Sunday, February 22, 2015

Hi everyone,

My current desktop, although quite dark, I find quite interesting.

I have a couple of things about my last letter that I just want to mention to you.

First the good news…

Momma liked my story of David and Dolores.

Next, the bad news…

Mike, while proofreading my last letter, was quite upset at me for talking to strangers. I don’t think he stayed upset too long when he saw what a wonderful story I made, but it has been an ongoing issue with us. He is often afraid for me. “You’re going to meet someone who isn’t so nice one of these days.”

Sigh.

This is something I have talked about many times over the years. When your number is up, your number is up, to put it quite crudely. And it isn’t what I said to him. What I said to him was, “On the appointed day, at the appointed hour of my death, I will be there. And nothing can change that.” I paused and put an end cap on that statement. “I trust God.”

I’ve thought about this quite a lot. I do trust God to keep me safe until my appointed time. That doesn’t mean I’m going to throw myself off a mountain and expect God will save me. I know better than that.

I am not going to rehash all of the things I’ve said on this subject before. If you have been reading me through the years then you have already read about the movie I saw about a man who lost his love just before they were to be married. He built a time machine and went back in time and tried to change things but no matter what he did, he couldn’t change the outcome. He only managed to change the way she died.

If you have been reading me through the years then you have already read about a branch falling off a tree to kill the woman who had been posing for a photograph underneath it.

If you have been reading me through the years then you have already read about a rock falling from a hillside, smashing through the windshield of a car to kill the young Microsoft exec who was driving and sparing his family.

Pretty much guys, when it is time for you to die, you will die. God doesn’t make any mistakes and something good can come from something bad.

“If our destiny is predetermined what is the point in living?” you ask.

While it is true that God is sovereign, He has given us free will. We can choose the path we take and it all works out to God’s plan.

Anything you do, He can use.

You just have to seek God…

And trust God.

And I know that I have a long way to go but I think I am on the right path. I just need to shut up and listen, you know what I’m sayin’?

<<<<<>>>>>

There isn’t much that happens in the parking lot here at Luby’s that Mike doesn’t know about. There are cameras all over the place. Even Itsy will sit and watch the monitors, especially if her daddy’s outside. You can see her little head swivel from monitor to monitor as she watches for him. She knows which monitor he will appear in next and when she sees him coming up the stairs. she’ll run to the door and be there when it opens. If she’s not then chances are she was sleeping too hard and only woke when the door opened.

“Ginger?” you ask.

Ginger just follows Itsy’s lead.

But anyway…

Winter months there isn’t as much traffic going in and out of Luby’s as in the summertime. About a month ago we notice this little sports car pull into the parking lot and park in the back of the lot. He wasn’t close to the dumpster so we didn’t think he was trying to dump his garbage. That’s called Theft Of Service, in case you didn’t know. So Mike watched as he got out of his car, locking it behind him. The lights flashed. Then he walked across the parking lot and we tried to guess where he was going. Wise Guys? Wok & Roll? The ATM?

No. He kept going right up the street. A few hours later a car pulls in the lot and parks beside the little sports car. The man gets out of the passenger seat and gets back in his car and they leave, going in different directions.

At first it was only once in a while then it got to be more and more often.

Now she picks him up here and they have even shared a meal or three together at the Mexican Restaurant before their tryst.

“If that guy put half as much energy into saving his marriage as he was into having this affair, it would make his marriage better.”

“How do you know it’s his fault? It might be his wife’s.”

Yeah, it’s always the wife’s fault.

“What if she is the married one?”

Yeah, there’s always that too. In which case I would say, “If that gal put half as much energy into saving her marriage as she puts into having this affair…” you get it.

<<<<<>>>>>

We have a new addition to our family. Hello! Hello! Welcome to our world Bramzen (Bram) Gatlin Harrison! This big boy arrived on 2-12-15 and weighed in at 12 pounds and 8 ounces.

If you knew his mama you would be filled with wonder that such a tiny little woman could have such a big baby! Truly a gift from God.

<<<<<>>>>>

This glowing, beautiful woman is my granddaughter Julie. She will give me my first great-grandchild. Bristol Ann Renee Johnson is due sometime in May.

