First Annual Vaisselle Awards--2008

Photo credit: terren in Virginia on Flickr.

First of all, you all know you deserve a trophy. Every reader of this blog has done something praiseworthy, noble and outstanding this year. But in the interest of time and space, I'll have to limit the awards this year to my family. Nepotism raised to the extreme. Drum roll, please!

The "I Know What I Want to Be When I Grow Up" award goes to N, my oldest, who, unlike most of us, finally knows what she wants to be when she grows up and has gotten awards and entrance into grad school to prove it. Go Red!

The "Supportive Spouse" award goes to T, her husband, for going along with this new plan and agreeing to move and renovate a whole house to make it work. Whoo-hoo!

The "Don't Worry, Be Happy" award goes to M, my second, for having a baby, starting the whole family blog trend, raising kids all week without a husband, moving, traveling around the world with two toddlers and managing quite a few other stressful things this year with a calm smile on her lovely face. You rock!

The "Super Dad" award goes to N, her husband, for going beyond the call of duty to spend quality time with his kids. This includes teaching a four-year-old to fly fish. Awesome!

The "Multitasking" award goes to G, my third, for running the world's biggest Cub Pack, creating some of the world's funniest blog posts, starting her own business, ramping up her photography skills, learning to make her own patterns, taking care of her family which includes four children six and under, a husband, a cat and a dog, and making homemade Christmas presents in just one year. Amazing!

The "I Want to Live Forever" award goes to her husband, D, for getting his cholesterol checked and then amazingly lowering it with a good diet and exercising. A winner!

The "Mean Green" award to my son, Z, for building his own truck and realizing that driving a practical and energy-efficient vehicle is almost as cool as being turbocharged. Vroom, vroom!

To Michael, my sweetie, the "Norman Vincent Peale Power of Positive Thinking" award for consistently trying to see the positive side of every aspect of our gut-wrenching move and life changes this year. Couldn't have done it without you!

To my parents, the "Aging Gracefully" award for getting through a tough year with good humor, intelligence, wisdom and common sense. You rule!

Although many other extended family members deserve kudos, I must honor my cousin, J, with the "Survivor" award for looking cancer in the face and staring it down. Think pink!

And to me, (it's my blog--you didn't expect me to leave myself out, did you?) the "Thinking Outside and Inside the Box" award for getting one house so ready to sell that it got an offer the very first day it was on the market and for unpacking and setting up another house so that we manage to live comfortably with only one big closet, a one-car garage, only one living area, a one-drawer kitchen and only one and a half baths. Go me!

To the rest of you, pat yourselves on the back. It's been a great year and I wish I could honor you all. But I do wish you a 2009 that's filled with accomplishment, satisfaction and, above all, joy. To quote Ginger Rogers in "Bachelor Mother", "Appee Neu Jeer!"

Awesome Christmas present

One silver lining about feeling bad during Christmas was that one of my presents came in really handy. Michael gave me the whole set of The Thin Man movies with Myrna Loy and William Powell. If you have to be cooped up, I can't think of a better duo to be spending time with. We realized that we had never even seen the first of the series, "The Thin Man" and only pieces of the next two. We've decided to wait a while before watching number four and five. We need to save some entertainment for the rest of the long winter. Those movies haven't aged a bit. They're still just as lively and charming as they were when brand new.

They must be a bit of a culture shock to the younger generation though. In one scene, there's about fifty people and one man is on the telephone and another interrupts him to make an important call because, of course, it's the only phone line in the room. You have to wonder how many phone lines there would be available in an roomful of people today. Also, the man making the original call asks for permission to call his mother and then proceeds to call San Francisco from New York. This is supposed to be a big joke as the charges would have been enormous back in the day. I remember my dad calling his parents on Christmas Day and Mother's Day and that it was a very big deal. He'd place the call early in the morning and the operator would call back in the afternoon when there was a connection available.

I do appreciate the ease and cheapness of communication today. It's made this move much easier knowing that I can pick up the phone whenever I want to and call Texas, Utah or even the Czech Republic. I only have to worry about who's awake when.

Dave Barry and the State of the Union

The local rag printed two and a half pages of Dave Barry today. It was his month-by-month take on 2008. It was a bizarre year even by Dave Barry standards. Thanks! It made our day. The man is still right on the money and always makes me laugh. His comments on the year really put it into perspective. He said you might as well laugh at it since you paid for it. How true!

As we look at the year in review, Michael and I were stunned to find out that our congregation added 19 or 20 new members by baptism this year. (This doesn't include children who are baptized when they turn eight.) To put this in perspective, our Texas stake (this is a whole bunch of congregations put together) had 24 baptisms in a year. It's nice to know that people here are seeking for truth. For us, it means new friends added to our church community all the time. And that's very nice.

We have been so impressed by the kindness and essential goodness of people we have met here. Sometimes when you live in Texas you start to believe that Texans are friendlier than other folks. And they are extremely friendly and nice. But we have been so well-treated here that we can't complain at all. The economy may be going to heck in a handbasket and Wall Street may have lost its moral compass, but things are doing just fine here in Wilkes-Barre. Most people are still trying to raise good kids and treat others fairly. So I'll drink sparkling grape juice to that!

Bronchitis

Need I say more? I've been sick for a week now. I can't seem to whip this even though I've though I've taken a full run of antibiotics. Which means it's probably viral and there's not much I can do. This is a new aspect of the move up north. In Texas, you could go at least go outside and warm up and dry out eventually because it never stayed cold for more than a week. But here, I'm stuck inside indefinitely. I'm afraid to go out and make this cough worse. I remember how hard it was to get rid of N's ear infections when we lived in Iowa when she was a baby. This is similar. Christmas was very quiet needless to say. But very wonderful in spite of my not feeling well. We talked with all the kids and my parents. That was glorious. And we enjoyed each other's company which was also great. The white Christmas was cool even though I couldn't get out and take a walk in it.

I heart New York

We finally made it to New York City. I had been there when I was sixteen but we spent our days in Queens at the World's Fair. So at our advanced ages, it was quite exciting to see all this stuff for the first time. We've seen so many movies about New York the places we visited seemed like old friends. And it made it even more special to see it at Christmastime.

We took the bus (which was easy) and spent the day in Manhattan on Saturday. I have bronchitis (not pneumonia) and am on antibiotics now so the trip wasn't quite as fun as it would have been if I had been well. But we had such a good time. That's me in front of Central Park right by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We mostly just walked around all day even though it was bitterly cold and windy. We did spend a few hours in the museum but I finally had to leave. There were so many paintings I had been waiting a lifetime to see that I was getting jaded. I didn't want to spoil my first impressions of the rest of them. I cried when I stood in front of that Christmas tree with the Neapolitan angels. They had music playing and the lighting on the angels was magical. I don't think I've seen many more beautiful sights in my life. We saw one of my favorite Ingres paintings (the lady in the blue dress) and two Vigee Lebrun's! Michael and I got to see lots of Degas, Renoir, Manet, Monet and Van Gogh paintings. We know that we missed tons and tons of stuff so that will be something to look forward to for our next trip.

New Yorkers were so extremely nice to us. We were astounded. One man came up to us and asked us if we needed help just because we looked confused. We asked him which way was east and he showed us and then he was off. One lady in the subway came out of her booth and talked to us for fully five minutes about what we should see and do. Incredible. People said "excuse me" and offered assistance. Not at all what we expected. We found the subways to be not half as intuitive (or as frequent) as the Metro trains in Paris. But because Manhattan is a big rock, the subway trains are not far below the surface the way they are in London or Paris. It's very easy to use a credit card and buy a one-day pass to the subway.

We walked into several hotel lobbies (which we don't ordinarily do but we weren't the only ones being touristy in New York). We saw the painting of Eloise in the Plaza. Facing the Plaza, the line to get into FAO Schwartz was halfway around the block and snaked back around itself. The Apple store also faces the Plaza and it's in a big glass box sunk into the ground. Pretty cool. We did go into Toys R Us where they had a giant ferris wheel you could ride in the foyer.

