picking up..

 There are friends with whom, after a long silence, you can pick up a conversation and carry on as if no time at all has elapsed.  

I had that kind of fun conversation today with a friend whom I've know since college.  She lives in Texas now, while I'm in Indiana, so it's not surprising that we don't see each other often, and we each have our own busy lives so the contacts are very infrequent. 

Today is her birthday so I called her, thinking I might leave a message if she was out celebrating with family and friends.  However, she was at home, the dinner being scheduled for later in the afternoon, and so we had time for a good long talk.

Afterwards I got to thinking about how our conversations have changed over the years.  First they were about who was dating whom.  I actually dated her future husband before I met my first husband.  Confusing, but we all stayed friends.  That was college.  Then comparing notes on our first years of teaching.  Later the conversations revolved around what our children were doing,  later still the grandchildren.  

Today I won points for having a great grandchild.  She doesn't see any on the horizon.  On the other hand, she won points for having more doctors.  She's wearing a pacemaker these days.  

I had to laugh at how the topics of our conversations have changed.  Who would have thought, 60 years ago, that we would ever be comparing our ailments.  Have we, gasp, grown old?  

just curious...

Earlier this week I spent over $100 buying birthday cards for family members and friends who have July birthdays.  Both of my brothers, for example, were born in July.  Also my spouse, his son, two friends and two daughters-in-law.  And there are more.

What makes me curious is why July?  I could understand lots of birthdays in September for example because of people celebrating all the December holidays exuberantly.  But what was going on in October?  Halloween doesn't seem like a romantic holiday to me.

Perhaps in the olden days, when we were a much more agrarian society, by October the harvest would be in, nights were growing longer and colder and there was no TV to watch.  But, old as I am, I am still young enough that I and all of my friends and family were born in the 20th or 21st century.  So what was going on in October?

Statistically August has the most baby births in the US with July and October close behind, but September contains the most common birthdays with September 9 being the most popular birthday.  My son was born on September 13.  Missed it by that much. Ah well. 

Still wondering what was going on in October...

Keeping our cool...

 A couple of weeks ago, not long after we returned from vacation, our refrigerator developed the nasty habit of leaking water on the floor every night while we were sleeping.  We would walk into the kitchen each morning to find a puddle of water, the width of the refrigerator and extending out about four inches from its front.  We would wipe it up - we started to keep an old towel handy for just that purpose - and wonder what the problem was.  Obviously something was wrong with our fridge.  We began to shop for a new one.  We found several that looked pretty good.  

As we were trying to decide which model to buy, my spouse dug out the service manual for our current one, wanting to double check sizes, etc.  We were surprised when we realized that our current fridge is only nine years old.  I've lived in this house for less than three years so I really had no idea about its age.  I knew we hadn't replaced it when we had the kitchen remodeled because it was working just fine, and, since it was black, it matched our other appliances. 

Anyway, when we realized it was only nine years old, we started thinking seriously about having it repaired, rather than replacing it.  The refrigerator repairman came today.  He discovered that we were right in our guess that the water puddle had something to do with the automatic defrosting that modern refrigerators go through every night to prevent frost build up in the freezer.  

It turned out that while we were on our month long vacation, various elements inside the freezer had frozen and not thawed, I don't know why.  But the result was water on the floor instead of contained and evaporated inside the fridge.  

The repairman came today, spent an hour making all necessary repairs, and charged us $175.00.  Soooo much cheaper than a new refrigerator.  

The moral of this story is that you don't always have to buy new.

An Abundance of Cookies

 My west coast brother has informed me that today is "National Sugar Cookie Day."  I didn't know that there was a special day for sugar cookies but they certainly deserve it.  While not as renowned as chocolate chip cookies, they deserve to be celebrated because they do have a deliciousness all their own.

I learned this through a diligent investment of time and energy one summer when I was 12 years old.  A girlfriend, Sandy, who live 'down the road' and I were both in 4H, and we decided to try for a ribbon that year in "demonstrations." I can't remember if that was the actual name of the catagory but the challenge was to demonstrate to the judges some aspect of food preparation.  We decided to bake sugar cookies. 

I suspect that our mothers may have guided this choice because the ingredients were relatively inexpensive.  Except fot the vanilla which my mother bought from the "Jewel T Man."  All summer long we praticed baking sugar cookies.  We would alternated homes.  We each had a ten year old brother, and they were absolutely delighted to test taste our cookies. Over and over again. 

If they had been the judges I think we would have won purple ribbons and gone on to the regional competition.  As it was, we won red ribbons.  Ah well, wisely I think, neither of us went on to become professional bakers.  We did remain friends though, all our lives.

This blog is in memory of my baking buddy Sandy, who died last week.  I hope you're enjoying sugar cookies in heaven.

a blog book??

 You may wonder at this and I'm not quite sure what made me do it, but I have just finished printing out all of the blogs that I wrote during our recent cruise.  The blogs are, of course, all saved on my computer, but e-things have a way of disappearing, or at least becoming 'lost' to me.

Also, the third grader who I tutored for the last two years gave me a lovely journal as a parting gift and I have decided that it will make a very good scrapbook. This is the cover of the journal.

It makes me smile every time I read it, so what better place to preserve my trip memories?  I hope that sometime later this summer I'll be able to share this with my young friend.  He loves maps so I will try to print out a few to include. Scotch tape and scissors, here I come.

it just seems right...

 Today, according to my west coast brother, is "World Chocolate Day." I can certainly understand why this would be a world wide day to celebrate rather than just a national or even international event.  Chocolate is universal after all.  I personally celebrated with an entirely chocolate supper - a chocolate soda made with chocolate ice cream.  Soooo good!

Some weeks ago, my wonder spouse and I decided that ice cream treats (or in his case a yogurt treat) from Zesto's would make an excellent occasional supper.  Especially on days like today whe we had had a fairly substantial lunch.  We feel it is our civic duty to support Zesto's as much as possible during the summer months, since their income is so seasonal.

Evidently there are many other civic minded people out there because the line at the drive through is always quite lengthy, especially around supper time.

I do find it interesting that, after only a chocolate ice cream soda for supper, I don't feel hungry until breakfast.  Evidently chocolate really is a wonder food.  Sweet dreams everyone.

What? Again?

 Well here we are at the beginning of another FIFA soccer game involving the US team.  This one finds the US team in what I expect will be a tough contest with Belgium.  We shall see.  At least my spouse and I will see as we settle into comfortable seats to watch tonight's game.  We have never considered ourselves particularly interested in sports be we are finding soccer oddly interesting, especially when the USA team is involved.  

Personally, I have always enjoyed sports more when I feel strongly on the side of one team.  I was never a cheerleader in highschool but I was part of the Pep Squad.  We would cheer our team on at home games and (after long bus rides) at away games.  These were always basketball games by the way.  We didn't have a football team until my senior year and girls sports, aside from cheer leading, were simply not a thing in our small rural school. 

My brother John (see yesterday's blog) played football his freshman year.  He was 6'6" tall and broad shouldered and the coach was very happy to have him on the team.  However, after one year John decided that football was not for him - too much chance of getting hurt, so he contented himself with being in the band.  He played trombone. 

The coach understood John's decision but complained that he couldn't find anyone to fill John's size 16 shoes.  I guess they were part of the uniform and belonged to the school.  But that's enough about high school sports, I have a soccer game to watch.