<<<<<>>>>>

I have been wanting to ask you if you have tried something called Refrigerator Oatmeal. I know, right! It sounds crazy but it isn’t bad, once you get used to it.

“What is it?” you ask.

Well, if you Google it there are all kinds of recipes but what I do is I take 1/3 cup oatmeal and I use the old fashion kind but if you want to try the quick cooking-go for it. But I take 1/3 cup oatmeal, a 4 ounce container of Activia yogurt then I use my empty Activia container to measure my fairlife milk, mix it up, cover and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning you have a quick and creamy breakfast.

There are lots of things that you can do with this recipe and I switch it up depending on the flavor Activia I’m using, but you could put cinnamon in it. Cinnamon is good for you. And chia seeds are good for you too. They are gluten free, a complete plant-based protein, have omega-3 and 6 fatty acids as well as antioxidants which we all know are good cancer fighters. Oh. And they are not that expensive. I got a 12 ounce bag at Hy-Vee for $7. Using a tablespoon at a time makes that bag last a long time.

I also have learned how to toast unsweetened coconut in my iron skillet. Coconut doesn’t have a lot of nutritional value, just a little bit of iron, but I like toasted coconut. Toasting really brings out the flavor.

So there you have it my friends and family. If you do decide to try this, especially for a cool breakfast in the hot summer months, don’t expect to like it right off. I didn’t hate it but oatmeal that has been soaked to soften rather than cooked is different. Not bad, just different. And you might look for more recipes online or simply play with it according to what’s in your house.

And a piece of advice, if you would allow me. I first saw and made this recipe using Greek yogurt. It might be thicker than the yogurt you choose to use so just be aware that if you use too much milk, it could get a little soupy on you. Use less and you can always add to it. I had to do that and discovered that with my fairlife, I like 4 ounces of milk, the size of my yogurt container.

<<<<<>>>>>

Butter.

You want to talk about butter again? And fridge odors?

I’m not going to go back and look to see if I told you something or not, but just let me say that I did have baking soda in my fridge. It’s spent, is what I thought at first, took it out and threw it away. I took a coffee filter, put a fair amount of baking soda in it and pulled up the edges to form a pouch. I secured it with a twist tie, leaving one end a little longer and I used that to hook over the wire rack in the fridge. I made my own fridge deodorizer. But the apples were just too strong and now, with the apples gone, my fridge smells all sparkly and clean again!

Butter.

“By smaller portions,” my beautiful Momma said to me. “Wrap the quarters in plastic before you put them in the fridge.” And, “Butter doesn’t have to be refrigerated.” I knew that but you have to use it in a good amount of time if you leave it out.

“You can’t replace butter!” that cute little red-haired sister of mine says. “Try freezing your extra butter.”

I love my freezer and I use it lots. I love to make big pots of soup and freeze portions for a quick and easy meal. But unfortunately the freezer is right above the fridge and if I can see the light from the fridge below, I’m pretty sure the odor can get up there too.

I did buy a tub of Parkay.

I could get used to the flavor but after eating it I felt like I had a lump of plastic in my belly and I kept burping it.

“Plastic?” you ask incredulously.

I think I thought that because I saw stuff about fake butters before. About how even flies wouldn’t eat it or it won’t melt even in the hot sun. Oh wait. That might have been McDonalds ice cream.

Apples!

Who knew apples could cause so much trouble!

<<<<<>>>>>

Now here’s a question for you. If you don’t want to use plastic anymore, what would you use instead?

Oh, wait. I can almost hear you. Let’s say I like to keep some air popped pop corn on hand and I keep it in a plastic zip-top storage bag. The next day or two days later I open it and I think I taste the plastic. Is that possible?

If you can taste something doesn’t that mean it contains molecules of whatever you are tasting?

Isn’t plastic made from petroleum?

Is that good for you-me-us?

This young lady, although beautiful enough to be a super model, is my niece Alex. She got accepted to an internship at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory this summer on a full scholarship.

You go girl! We are all very proud of you! Don’t forget us peons when you are rich and famous, okay?

<<<<<>>>>>

Let’s do March birthdays.