Bloomingdale's windows were awesome. They had decorated the windows to go along with a Tony Bennett CD they were selling inside. So the windows with moving characters depicted scenes from the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. One window looked just like my Alice and Jerry reader. The Bergdorf Goodman windows were strange. Many of them were all white and they were fantasies. Ladies dressed in gorgeous gowns (one window had a man mannequin with a fox head instead of a human one) with white geese and odd and random items painted white. Bizarre. We were surprised that the Chanel, Dior and other very expensive boutiques were very understated. They didn't look Christmasy at all. Trump Tower was lit up like crazy. One building was covered with lights which made it look like a giant present with bow.

We saw kids sledding in Central Park, very rich ladies walking out of Chanel and Dior boutiques, hot dog stands, fancy apartment buildings with doormen (the only buildings with no ice on the sidewalks. It's evidently no one's job in New York to clear the sidewalks so we slogged around in slush all day even though it didn't snow a bit. Just left over stuff from the day before.)Michael spotted an 80,000 dollar car. We saw art deco stuff in gorgeous architectural details especially around Rockefeller Center.

We had almost no disappointments. The only thing that wasn't as wonderful as I expected was the skating rink in front of the Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Center. It was about half the size I thought it would be. (It was about the size of the Galleria rink in Dallas.) Other than that, it was wonderful. To see so many buildings, company names, stores and landmarks all so close together was like working a jigsaw puzzle. Oh, that store goes there, right next to that park! Perhaps it was best that we came to it after a lifetime of reading books, seeing movies and learning about New York City. Every block had something that rang a bell. Sadly, even though we didn't get near Wall Street, we walked past an awful lot of financial institutions whose names have been in the news a lot lately. You can see how people with tons of money in a city that sophisticated could lose sight of what's real or important. Their greed just fed on everyone else's greed.

I'm anxious to go back but I think it will be nicer in the spring.

Peanut butter fudge

I could talk about the fact that I'm coughing and sick and that the temperature was 6 when I got up this morning (at 9:45.) But that would be way boring. Instead I'll post the peanut butter fudge recipe I promised. I found it on allrecipes.com. Have you seen this site? The comments are hilarious. "For the salad, I substituted canned spinach for fresh, I used Velveeta instead of feta and I added dill pickles instead of Calamata olives. I don't know what went wrong. It was really yucky!" Anyway, that was beside the point.I didn't follow the actual recipe because no one does! The recipe is called Easiest Peanut Butter Fudge there and, of course, everyone comments and no one follows the recipe. Here is the recipe as I made it based on a lot of the comments:

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners' sugar

DIRECTIONS
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in brown sugar and milk. Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes (I probably boiled mine a little longer but I tested it and it still wasn't soft ball stage), stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla. Pour over confectioners' sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth; pour into an 8x8 inch dish. Chill until firm and cut into squares.

I used unsalted butter and evap milk but would have used whole milk if I had had it. I beat it in the Kitchenaid. I put the confectioner's sugar in the Kitchenaid bowl and poured the hot mixture on top. If your confectioner's sugar was the least bit lumpy you would want to sift it. I used a really low speed to beat it. Then I got a phone call. When I got back it looked great. Unfortunately, for me, those are the best fudge instructions I can give. My fudge is always too stiff or too runny. This time it was too stiff but delicious. One of you will have to volunteer to call me the next time I make it.

Since I can't have real fudge because chocolate gives me migraines, this was an incredible substitute. Michael's suggestion. Great idea, honey!

I'm coughing and am not up to much else so I'll probably post again later today with Michael's pix of our trip to New York City on Saturday! Yes, I finally got there and the pneumonia I have today was totally worth it.

Sharing our white Christmas

Good thing no one's coming for Christmas this year. I'd be a nervous wreck about them flying in this kind of weather. I've never seen snow come down like this in my whole life. I mean it. I know what you say about rain. You say it's pouring. What do you say when the snow is pouring? I shoveled maybe six inches of snow off the driveway so that the plumber could get out and now you can hardly tell. (Plumber replaced the faucets in our bathtub. They look really good and now we have a choice other than freezing cold or scalding hot showers.) It was seriously fun shoveling and I plan to go out again later just to stomp around in it. The snow is very light and easy to shovel and it's beautiful. I know the delight won't last forever, but I sure am enjoying it now. The snow plow has already been down the street and now I can't tell where the street is. It just blends in with everyone's yard.

The photos are of our decorations which many of you will remember. But I think they look swell in the new house. The bay window with a snow scene behind the tree and the stockings on the oak staircase really look good. And how many women are lucky enough to have a train and a tuba with their tree?

For more photos, check my Flickr account by clicking on the link to the right or ask me for an invitation to see my Easyshare account to see even more. I'll be taking pictures of the whopping snowstorm when it stops.

Thanksgiving in December

Today I am cooking the Thanksgiving dinner I didn't get to cook in November because I stayed in Shreveport longer than expected. Michael's company gave everyone a turkey and, of course, gave it on the one day warm day all month when it would thaw. Every other day this month you could have thrown it in your car and not worried about it. So instead of refreezing it I let it thaw in the fridge. Today's the day it's ready to cook. We did have a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with our church family, but the cornbread dressing, five cup salad and pumpkin pie were really missed. The menu for today: Turkey, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, five cup salad and pumpkin pie. Some kind of green vegetable but skipping the Brussels sprouts as we had plenty of those in November. I might even make Marjo's rolls if I really get obsessed. Seems kinda silly to cook for just the two of us but we'll have lots of leftovers I can freeze and use next week at Christmastime. Plus, I bought a big ham. We should be set even if snowed in. We realized last night that this will be the very first Christmas with just the two of us. That's in 37 years (38 if you count the one when we were engaged), mind you. I've uber-Christmased this year with lots of holiday movies, Christmas music, decorations, cooking and writing cards just to compensate for the total lack of family. Stay tuned for tomorrow's topic: new peanut butter fudge recipe that's to die for.

Warning: I'm whining about teachers' unions again

Teachers continue to strike or to threaten strikes in districts around here. It's unthinkable that the teachers who are well-paid (Trust me on that. The cost of living here isn't that much more than where I used to live but the teachers get paid a whole lot more.) and who have tenure would be striking at a time like this. The kids' parents are working hard enough just to keep their jobs most of which are lower-paying than the teachers' salaries. Now they have to worry about their kids being at home alone because how many of them can afford unexpected day care for their elementary kids? One school district has extended the school year to June 23rd just so the kids can have a few days off at Christmas. Their strike has burned up all the kids' days off between now and the end of the year. One of the big issues? The teachers are paying more for health insurance. Hello? Michael is paying more next year and he works for a health-related company. In Texas, the teachers there had to pay more every year for their insurance. In a lot of cases it just ate up their raises. But what are you going to do if health costs are outdistancing other cost increases? Another issue was having to do extras like Open House, after school tutoring and Meet the Teacher Nights. Hm-m-m. Sounds like they're really committed to the kids, doesn't it? And the standardized science scores just came out. They looked appalling to me. If their tests are anything like the ones our kids took, these districts wouldn't have a prayer in the state of Texas where we had to meet high standards not just for all kids counted together but for all subgroups as well. Not having been a teacher here, it's easy for me to rant and rave. But belonging to a union is not on my list of things to do so I guess I'll never teach in the schools here. But I am willing to bet that their challenges are no worse than ours were in Denton with large numbers of non-English speakers and a high percentage of special needs children. It literally makes me sick to my stomach that the teachers feel the need to walk the picket line in economic times like these.

Goodbye Happy Car! Hello Impreza!

Today I rented the storage building for my Miata, better known as the Happy Car. It's so short it will fit in a 10 by 15 foot unit. Michael will spray it off and we will wait until the roads have been washed off by rain before driving it to the storage facility. We don't want any of the ice melt stuff to rust my car while it's in storage. That's the whole point. It will stay there until spring has come and the roads are salt-free once more.

I will be driving the Subaru Impreza from now on. It is very comforting knowing you have all-wheel drive when you try to negotiate the five-minute drive to church or to the grocery store. There are scary, twisty mountain roads in any direction from my house.

