you said, “Well, that’s chatoyant!”  I’m guessing, not recently, if ever.

Hubby asked me this morning, out of the blue, how to spell chatoyancy.

I, being my always articulate self, said, “Huh?”

He said the word had just crossed his mind (he’s got to stop working so many crossword puzzles!) and he couldn’t picture how to spell it.

I told him I didn’t remember ever hearing that word.  But he reminded me that years ago when he had given me an opal ring, I wore it to work and Art, a very well-spoken co-worker, told me the stone had beautiful chatoyancy.  I remember now that I came home and told Hubby the word that Art had used to describe my opal.  It made the stone sound soooo, special.

But I had long since forgotten the word, until Hubby brought it up this morning.  So, we started trying to look it up in the dictionary – shitoyency, shytoyency, chytoyency, chitoyency, chetoyency, chytoiency, you get the idea.  I’ve always said that using a dictionary has one major flaw — you have to have some idea of how to spell the word, in order to find it!  And, I have to say, I am never impressed with Spell Check.  I tried putting some variations into a text document and then used the Spell Check, and with each try it either suggested a really far out alternative word, or just said it had no suggestions.

But perseverance does pay off, and we finally found it.

chatoyant\sha-’toi-ent\ n: [variation of the French word, chatoyer to shine like a cat's eye]: having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light (a chatoyant  gem)

So, if you have a friend with an opal, look for a chance to use this word to impress her with your vocabulary! 

And, if you happen to find a way to use it in another context, be sure to let me know.  I’ll try to impress “Mr. Obscure Word” Hubby with it.

Happy Saturday!

A dependable back-up is priceless!

 

Just ask Jim Sorgi! Do you recognize his name?  Probably not, unless you’re a Colts fan.  He is the long-time back-up quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.  And he is a very good quarterback when he gets a chance to play.  Unfortunately, he is the back-up to Peyton Manning who hardly ever needs a back-up.

But, Jim Sorgi is always ready and very good when he’s called upon … just like my Kodak Easy Share camera.

You may remember that I dropped my new, favorite Panasonic Lumix a couple months ago, and it has been sent to the factory for repairs.  When Hubby gave it to me for Christmas, it immediately became my favorite camera because it was small enough that I could carry it in my purse.  So it became my “starter” and Kodak was put on the shelf as my back-up.

So, with my Lumix on “injured reserve”, my back-up Kodak  is off the bench (shelf) and filling  in admirably, just like Jim Sorgi does for the Colts.

Yesterday morning before sunrise, I turned on the backyard lights so that I could take some trash out, and noticed how one light was shining on these bushes and rockers.  So, I came in and got my ol’ trusty Kodak and took some pictures. 

 

When I get my little Lumix ”purse camera” back, Mr. Kodak will go back to the shelf in a closet.  But he will do so with the satisfaction of knowing that he filled in admirably when he was called upon!

A dependable back-up is priceless.

Stop Eating … We’re Going to Talk Septic!

 

Our farmhouse that we lived in for 20 years had been built in the 1870’s by Hubby’s great-grandfather, Valentine.

Of course, the septic system wasn’t that old when we moved there, but it was old!  So, it was inevitable that we would have problems with it from time to time. 

The first time we had a problem (and I won’t go into detail … don’t bother to thank me), we looked in the phone book for a company that dealt with such things.  And we found one whose name inspired confidence in us … Golden Rule Septic Company. 

We called and asked them to come out ASAP (because when your septic system isn’t working, it is realllly important to get it working again fast!), and that was the beginning of a long, happy relationship between us and the father and son who were Golden Rule.

The first time they came out, we were a little surprised that they were black.  I don’t know why, but it just seemed to us, since septic systems are predominantly in rural areas, and most of the rural people in this area are white, that the people who would be experts at dealing with that rural system would be white too.  But, let me tell you, I don’t know where Dad and Son lived, but they did know “septic”!  Every time they came to our rescue, they found the problem, fixed it, were pleasant but professional while they were there, and always charged us a fair price.

Twice we had to call them on holidays.  That shouldn’t surprise any of us, because, after all, isn’t that the way things usually work?  If something is going to break, it will be on a weekend or holiday!

I especially remember the time the system stopped working on Christmas Day, just hours before Hubby’s large extended family would converge on our house for Christmas dinner!

I called Golden Rule hoping, but doubting, that even they would be willing to come out on Christmas Day.  Well, I shouldn’t have doubted.  They came to our house immediately, worked quickly and efficiently to find the problem and fix it (which always required digging out in the yard where the septic tank was — not an easy job even in warm weather, but cold, hard work in December!) and then were even reluctant to take the tip we wanted to give them because we so appreciated them coming out on Christmas day.

When we moved to this house six years ago, one of the great things we really appreciated, and still do, is city water and sewers.  But, there is one downside … we no longer have a reason to deal with Dad and Son at Golden Rule Septic Company.

The Golden Rule:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Luke 6:31

The great father and son team who named their company “Golden Rule” didn’t just say it, they lived it!

Answered Prayer

 

Almost exactly two years after it was first put on the market, Gunny and Dillys’ house in the city they used to live in 16 hours away has sold!  The closing was Friday.  Thank you, God.

They can now move on with their lives.  As Dilly told me several months ago, “We can’t totally live here until we sell that house.  We still have ‘one foot’ there!” 

So, now, Dilly, Gunny, their two teenagers and their two Great Dane dogs, who have all lived “like a can of sardines” in a very small apartment for what seems like a verrrry long time, can finally decide where they want to live permanently in their new city.

As with most challenging events in the lives of those we love, it was hard to see them go through the long wait for that house to sell.  But they have actually been pretty happy in their cramped apartment, and have said that they are coming away from this experience with a very different outlook on what is required for happiness!

It’s wonderful that they are taking away from this experience some great memories and life-lessons learned, but that doesn’t stop any of us from being very, very relieved that the house has finally sold.

Thank you, God, for answered prayer.

Taaa Daaa!

 

Finally! 

A few days ago I posted about my over-full refrigerator and how it ressembled Mama’s always-packed one, but I’m just now getting around to cleaning it.

     Before …

    … After 

Hmmm.  But, now that I see the “after” picture, while it is clean and better organized, it still looks quite a bit like Mama’s did!

There’s just no getting around it … I am Mama’s daughter, especially when it comes to “being prepared” with lots of refrigerator contents.

I’m sure she would smile at this particular trait I’ve inherited, especially the seven jars of pickles in the back of the second shelf.  She always believed in having a variety of pickles on hand, “just in case”.  She’d be right at home with all my “stuff”.

Oh, well.  I’m off to play a round of golf.  I’ve earned it.

Happy Saturday!