Candy Wilson, 2^nd; Horace Smith, 7^th; Helen Louis Henderson Mangold, 13^th; Lorraine Soden Zabitz, 14^th; Elwood Franklin, 14^th; Sara Lynn and Rachel Marie Bowers, 19^th; Miles Smith, 22^nd; Colton Francis Ammerman, 23^rd; Rexford Soden 26^th; Richard Anthony Bowers, 27^th; Howard Richard Bowers, 27^th; Ean James Ammerman, 29^th.

Happy birthday!

If I have forgotten anyone or gotten spellings wrong, please forgive me--then correct me!

Let’s call this one done!

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Hello my loves,

I’ve had two desktops this past week. The first one was just some kind of red berry. I like the red tips left behind when the berry is plucked off or has fallen off or whatever happens to them and I love the background.

My current desktop photo is a feather floating in shallow water with a leaf.

I laughed when I saw this next photo pop up on my screen as I was scrolling through some freshly taken photos. Is that Godzilla?

You know something? Some of the most interesting things have appeared in what I thought would be boring photos at the time that I took them…

“You take photos that you think will be boring?” you scratch your head in wonderment.

I know, right! I was hoping to sneak that one past you but you guys are just too smart for me!

I was going to say…and yet I take them anyway. I just can’t help it. I have to photograph something!

I had Itsy and Ginger out for a walk on this past beautiful Tuesday afternoon and I was looking for things to photograph. A flock of pelicans circle overhead.　
　

　
　
　

　

　
An abandoned and colorful candy box adorns the roadside.

“Whatever were you going to do with a photo of that!”

Don’t ask, but there it is anyway.

An acorn cap cradled in the divot of a rock.

We get down to the pond at the campground and as we walked along the edge we scared the little minnows that had been sunning themselves in the shallows. You should have seen them all! I was just shooting these little minnows and never saw Godzilla standing there with his head thrown back and his sharp white teeth gleaming in the sunlight until I saw it on the computer. And look at that shadow would ya? It adds to the illusion, don’t you think?

The girls and I turned around and were headed out of the campground when this old clunker of a van stopped at the road head. If they come down this way, I’m going to ask for a picture and a comment for my HIM webpage. The van did turn and drive slowly down my way. As it approached I smiled and waved. The sun reflected off the dirt on the windows preventing me from seeing them very clearly until they were pretty close to me. I could tell the driver was a grizzled old mountain-man looking kind of guy and I couldn’t tell anything about the passenger, but they did wave as they rolled on past me.

Doggone it!

“What happened Peg?” you ask. “Why didn’t you stop him? And I thought you were going to change the name of your page!”

I know, right! But I couldn’t decide if I should change the name or not, then I couldn’t decide on a new name if I did change it. So what I do, when I don’t know what to do, is I don’t do anything. How’s that for a philosophy?

And why didn’t I stop them?

I had it in my mind that they would say howdy to me as they went past and I would ask then. The window was up. They didn’t say howdy and I didn’t have a backup plan.

I walked on feeling like I missed my chance.

The girls and I headed up the hill towards the dam, me looking for things to photograph, the girls sniffing the roadside. Are those deer bones? They’re down in the woods and I can’t see them very well. I snap a photo so I can look at it a little closer on my computer later. A trick I learned from my dad.

“So what do you care if they are deer bones?”

I was really hoping you wouldn’t ask me that question.

Boy! I can’t get anything past you guys today!

If you have to ask then I’ll have to admit that I am collecting a few things like that. A deer rib. A bleached out turtle shell. An armadillo claw and a piece of his shell...

Hey!

Is that an armadillo egg?

Just kidding.

And I can hear you asking, “What are you doing that for?”

So I’ll just tell you right now. I have an idea rattling around in my head. I don’t know all the particulars yet but what I want to do is honor these creatures that were once living, feeling beings created by our Lord and God.

I walk on and snap photos of the insulators on the power lines. And winter flowers.

Then I hear it. I stop. I hear the rattletrap coming out of the campground. If they come this way I’m going to step out in the road and wave them down. I listen and I can follow the sound of the van as it makes its approach to the turn onto Valley Road. But which way will they turn? I hear the acceleration and for a few anxious seconds I can’t tell which way they turned. But I didn’t have long to wait before I could tell the sound was getting louder. They were coming my way!