I went to Target today for a microwave cart since our kitchen counter space is the size of a postage stamp. The essential microwave we had to buy is taking up far too much room. When I go shopping, I always park far away from other cars but today it didn't help. Someone too lazy to walk a few yards and put their cart away safely let the wind catch their cart and it rammed into our Impreza. Since the contact point was the metal base, it completely wiped out my wheel cover. Could have been worse. I could have lost a door. It wasn't even cold today or rainy. Just windy. Thanks a lot, folks. I park miles away from you so you don't ding my doors and then you let your carts ram my car. I thought it was just my Miata people were out to get. I've been hit in parking lots twice in the Happy Car and once at an intersection standing still. Now that they're hitting our Subaru, I realize that it's not the Miata, it's just me. Sadly, there are plenty of irresponsible people here in PA just as there were in Texas.

Why bother?

So if they're having a white Christmas in New Orleans, why bother moving to Pennsylvania? Seriously!

We have got about an inch today but my brother on the left got far more in Baton Rouge. For great pix of the snow in Baton Rouge, check out the Baton Rouge Advocate website at 2theadvocate.com. Sorry I can't link you there. Blogger isn't working well for me today.

Going to a party in the snow tonight. I think I'll be a lot less excited about the snow when I can't look out at it past my Christmas tree.

Tear my heart out

My daughter just posted the first closeup I've seen of my new granddaughter. Knowing that I'm missing out on all that beauty is almost more than I can bear. She's glorious and if they made a china doll based on her face they would sell a million copies. I'm so excited for her sister who gets to go meet the new one and help out with the new baby adjustment period and visit the beautiful city of Prague.

This is not to discourage my daughter from sending me pictures. It's far worse not knowing what E looks like than seeing how precious she really is. So keep 'em coming.

This really isn't a move to Pennsylvania issue. We were even farther away in Texas from this daughter. But it is a "I live so far away from my family" issue.

My talented and bubbly real estate agent came by the other day to drop off a lovely ornament for our tree. (Glad I decided to put one up!) She complained about the grayness of the weather. It was four o'clock in the afternoon but it looked like nine it was so dark. She said that it looked like a horror movie outside. So I'm guessing that this weather is a little unusual. Even so, I'm dealing with it. Yesterday I got busy and went out in the pouring cold rain to do all my errands because the alternative was going out in the icy rain and sleet today and tomorrow. It's all relative. The happy car hasn't gone into storage yet but I think I've found a nice home for it. But it looks happy in the snow picture, doesn't it? I love the way Miatas smile.

How many porches do you have?

I received a call yesterday from my firstborn, N, who was wondering what had happened to a package she and her husband had sent. According to UPS, they had delivered it to my porch on the 4th and knowing her mom the way she does, she knew I would call her immediately on receipt to squeal in her ear about how excited I was to receive it. Michael was home while I was talking to her and he wandered around looking for this missing package while I tried to think of more places to look. After he checked inside the sun porch, outside the sun porch, under the sun porch furniture and outside the back door it occurred to me that we do have a front door and it actually has a porch. So Michael opened the front door which no one uses because there is no walkway leading up to it, and, lo and behold, my wonderful new Harry Potter book was sitting there all nice and dry even though it had snowed for the past two days. Naomi finally asked how many porches we have. Two, I realize now. And we have four entrances to the house, one for each side. Doorbells on three entrances. Well, I guess you can't say we aren't welcoming. You can break into our house from any direction.

A new Harry Potter book is always a good thing. This one is a very nice addition to the collection. Thanks, N and T. You're great!

Church canceled?

Yesterday morning, there was only one other car in the church parking lot when I arrived. I couldn't figure it out. I wasn't early for my meeting but just right on time. Where were the others? I walked around the building in my snow boots looking for an open door since someone else was obviously there. My snow boots which I was wearing for the first time leave a cute hobnail pattern and I was having fun crunching along trying to see which door was open. As I walked I noticed tracks and realized that a deer had walked the entire perimeter of the church in the wee hours. Eating shrubs I guess. So there were my footprints and the deer's but that was all. No one else's and no open doors either. It occurred to me that maybe church was canceled since the parking lot was over an inch deep in snow that had fallen in the night. Some of our church members live even higher up in the mountains than I do so they must have had lots more snow. In Denton, Texas they would have at least considered canceling with that kind of road conditions.

By the time I got back to my car another car drove up and then another. I realized three things. One is, you don't cancel church for a little snow around here. Almost all the roads had been plowed and sanded in the short distance I had to drive to church. The other is that the next door neighbors to the church must be using our lot for additional parking for their Beemer. The third is that I should consider whether arriving on time for my 8:15 meeting is worth it since I seem to be the only one who gets there on time.

Snow is pretty

Who knew that I would wait until it started snowing before I went running my errands? I'm usually the one hunkered down in my house refusing to drive in any kind of icy or snowy weather. But it was so pretty coming down (and since it wasn't sticking to the roads at all) and since I now have an all wheel drive vehicle, I decided to do the post office and bank run in the snow. I wore my Santa hat which gets mostly stares around here. (Maybe it's too early, but it's December and it was snowing for Pete's sake!) I wonder if they wore Halloween costumes here to go to the grocery store? I'm guessing not. I was in Utah so I don't know what they did here. Early on Halloween day in Provo, the grocery store was packed with people dressed in costumes when I visited my daughter. And in Texas, a Santa hat or a Halloween costume wouldn't surprise anyone, I don't think. But here in Pennsylvania we are rawther conservative. Oh dear!

Dressing up is one of the things I miss most about being a kid. So I think we adults should take full advantage of the clothing possibilities at Halloween and Christmas.

About this time last year

About this time last year, we found out Michael had the chance to be transferred to Wilkes-Barre. What a difference a year makes! As I look back on the past year, the hardest thing was just deciding to move so far away from family and friends. The second hardest was getting our house ready to sell. It's still daunting looking back on the amount of cleaning out, painting, and fixing up we had to do to get it ready. At least I spent a lot of my last winter in Texas outside enjoying the sunshine. The third hardest thing was getting this house organized and livable (an ongoing project.)

I've swung violently from pessimism to optimism all year. I tend to be optimistic about the big things working out (health, my children's happiness, my long term goals, my marriage) and tend to be pessimistic about the small items (the seriousness of the leak in the laundry room, the possibility of losing my luggage when I fly, the chances of finding what I want at the grocery store.) I must drive my family crazy.

Here's what I expected that came true: Our new ward (church congregation) is full of great people. I have to spend a lot of time in airplanes going to visit family members. My parents have needed me to be there for them. I miss the sunshine. I hate being so far away from my children and grandchildren. Living in new part of the United States is exciting.

Here's what I expected that didn't come true: I would hate the cold. (So far so good. It really hasn't been that bad. Down coats help a lot.) We would find people to be less friendly than in Texas. (They're actually very friendly and very nice.) We would have trouble living in such a small house. (I have learned to love my well-organized small kitchen and downsizing has not been bad at all.) I would lose contact with my friends and former students. (I actually have more contact with my students through Facebook and by emailing, calling and writing blog posts, I've kept close to friends.)

Here's what I didn't expect at all: Michael works so many hours and so many days of the week now that we don't get to do as many fun things as we want. We haven't been to Manhattan yet! The summer offered us the most beautiful weather imaginable. I'm the only organist in the ward and the best pianist by far so I play all the time. My writing career has come to a complete standstill. It's really hard to get a teaching job here if I decide I want to go back into the classroom. People are begging me to teach piano lessons. We haven't been to one musical concert since we moved. I've gotten excited about cooking again. My children and parents seem to be closer to me than ever before. Even though Pennsylvania is beginning to feel like home, it's so beautiful here, I still feel like I'm on vacation all the time.

Wow, that was probably way more info than you needed.

Thanks for the memories

One advantage of getting older is having a lot more memories than the young. You may not know who these folks are, but I remember them all well and in 2008 we had to say goodbye. I'd like to say thank you to the following folks who lived long upon the earth and who made it a better place. You made me laugh or cry or raised my hopes and dreams:
Thanks to:
Michael Crichton for bringing dinosaurs to life
Tony Hillerman for introducing us to the Navaho world
Edie Adams for creating some of the silliest TV and movies ever
Bill Melendez for the Peanuts Christmas special
Phil Hill for being a hero to my Michael
Louis Teicher for thrilling piano music
Jo Stafford for Louisiana songs
George Carlin for weather reports
Sydney Pollack for the way we were
Dick Martin for the Farkle family
Kermit Love for designing Big Bird
Tasha Tudor for making precious books that my children loved
Cyd Charisse for other-worldly dancing
Bo Diddley for the beat
Yves St. Laurent for making women look beautiful
Mel Ferrer for making Toulouse Lautrec live
Suzanne Pleshette for believably putting up with Bob Newhart
John Stewart for one third of the Kingston Trio's music
Paul Scofield for brilliant acting
Aime Cesaire for creating poetry that lifted a whole continent
Paul Newman for lots and lots of reasons
and
Edmund Hillary for redefining what mankind can achieve.

Old acquaintance isn't forgotten.

Happy Thanksgiving

This is what sixty years of happy marriage look like. This is a picture of my folks just days before their sixtieth wedding anniversary.

Since I arrived only one day before Thanksgiving, I didn't try to put on a whole Thanksgiving dinner. We went to a potluck at church instead. What with cool Hispanic music and a turkey named Steve, we had a wonderful time. I took ten pounds of mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. We even got to take home leftovers. I spent all day yesterday decorating. It's just the two of us but discipline must be maintained. The tree is up and we have a bay window to put it in and for the first time ever, I have a banister to decorate. It looks nice, I think. We spent a cozy evening last night. Michael set up his train around the tree and then we watched one of our old favorites, Bachelor Mother, with David Niven and Ginger Rogers. Pretty nice. Both Christmas movies we have watched so far were set in New York City. We keep looking at ourselves saying, "We could go there and see Radio City Music Hall, Gimbel's, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, etc." I hope we get the chance. If not this year, then maybe next. It's totally weird living so close to those mythic places.

Back home

I'm back home arriving one week and a day later than planned. I spent most of my birthday yesterday in planes and airports. The couple we invited over for Thanksgiving dinner has had to punt and we will be joining them at a Thanksgiving dinner at church. I'll be making ten pounds of mashed potatoes. Not exactly what I had planned but that's okay. My mom is back at home and doing well and that's the most important thing.

Thanksgiving is a great time to send out a few thank yous. I must say thank you to Michael, my parents and my children for knowing me so well that they all gave me perfect presents this year. And to my brothers, I also say thank you for all the support, love and laughs this week. I can't imagine being an only child after this experience. We needed each other and our parents needed each of us.

An amazing surprise was all the birthday wishes from my students and friends on Facebook. I appreciate all those thoughts as well.

Michael and I both knew that this move would mean that I would need to return to Shreveport often and so it has worked out. As I'm watching snow fly past my window, it's hard to believe that I was where the camellias are blooming just yesterday. But as lovely as all those 70 degree sunshiny days and gorgeous flowers were, this is now home and I'm glad to be back.

My mom

The whole purpose of this blog (in my mind, at least) is to record for future generations (haha) my life-changing move to Pennsylvania. One of the hardest wrenches was leaving mom and dad behind as they are 89 and 87. My brothers and I planned a surprise for their sixtieth wedding anniversary this coming week. The parents were going on a cruise so we surprised them a week early. It was going to be a cool surprise with all three of us showing up together until mom went into the hospital. One brother had to come early, the other brother came a little early and I finally got picked up at the airport. My arrival and the second brother's arrival were good surprises. But not as cool as the original plan. But then the morning of my flight back to PA, mom got sick again and I'm still here. I didn't want to blog about it until I had good news but I think she's finally around the bend. I don't know when she's coming home but the extensive surgery that was threatened hasn't happened and looks like it's not going to happen at this point. It's been a long week for the whole family.

What I feared when I moved up to PA was that my parents would need me and I would have trouble getting back home. In fact, I've just happened to be here when first dad then mom had a problem and I stayed to help. I have told mom and dad that I won't be flying down any more because every time I do, one of them goes into the hospital. Maybe I'll drive but flying to S'port seems to be bad karma. Just kidding of course. I'm very glad that I'm here but I have fretted some about the things left undone in PA. This will be a test of my faith that all will work out for the best.

So many things about the move that I dreaded have turned out really well in spite of my worries. But my parents' need for me to be close has turned out to be a real problem. On the literally bright side, the weather has been so beautiful here with temps in the 70s and 80s and lots and lots of sunshine, that it's been hard to be too depressed about the situation. The camellias are blooming at the hospital garden and I've soaked up as many rays as I could. I wish I could take it home in a bottle the way Hermione Granger carries around her bluebell flames.

New grandbaby

I just got word that I have a new grandbaby girl born in the Czech Republic today. Mom and baby are fine. How exciting!

Best surprise ever

We had planned to surprise my parents with a visit from all of us (me and my twin brothers) with all of us just showing up on their doorstep at the same time this past Friday. This was to be an early surprise for their 60th wedding anniversary since they were going to be on a cruise for the actual day. But then Momma got sick and went into the hospital for a few days. So change of plans. K1 went early with his son and arrived on Wednesday, K2 and S arrived on Friday and surprised them. Then I arrived on Friday afternoon late and surprised them again. Momma said it was better this way because if we had all arrived together she would have cried. This way she was just really, really happy. We all went out to dinner on Friday night. Really cool. The amazing thing is that no one blew the surprise even though half of America knew we were doing it. Maybe a hundred people knew about the secret and yet no one let it slip. It was great fun. But the twins had such a good time telling "Dad" stories at the restaurant that he finally asked, "Is this a roast?" A good time was had by all.

What are the chances?

I called one of my doctor's offices in Denton for some medical records two days ago and the nice lady I talked to was from Wilkes-Barre. She wanted to be here since her sister was due any day. I wanted to be there since my mom has been in the hospital. What were the chances of talking to her that day?

Aren't human beings always like this? Wanting to be somewhere else, wishing they had more of this or less of that, worrying about things they can't do anything about? Unsatisfied would just about describe most people on most days.

But not being satisfied with the status quo is responsible for who knows how many scientific discoveries, social improvements and great works of art. Wishin' and hopin', thinkin' and prayin', plannin' and dreamin' are all important parts of life. But Dionne Warwick is right, you gotta go ahead and live in the present. If this move taught me anything, it's that the more you appreciate the "now" the happier you'll be.

Reminder of why I write

The picture is just to remind me what blue sky looks like. Ha, ha. This is Lubbock and it was hot as you know what that day with a dry wind. But there was plenty of sky and sun.

I waffle back and forth about being a writer and whether it's worth it. I'm not making any money and I feel like I'm not contributing at a time when our retirement fund is wallowing in the slough of despond. And I'm having huge motivation issues since I don't have a writers' group to give me support and encouragement. (Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.)

But then I receive a message which makes writing a no-brainer. On Sunday, one of the Primary girls along with her mom and sister came up to me and with awe in her voice asked if I was the author of "Jake's Miracle" which was published in our church's children's magazine last October. When I said yes, her mom said that it was her daughter's favorite story ever from the magazine. That was a pretty impressive moment. I was so happy to be able to share the story of a great kid who lived in my daughter's ward in Texas. The church hasn't published any recent circulation numbers and my story wasn't included in the international version of the magazine (the circulation of The Friend was about 250,000 in 1996), but there's no doubt that thousands and thousands of children read that story. The story is now archived on the church's website in text form and in glorious full-color PDF and is available to anyone in the world who wants to read it now or in the future. Hm-m-m. Back to work.

Pas de Panique

This is what French people say. Pas de panique. No panic. But when your dad calls and says your mom has been taken to the hospital, you do panic. It's just natural. According to my brother Kevin, she is doing well now and evidently it was a case of medication interaction. Even though Dad made a special point to remind the doctor of all the meds Momma is taking, she still ended up with a med for a pain problem that made her really wonky and she fell. But no broken bones and they're keeping her in the hospital until the new meds have worn off. It's at times like this that I really hate being so far away. In Texas I could just jump into the happy car and be where my parents were in a few hours.