There are no sidewalks on these back roads that I walk on so I step a little further into the road and wave at them. They slow and I expected the window to go down. Instead, the door opens.

 
“Hi!” I cheerfully exclaim. “How about a photo and a comment for my Facebook Page,” I asked.

“Sure.” No hesitation there at all.

“Great! Let’s pull off at the top of the hill and we’ll chat.”

They drove up to the top of the hill, pulled in and waited for me to make the walk.

I talked with this couple for almost half an hour and I have to tell you. There are times when I think people deserve more than one or two lines on a Facebook Page.

What I put up on Facebook was, "She's as beautiful to me today as she was 46 years ago when I married her." And I posted a photo of a kiss they shared for my camera.

Just like a true gentleman, he removed his hat before he went in for the kiss and I love the look on their faces after the kiss.

David and Dolores have an awesome love story to tell. They shared their first kiss when she was 14 and he 15. He was from the wrong side of the tracks and once trekked through a snow storm to see her.

“The cold never bothered me,” he said in wonderment. “It was midnight when she chased me out of there and I never felt the cold. I felt like I was on Cloud 9 the whole time I was walking home because I had just been with her.”

As we chatted they bounced around in their story and I didn’t get all the holes filled in but one thing that really sticks out in my mind is this.

“I’m so proud of the fact that I got a chance to serve my country and had all the excitement and adventure that a young man could have,” David said.

And his pride was evident.

Then there’s one more thing. They told me that one of their favorite things to do is to just be together. They had errands to run the morning I met them and afterward they decided to go for a ride.

“I just follow my nose. Whatever strikes my fancy is where we go. We don’t come down here very often, but I wanted to see what was going on on the Strip and for some reason I went down to the campground.”

And because of that I got to meet them.

Enough said.

<<<<<>>>>>

Have you tried that new milk? They’re calling it Milka-Cola because it’s backed by Coca-Cola, but it’s name is fairlife with the i in fair being upside down, no capital letters and all one word. It’s twice the cost of other milk. A half gallon set us back almost four dollars here in Missouri.

“Why would you buy it?” I hear you ask.

Well, they say they take “extraordinary” care of their cows and I like that. “Cows that are happy and well taken care of produce more milk,” they say. They say they have the highest milk quality standards. They say they have from grass to glass traceability back to their own farms. They say they are in pursuit of sustainable farming. They say their cows are not treated with rBST growth hormone.

“Is that important?” you ask.

Well, I’m all for as close to whole and natural as I can get. The less chemicals and processing-the better I like it. But there is a disclaimer on the milk label saying, “FDA states: no significant difference has been shown between milk from cows treated and not treated with rBST growth hormones.” And if you Google it you will get more information than I can wrap my head around! But I’ll tell you a few things about it that stick out in my mind.

The milk may be the same and we may not be affected by the hormone but cows treated with it suffer more pain and health problems.

Notice that I used the word may? May is a funny word. It’s not a definitive word. It doesn’t mean can’t or won’t, it means both may and may not.

The web site Wikipedia reports that in 1993, the rBST growth hormone was approved for use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration and is safe for human consumption. But how many times have you heard that before? How many times have we seen studies and reports come out saying something is safe or non-harmful only to be found false or erroneous years later? The most recent one that comes to mind is the cholesterol debate. It made the news this past week. There is no link between the cholesterol in the foods we eat and blood cholesterol. Eggs are safe again! Yay!
This hormone is banned in other countries but only because it increases health risks to the cows. One of those things being an overall increase of mastitis by 53%.

Mastitis, I can tell you from personal experience, is painful.

“Peg, do you believe everything you read on the internet?” you ask.

Well, let’s just refer back to my statement about whole and natural to answer that.

I haven’t drank milk in years and now if I drink it, I get a tummy ache. I could probably suffer through it and build my enzymes back up to where I can digest the lactose in milk again but I didn’t miss it enough to do that. This milk, this fairlife, has 50% more protein, 30% more calcium, 50% less sugar and no lactose! How about that?

“How’s it taste?” you wonder.