Sidenote: As I typed the word "it's" it reminded me that I am finding terrible errors all of a sudden in websites, newspapers and even magazines as eminent as Time. I found a whose/who's error in the local rag just this morning. Is it just me or is grammar completely out of control? Maybe somebody needs my services as a copy editor.

Lack O'Sun counties

The county next to mine is called Lackawanna. Scranton (of election fame) is in Lackawanna county and I am in Luzerne. Right now both counties could be called Lack O'Sun. I'm having a little problem with depression right now. It's mild and I hope it's temporary. Even though I am not feeling totally blue, I am incapacitated in many ways. Just can't seem to make myself do anything. Laundry and kitchen chores I seem to be able to manage but forget anything really creative or demanding at the moment. The lack of sunshine could have something to do with it. I almost saw the sun this morning. It was behind a cloud. I knew the cloudiness up here might present a problem for me but I didn't expect it this soon.

I'm considering buying a light box--the kind they invented for those poor people in the Northwest for their SAD disorder. Don't know if it would help or not, but it might be worth a try. If you've never suffered from a depression that comes on for no apparent reason (or for a reason so small it's ridiculous), I envy you.

What's wrong with the electoral college

I must blog twice today. As I was throwing out newspapers which piled up during my absence I found that the following people had visited Wilkes-Barre/Scranton during the week before the election: John and Cindy McCain, Caroline Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. Here's who visited before that: Everybody including Barack, Michelle, Sarah, Hillary and Joe (not the plumber). How many of those folks do you think came to visit Utah while I was there? Zip. Why? Because Utah doesn't count really. It was sure to vote Republican, so why would either candidate bother unless they could drum up some serious campaign funds? How many voters in states like Utah and Texas didn't vote because they already knew the outcome in their state? If we had a popular vote, then everybody's vote would be of equal importance and candidates would spend their time thinking about the needs of everyone and not just the needs of those who live in swing states. You gotta believe that even after the election, American presidents think more about the states and cities whose votes they might need for reelection than for those states in which they can't possibly succeed. With a popular vote, getting votes in Dallas, Texas would be just as important as getting votes in Dallas, PA. My vote shouldn't be more important than my daughter's in Prague or my daughter's in Austin but you wouldn't believe it from the amount of personal attention I got. So not fair.

Benefits of an economic downturn

Wow, traveling by airplane is a whole new experience with the economic downturn. I had empty seats by me on all the flights I took. I even had three seats to myself on the long flight from Phoenix to Philly. I stretched out and slept for hours. This won't last. Eventually the airlines will begin canceling flights. But if you've been avoiding flying because of overcrowding, now is the time to go.

Shopping is much easier now since the malls are empty. And everything is on sale. If you have money right now, you can definitely pick up bargains. Of course, there's always the specter of losing your job. So only those who are very secure would feel confident enough to go out and buy a lot of stuff.

Maybe we will go back to some old-fashioned thrift and saving. Perhaps women won't be judged on what kind of purse they're carrying. Plus, this desire to save may go along well with the green movement and a desire to reuse and recycle. The handmade Christmas gift might make a comeback!

I'm back

I'm back. And today I've had one of those whopper migraines so I will definitely post more later. As for the election, my state was divided, my family was divided and my feelings were divided. I couldn't fully support either candidate. I did feel for the first time in my life that either candidate would have made a good president. That says something good about our country, I think.

I was in three states yesterday and it was impressive to see how people were glued to televisions at all the airports. (Including airport personnel. I'm not sure how much work got done yesterday in airports, but they didn't lose my bag which is really something considering my past record.) I was also impressed by how many "I Voted" stickers I saw. So many people I talked to had voted absentee or voted early so that they wouldn't miss out on their chance to vote even though they were traveling on election day. It was an amazing experience to witness several different parts of the country and see how much Americans care, no matter where they come from.

Halloween costumes

Halloween costumes are regional, I am sure. My favorites from the trunk-or-treat at my daughter's family's church were the adult couple dressed as McCain and Palin. They looked pretty good actually. It was also very Star Wars-y last night. My grandson was Jango Fett, and I saw a really cute tiny Luke SkyWalker and Princess Leia brother sister duo. (Dad was Darth Vader). One tiny little thing dressed like a pig had a wolf for a Dad. He was way too scary for the little ones. My oldest granddaughter was Word Girl. The younger boy was a tiger which roared and the baby was cute in a pink tutu and skull leg warmers. The weather was amazingly beautiful. My grandkids are outside playing barefoot right now. Harry Potter came to the door as well as Princess Jasmine. Everybody had fun. The only sad thing was my younger grandson who picked up his bucket today and was ready to go out again. It's tough being three and not understanding how the world works.

Made it to Utah

It was a long trip, but I made it to Utah safely. I got up at 3:40 AM on the East Coast and arrived here 5:15 PM Mountain Time. That's 7:15 PM my Pennsylvania time. Whew! All is well though. I'm having a great visit. It took the baby until today to warm up to me and it was worth the wait. They're all so cute and fun to be around. More tomorrow.

Let it Snow

Yes folks, we are having our first snow storm today. Four inches of really heavy wet snow is expected in the valley. Six inches at elevations above 1200 feet. I asked Michael what our elevation is. It's 1100 feet. So there you go. We have 100 feet to spare. And up to 40 mile a hour winds. It should be over before I'm supposed to fly out tomorrow morning. But, if not, I could go the next day and still make it to Provo by Halloween.

I've been out twice today already and it's only 10:16. The first time was to get the paper. I usually run out and pick it up in my bare feet. But today I put on shoes and took an umbrella. The second time was to pull a big branch off of one of our cars.(Car is okay.) For that I needed my new down jacket. It's not sticking now but we have the whole day ahead of us! I think I'll make chili.

My mom always has trouble Christmas shopping when the weather is nice. She wants it to be cold and crisp outside so that she can get in the mood. I think she would have no problems here! She might even overspend.

Yes, I actually played my violin in church

I think I kept a pretty low profile in Denton, playing my violin in church only on rare occasions. I did play with the girls in a quartet for one Christmas program but that may have been it. There was so much talent in the Denton Stake that I was loath to advertise my extremely limited skills on that instrument. Suddenly I find myself one of only a few violinists in the Wilkes-Barre Stake (a stake is a regional organization of individual congregations which we call wards) and so I actually volunteered to play in an ensemble for the prelude to the Saturday night meetings for our regional twice-yearly conference. And, unbelievably, I enjoyed it. I really could use some practice and my bow needs new hair but it was still fun. Luckily, this is a once-a-year gig so I don't have to worry about it for another year. I also sang in the stake choir which was about half the size of the usual Denton Stake choir. This was a good group and a good turnout for this stake since it is less than half the size of the Denton Stake. We easily fit into one building for our meetings while Denton's conference was broadcast over the Internet to avoid two sessions.

The strangest thing about having the membership of the church be so small in the Wilkes-Barre area is the almost total lack of impact the members have on the community. Our ward here covers the whole county. In Denton, my ward covered less than a fourth of the city, and a much smaller percentage of the county. In Denton, you would be hard-pressed to find a school teacher who couldn't name several Latter-day Saint students they had taught. And we had many members who were prominent in their fields and in volunteer organizations. Here it's amazing to find a person who actually knows a member of my church. And when you talk about growth, here are the numbers according to the census bureau. Luzerne County, PA in 2000 had 319,000 residents. Their estimate for 2006 is 313,000. That's a two percent loss. Denton County had 432,000 residents in 2000 and the census bureau estimates that the 2006 population was 584,000. That's a 35 percent increase. Just a little hard for me to wrap my mind around some days.

More on voting

First, these pictures are random, but I don't have any voting pictures! The little girl is Gracie whom I got to keep two times a week for a month at the beginning of the semester. Pretty cute. The second is a pipe band at the Civil War encampment at Warrior Run. They were extremely good.

Back to voting. I did get my ballot and will be dropping it off in the mail. There were only six people or things to vote for on my Pennsylvania ballot and one of them was an uncontested candidate. It is true that I'd never voted for a state auditor before. So I had to figure out what that person does. But making choices was amazingly simple compared to Texas.

I looked at the Texas ballot from my old precinct. Twenty-three choices. Granted a few of them were uncontested but there were still a whole lot of choices to make. It's true that Texans have a lot more control over smaller decisions. But a lot of the choices are because judges are elected for short terms. A judge in PA is elected for a ten-year term. This means judges up here can worry more about doing their job than getting re-elected.

I'm not sure which system is best. But at least here in PA, I felt that I could make an informed choice on all the candidates. And no railroad commissioner to vote for! I also looked up my voter registration in Texas. If I had decided to visit my son instead of my daughter this coming week, I could have easily voted in two states as I am still registered in Texas. I realize I would have had to break federal law to do that and that that would be grossly immoral, but you have to wonder if that happens? College students who turned eighteen before they left high school might easily be registered in two places, their hometown and their college town. So could folks who are transferred often because of their jobs. I guess that it's just like any other part of a democracy. You have to depend on most people doing the right thing. I looked all over the Denton County election website to find a way to unregister myself and couldn't find out how to do it. Hm-m-m. Don't you think they should at least describe a way to unregister yourself when you move? I guess I have to write them a letter, but I seriously doubt many people do that.

Am I Dense?

I just don't get this stock market thing. If investors just stopped panicking and selling off their stock, wouldn't things settle down for everybody? What are they going to do with their money? Hide it under the bed? And why would anybody want to sell off their stock when the prices were the lowest they'd been for years? Wouldn't this be a good time to buy stock? I must be dense. Somebody explain this to me please.

Tender mercies

A small but dramatic "tender mercy" happened yesterday. It was really cold here. The coldest day since April, in fact. Although it was in the 40s, we had one of those damp, biting winds that Texans are so familiar with. My red winter coat is really cute but it's not warm in a wind. (A real fault, if you ask me.) I had already decided I needed a good coat for a Pennsylvania winter. So while I was out buying my son-in-law's birthday present, I thought I might look for a better, warmer coat. And I was really hoping for a bargain. Aren't we all trying to be penny pinchers these days? Something prompted me to go to Macy's. Even though I doubted that I would find something cheap this early in the season, I realized that, at the very least, I could see what was available and stylish. Stylish was important to me because I am going to be wearing this coat a lot! I looked around and decided that down was what I needed. They had maybe a hundred down coats on sale for a really good price but a little steep for me so I didn't even try one on. But I particularly admired a coat by Calvin Klein and thought I might come back later. Then I went to my favorite store, Ross. You never know what you're going to find there. And I've walked out of it without buying anything as often as I've bought something there. On the rack in my size was the exact same coat I had admired in Macy's, only forty dollars cheaper. So now I have a beautiful, new down coat that will keep me very warm.

In our church, we talk about "tender mercies" a lot. This phrase is mentioned in the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. We have had it defined to us in a special way. A tender mercy can be something that seems like a coincidence but, in fact, you recognize as a personal message from God. Now forty dollars may seem relatively unimportant to you, and in the large scheme of things, it is unimportant. But the knowledge that I am being watched over and personally protected is worth more than all my earthly possessions.

What? I can't vote?

I woke up at 4:45 this morning with the realization that I will not be in Pennsylvania on election day. There is no early voting in Pennsylvania, and the state only tells you that you "may" be able to vote absentee. You must state your reason for being out of town. No excuses of any kind are allowed if you are present in the county on the day of the election. Your excuse has to be a "duty" of some kind but can include vacation if you are employed. So I'm hoping that the reason I gave for going to Utah will pass muster, otherwise I won't be voting in this election. I mailed off my request for an absentee ballot today. This is way before the deadline, but if they don't get it to me before I leave on the 29th, I've been disenfranchised.

This stinks. But voting as an expat must also stink. I found a number on the Internet which may or may not be accurate: 3.7 million expats (including my daughter and her husband). That's a whole heck of a lot of people, many of whom care very much about their home country and how it's run. And judging from mail service in some countries, I bet a lot of them don't get their ballots in time to return them by the deadline in the US.

I found early in-person voting to be very convenient in Texas, especially as a school teacher. So for today at least, The Keystone State is the Stone Age State. I looked it up. Thirty-four states allow early in-person voting without an excuse. More will allow it with an excuse. Come on Pennsylvanians, get with the rest of the world. Early voting is cool and is the way to go.

Les Feuilles Mortes

Did you know that the old song, "The Falling Leaves", was really a French song to begin with? "Les Feuilles Mortes" is the name of it and it means "The Dead Leaves" which is a little more dreary. And that's what we have lots of right now: falling, dead leaves. We had a good freeze last night so the leaves are falling fast. It's like gentle snow falling all around you when you stand under my maple tree, only with gigantic red snowflakes instead of small white ones. So based on the photo, your question for the day is: Where do the leaves end and my car start? It is pretty cool having a red car covered with red leaves.

I spent every fall of my childhood cutting out leaves of colored construction paper and wondering why the heck I was doing it. We talked a lot about fall but other than football season, it was really hard to tell the difference from summer. My little GL was born on October 19th in Arkansas and it was over 90 degrees that day. When we took her home from the hospital her hand got a burn on it from the metal buckle on her car seat. Luckily we figured out really quickly why she was screaming. Sorry, peach! So we sure didn't have fall that year.

But here the colored leaves are real and not made out of paper. And fall is truly amazing. The colors are deep and rich, the weather is cool, the apples are crisp and the pumpkins are ripe. You can cut your Jack-o-Lanterns early because they won't rot the way they do in Texas.

And I can come back and read this idyllic post when I'm knee deep in snow in February and freezing to death.

So sorry, Pennsylvania. It's Utah for Halloween

I've been trying to use some US Air vouchers for free tickets for a while now. I finally got a ticket and will be going to Utah from the 29th of October to the 4th of November. I can't wait. Provo is my favorite place in the world for Halloween. It's the way I remember Halloween from my childhood. I love seeing my grandkids all dressed up, and the whole town is kid-friendly on Halloween night. And my daughter is super nice about letting me come at short notice.

So sorry, Shavertown. I will have to miss your holiday here. They tell me that the kids will come to our door for candy. (In Texas, they had stopped coming.) Maybe Michael will get home from work in time to give out candy. If not, the neighborhood kids will just have to wait until next year to trick-or-treat us. I will be able to check out the haunted library before I go though. Wonder what that's like?

My life is so exciting

This morning things started going bump in the basement. Really serious noises as if a very clumsy thief was trying to steal what few things of value we have down there. I opened the door to the basement and there were a pair of sunglasses and some sunblock lying on the floor that weren't supposed to be there. A while later, I checked again and a container of Off! was lying at the bottom of the stairs. So whatever was down there was obviously a party mammal. And most probably a squirrel. Hammy in my basement! Just think of the possibilities!

My wonderful neighbor came over with a tennis racquet, I grabbed a broom and we investigated. I had the idea of just leaving the basement stairs door open (it doesn't open directly into the house) in the hopes that whatever it was, it would want fresh air and food. My neighbor suggested that I use a peanut butter cracker as bait. So we left two crackers with peanut butter at the top of the stairs, opened the door a crack, then went into the living room to chat. After our talk, I checked and one of the crackers was gone. So I closed the door and left the other cracker to make sure our friend had left. At last check, that cracker is still there so I think we solved the problem. I won't leave the cracker for much longer because then I'll attract a mouse friend or two. Tonight, Michael and I can investigate the basement to see what damage the critter did during his or her stay. And try to find out how the thing got in.

Texas was so replete with reptiles and amphibians. I couldn't keep lizards out of the house. We had several really sad episodes. And I hate the idea of having any reptile or amphibian in my house. But Pennsylvania is really mammal-oriented. We've found deer footprints in our yard and we have a resident woodchuck as well as chipmunks and squirrels. No bears that we know of in our neighborhood, thank goodness. But they have them at Michael's work and in Mountain Top, a community on the other side of the valley. I wasn't too freaked about having an animal in the house although my hair stylist reminded me today that a squirrel is just a rat in a cute costume. And yet I panicked in Texas when a teeny little lizard found his way in the back door. Well, I never aspired to being totally rational. Good thing!

Frustration

There's a whole lot I'd like to say about the long hours Michael is working. But it wouldn't be politic to say too much in a public forum. He promises this will get better after the first of the year and I am hoping and praying that will be so. I'm glad we don't have kids in the home right now. They would never see him. Luckily, I'm here all the time and so can see him whenever he happens to be home which today was between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. (He had left at 3 a.m. and has returned to work this evening.) So my being flexible helps out a whole lot. He went through a lot of periods of extra work in Fort Worth too but I didn't notice it as much because I was working so many hours as a school teacher. Let's put it this way: he is really going to enjoy retirement.

Shickshinny, Wapwallopen and Mehoopany

If there's a state with more colorful town names than PA, I'd like to see it. On Friday, I went on a campout (yes, moi, on a campout) to a camp owned by our church on Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in New York. I drove there with some friends from church. This was a women's campout and it was a lot of fun. The fall colors are amazing and Seneca Lake seems to go on for miles. The highway goes along the side of the lake and you see bed and breakfasts, historic towns and vineyards everywhere. We went through Watkins Glen which is legendary for car racing. I didn't know it had one of the most beautiful state parks in America. Michael and I will be going back. The Saturday of the campout, the girls and I drove thirty minutes to the Palmyra Temple which is right by the Hill Cumorah. The temple overlooks the Sacred Grove where Joseph Smith received his first vision. What an amazingly beautiful place!

While I was gone, Michael went to a place called Council Cliff which is near Wapwallopen. He also passed through Shickshinny. He was looking for hawks but didn't see many. Instead he got a glorious view of the Susquehanna with fall foliage. On Sunday, we drove back through some of the towns I had seen on Friday and Saturday. We went past Mehoopany, went through Meshoppen, Wysox and Wyalusing. The pictures are as follows: A scenic overlook near Wysox, PA which shows a curve of the Susquehanna. The Palmyra Temple grounds with the Sacred Grove in the distance. My own sugar maple in my back yard. In the couple of days since I took this photo, the leaves have turned orange red and the tree is on its way to the deep red we associate with the Canadian flag.

We are in awe of the beauty of fall here. I think winter will have to be incredibly harsh to negate the effects of the gorgeous summer and mild and colorful fall.

Warrior Run-Fort Freeland Heritage Days

We went to Turbotville, PA last Saturday for a festival we had seen advertised in the local paper. Warrior Run-Ford Freeland Heritage Days is pretty interesting as festivals go. The Warrior Run school district bought a huge tract of land which included a historic house from the 1700s. The district and local historical society work together to put on this festival. The home has been completely restored and the students are apprenticed to learn Colonial crafts and skills. They begin as grade schoolers hauling water and such and work up to doing very complex skills like quilting, pump making, blacksmithing and butchering. They also have an Indian village and most years have a re-enactment of a Revolutionary War Battle. At another site across the highway, they have Civil War re-enactors at a historic Civil War site.

We had a grand time. Michael put a hole in a fence post, and we tasted everything from three sister stew (corn, beans and squash) to fresh-pressed apple cider. The lunch they provided was cheap and good. Michael and I had a bowl of chicken soup to warm us up. The most exciting thing was to see beautiful young people learning all about the history of their region. A high point was talking to the master quilter who was insanely impressed when I told her about my daughter's big win at the Paducah, Kentucky quilt show. The pictures are of a cooper making a barrel, Michael learning to make wooden fencing, and a young lady at one of the cooking booths. I'll try to get more pictures loaded to Flicker. We were somewhat amused that the festival was well-attended by the Amish. It seemed odd to see the Amish ladies in their caps watching the costumed girls and ladies in their similar lace caps. The Amish men's clothing was very similar to what the boy and men presenters were wearing.

It was completely un-Disneyfied like Williamsburg and yet very authentic. And everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun. We only had to drive an hour and a half to get there. The drive was awe-inspiring since the leaves are well on their way to their full fall color. Michael talked about it at work and sadly no one seemed to have ever heard of it.

New Temple

Although Latter-day Saints attend church in chapels which are near our homes, we also attend temples which provide a different and very sacred worship experience. Right now, we are in the Washington, D.C. temple district which is five hours away. There is a closer one in Manhattan, which is two and a half hours away, but by the time you beat the traffic and find parking, etc. it's quite an adventure. So we are thrilled that our church announced that a temple will be built in Philadelphia. It was exciting to be in Dallas, Texas when its temple was built and I look forward to seeing the whole process of opening the first temple in the state of Pennsylvania. A totally unexpected bonus of moving here.

On a more worldly note, it is wildly interesting to live in a swing state. Pennsylvania could still go one way or the other. I can't tell you how important I feel having candidates visit our area frequently and knowing that my vote is being actively sought.

Done!

My first draft is done. 61,000 words and the last two chapters give new meaning to the word rough. But the story has a beginning, a middle and a happy ending. Hooray!

5000 words to go

My goal was 60,000 words for my novel as that is a good length for contemporary romance. So I'm at 55,000 words and almost finished. So the length will be good. I'm dying to get it done but yesterday was totally booked and I didn't write one word. Today's the day. I just feel it. I'm so excited about finishing it that I'm not that bummed about our bus trip to New York that was planned for tomorrow being canceled.

Finishing my novel is not the most important thing I have to do today. Wishing my dad a happy 89th is number one. So as soon as I post this, I'm on the phone. Happy Birthday, Dad!

Must blog

I really don't have a lot of time this week. I set myself a deadline to finish my novel and I'm not meeting it. (The deadline was today.)Unfortunately, a lot of bills, church work and plumbing have gotten in the way. But I did see something in the paper yesterday that I had to write about. I've mentioned the names up here and how wonderfully diverse they are. We have friends named Pitcavage. There are lots of -cavage or -avage endings around here. Believe it or not, this is Lithuanian for "son of" and is also written, ewicz, owicz or owitz. It's evidently an attempt to write phonetically how it sounds. So in the paper there was a society page and here are just a few of the names: Dushok, Konick, Pfriman, Shinko, Tanski, Schwenk, Dodroski, Kepics, Nestorick and my personal favorite, Zaclukashefski. Now if your name was Zaclukashefski, what would be the one name you wouldn't choose as a first name for your son? So, of course, the young man in the society photo is named Zack Zaclukashefski. Go fig.

Bought a car

We knew we would need something more than two Miatas for the winter which is on its way. We never buy new so Michael did his research and decided exactly what we needed. So we bought a cute 1998 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport this week. It has all-wheel drive and will serve us well as we slosh through snow and ice. Now I can drive a car that's only ten years old. My Miata is a 1990 so figure that one out. Usually Michael is the car buyer but he's been way too busy and so I was given the assignment of finding us a car. A tender mercy allowed me to find a one-owner car in great shape with low mileage five minutes from our home. We were looking at a 200 mile radius as Michael was very specific about what model, year and mileage he wanted. I like it a lot and took it out on its first trip yesterday to the grocery store. They were having a sale on canned vegetables and so I stocked up! It's a hatchback and the trunk area in the back is huge! I didn't begin to fill it up. I was sad just for a moment as I rolled the grocery cart up to the car with a huge amount of groceries. It took me right back to days with our Colt Vista. I realized that the thing missing with our new car was four cute children in car seats. If I live to be a hundred and three I will never stop missing my kids.

No bedside manner

I went to two medical appointments yesterday. It is a bust that because of the move I am having to cram in all the visits in just a few months. Seems like all I do these days is go to those annual checkups, dental, eye, etc. Yesterday's doctor was an opthamologist because I had a problem with my retina a year ago last spring. Hm-m-m. The building was a shocker. Kingston is pretty small but this building looked like a mall it was so huge. Then, the office, even though I had called on Friday to correct the error, thought I was a cataract patient, i.e., money in the bank. We got that straightened out and I heard a guy in the check-in booth next to me say, "I didn't come here for my ears, I came to have my eyes checked." Seems that they now offer hearing aid service at this place and the check-in girl was obviously asked to recruit new business. I wasn't asked about my ears amazingly enough. Could it be that I was twenty years younger than most of the people in the waiting room? I had trouble finding my place to sit. I was sent to the maroon chairs but sat down in a "purple" chair instead so the check-in lady had to tell me to move. Almost everyone in the waiting room was over 70 and many were watching a movie about how they do cataract surgery. Instead I just needed to have my retina checked to make sure all was to the good. So everybody got all flustered although one lady did admit it was their fault. This doctor guy, who shall remain nameless, seemed pretty ticked that I was sent to see him in the first place. I picked up the card with his resume on it before I saw him. Magna Cum Laude from Notre Dame and so on and so on. He explained that he was a "sub-specialist" (whatever the heck that is) and that he really wasn't needed for a case like this and that he didn't need to see me again. He did encourage me to use their facility for my annual eye exams and glasses. I explained that I would have to see if his group was on my eye health plan. He told me that if you went to Penney's or Sears you were going to get who knows what. (I loved my optometrist in Denton who worked at Pearle Vision by the way.) This guy obviously owns a percentage of the practice and gets his little cut every time someone buys glasses or a hearing aid. I'm surprised he didn't encourage me to have my ears checked too. I do not take offense easily, but when you visit a mill like this that mints money, you expect nice treatment. Everyone was very gracious except the doctor. Every doctor I had seen in PA before this guy had shown some kind of concern. I wonder how successful this guy would be in Texas where doctors are actually expected to take an interest in the patient?

Facebook

Facebook. I never considered using it until one of my daughters opened up a family group for us. So I had mostly family members as friends and it was pretty quiet. Then a few people found me and I found a few more and I've managed to make contact with a couple of dozen former students. Nice kids all of them. And they are all doing such exciting things and have gotten lots of education and as I predicted, are spread out over the planet. (So many parents told me their kids should not take French because Spanish was what they would need. I always pointed out that they probably wouldn't all stay in Texas! Hah!) I feel much less homesick when I think that I can keep in touch with friends and students this way. I sometimes feel a little elderly in that milieu but being a former teacher gives me some sort of credence. I'm kind of like the faculty members standing around at a high school reunion. I'm not part of the party but maybe some of the kids are glad to see me there.

Missing friends

I haven't posted a picture in a while. This one Michael took at Valley Forge of Washington's headquarters. The stone exterior and even the interior wood are still intact. How cool is that? The picture has nothing to do with today's post!

I spoke to two special friends today from Texas and it was so good to talk to them. I miss so many things like the sunshiney weather, the Mexican food, concerts at UNT, the Dallas Opera, the grocery stores, my writers' group and my old house. But most of all I miss the people I love in the Denton area i.e. my boy, my friends, children of friends and my former students (some of whom have become friends). I used to see my students everywhere--at restaurants, at the grocery store, at the mall and even at the car parts places. Ask Michael. He just got used to it and even found it amusing that we would be at a restaurant and someone would come over yelling "Madame D.." and I would rack my brain to remember their name before they got to my table. He definitely had to play the role of "Mr. Mme D..."

Yesterday I went on a quick run to the grocery store without earrings. This has always been my number one taboo. Going out of the house without makeup is okay in an emergency but earrings are essential. So if I went to the grocery store yesterday without earrings, it's because I knew that I wouldn't see anyone I knew even though I went to the store that's only five minutes away from my house. So sad! Two things need to happen here. One) I need to make more friends and I really am trying to do that. Two) Discipline must be maintained. If earrings were de rigueur in Denton, then they are here too.

Benjamin Franklin

We went to a lecture tonight about Benjamin Franklin at the Back Mountain library. It was fascinating. The lecturer said that all the records of his meetings with the Junto club he organized soon after he came to Philadelphia, the minutes of the American Philosophical Society back to the early 1700s, the documents relating to the first library in America that Franklin founded and almost all of his correspondence still exist. Most of his papers are digitized and available online. I've also been reading a biography of Franklin to prepare myself for this lecture. I've underestimated both his scientific contributions and the importance and extent of his political activities. You don't get the full story when you get your info from a children's book called Ben and Me which features a mouse narrator.

I don't like Ike

It was very frustrating sitting here in Pennsylvania and watching hurricanes storm through the neighborhoods of tons of our family members and friends. Michael's sister and nephew and their families got the worst of it in Houston. They are safe but his sister lost trees and had water coming into the house in three places. Then there's Michael's aunt who lives in Baytown. We haven't heard how her house fared. We heard from his other sister in Marshall earlier today as they were waiting for the storm but I'm thinking they're okay as are my parents in Shreveport since I haven't seen anything in the news about those areas. My son is in Denton so he also was potentially in the path of the storm but it wasn't bad there. And my brother in Rockwall was closer to the center of the storm. His two kids live in that area too. My daughter was on the outside edges in Round Rock and her husband was sitting out the storm with his helicopter in Mississippi. I haven't heard how my cousin did who lives in Sulphur and Michael's niece is worried about the huge sweet potato farm her in-laws and husband own and run in South Louisiana. Who knows how that did? To top it off, my other brother and his son and family had to deal with Gustav in Baton Rouge a few weeks ago. I guess I didn't realize how much of my family is concentrated in those two states. No wonder I hated to leave! Our roots go deep in those two states. I'm hoping that our extended families managed to get through this without too many problems.

Rain Check

The Times-Leader, the local newspaper my grandfather worked for when my dad was a boy, offers garage and yard sale ads with a rain check guarantee. If your garage sale or yard sale is rained out, they'll give you another ad for another weekend. Michael and I have mused about what you would do for an outdoor wedding here. You could invite people from the hours of 10-4, whenever it wasn't raining, for the ceremony. Seriously, it rains a lot here. But it almost never rains all day. So even though the weather channel depressed me before I got here, since every day was listed as partly cloudy, in fact, there are some good moments in almost every day here and the weather is much brighter and sunnier than I thought it would be.

I kept G, a 2-year-old from my church congregation, today while her mother started a new job as preschool teacher. G will go to mother's day out in a few weeks, but I am covering the interim on Tuesdays and Thursdays. G nearly laughed herself silly over the hedgehog puppet I have. Everything the hedgehog did (clap hands, sniff, hide his eyes with his hands), she did. It was great.

I also did online shopping for grandsons and a son-in-law. I found some wonderful things. I hope they like using them as much as I enjoyed buying them.

Yearbook yourself

My daughter found a cute site called "Yearbook Yourself." Check out the latest entry on Puking Pastilles (see the link on the right under family blogs) and compare the photos. This one was taken in 1968. Tell me what you think.

Um, like the weather is so, like, beautiful

Omigosh, it is so, like, beautiful here. Sorry, I did a reading marathon of The Princess Diaries books and it's hard to speak like a normal human. Those books are a lot edgier and funnier than the movies. (Not to say that I don't like the movie because I like just about anything with Julie Andrews.) I almost remember what it was like to be in high school although that was a thousand years ago. I'm trying to get more into the mode of how a younger person talks so that I can finish this novel I'm working on.

The weather is quite unbelievably gorgeous which seems sorry since half the world seems to be flooded or blown away at the moment. And better yet on the air quality topic, a restaurant and public place smoking ban goes into effect in Pennsylvania in just two days! Something I am really looking forward to and that Texas so needs.

Living in PA right now is so fascinating because we're a big state which could go either way and amazingly, with a pop of 250,000, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton corridor is a sizeable population center. Evidently, lots of Pennsylvanians live in small towns and not big cities. Clinton and Obama made visits here before the primaries (on the same day, no less). And Obama just dropped by in a local diner down the road the other day and had banana cream pie. The local rag was impressed that he asked for a to go box. The Republicans will also make their way here I am sure. If the opportunity arises, I should go out and see one of the candidates if they make another public appearance. The last presidential candidate I saw in person was Goldwater for pity's sake at the Shreveport airport. And who remembers AuH2O these days?