I like it. The 2% is rich and creamy tasting.

Mike found the web site for one of the farms that produce this milk. It’s in Fair Oaks, Indiana and it is quite an impressive operation. So much so that Mike, in fact, would like to go and see it.

<<<<<>>>>>

More stories and no more room! I’m at the bottom of page eight and I don’t want to start a page nine.

Do you know why?

“Why,” you answer.

Because if I start a page nine I have to make a page ten and even though I have a few more things to talk about, I don’t know that it’s enough for two more pages! So! We shall save it for seed.

Until next time,

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Hi everyone,

My desktop photo this week is Andrew, aka, The Star Of My Show, aka, My Little Heart.

I love the expression on his face as he peeled one of the trees from the cabinet door and stuck it on his arm.

I laughed. If you ever want a kid do something again, just laugh at him.

 Pretty soon we were all wearing trees. First Mommy got one and then Daddy got a pink one on his hand,

then I got four of them across my shirt front.

By the way, Andrew took this photo. I was helping him hold the camera while I tried to stay far enough away for it to focus but he snapped it. So don’t look at my wrinkles, okay?

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

“Wrinkles?” you ask.

Yeah, there’s that too, but no, I was speaking of Andrew wanting my camera. His whole life he has seen me taking tons of photos of him. And it’s a wonder he recognizes me without a camera stuck to my face, but it was only a matter of time until he asked to try the camera.

Guys, he was so stinkin’ cute! And here’s the photo to prove it. This is Andrew asking if he can try my camera. He still doesn’t talk much but he doesn’t have to. We all understand him perfectly!

I took the strap off my neck and handed my $600 camera to a two-year old.

“Are you crazy!”

I know, right! I thought the same thing myself after I handed it over but what could I do? I’m putty in this kid’s hands.

Andrew sat on my bed and handled my camera as if he had been handling a camera his whole life. He knew how to hold it (one hand on each side) and he knew he had to have it up to his eye. He even knew he had to push a button and I watched as his little fingers searched for the shutter button.

“It’s right here,” I told him showing him which button to push. Then I sat back and watched as he wrestled with a camera that was much too big and much too heavy for him to handle.

 

At first I thought Andrew was looking through the view finder than I saw he was peaking over the top of the camera, so he hasn’t yet gotten the idea that he needs to look through it, but he had everything pointed in the right direction.

 

That cat!

That darn cat!

Yeah! Baby Blue. She loves to be close to Mike and sometimes she has to lay on the corner of his computer to accomplish that. Most times it’s not a problem but this past week she laid on a button and opened 141 windows!

 

Our poor little Baby Blue…

I say that but despite her slow start in life she’s not little anymore. At eight pounds she is pretty much a normal size cat. She does, however, continue to have respiratory problems. In plain English, she’s a snotty cat. She sneezes snot all over the place! But when you love something, like we do Baby Blue, you put up with their problems.

Monday morning we were sitting at the table doing…what else?…playing Skip-Bo with Gary when Baby Blue sneezed. I turned and looked and here she had snotted a blob of bloody snot on my kitchen floor.

“Her nose is probably just dry, like ours gets and sometimes when you blow it, it’s bloody,” Mike said.

I wasn’t convinced. “What if she has pneumonia?” Seeing blood where you don’t expect to see blood is cause for investigation-in my book.

I called the vet and we got her right in that day. It turns out that Mike was more right than I was. It probably was just blood from dry nasal passages. She had no temperature and the vet couldn’t hear anything in her lungs. Nonetheless we still came home with three medications for Baby Blue and a hundred dollars less in our wallet.

 

“Three medications for dry nasal passages?” I know right!

The vet found something going on with one ear and I have to put drops in it twice a day. She also gave us two medications to try to make her less snotty. One was a liquid and one was a pill.

“But you have to make sure that the pill gets into the stomach.” The vet cautioned us. “Follow with a syringe full of water or make sure she eats a full meal.”

The liquid is easy to get into Baby Blue but the pill turned out to be a real challenge and I have the scratches and bites to prove it! Yeah. That happened with the second pill I gave her then I decided I had to find a better pill delivery system.

Baby Blue likes Pup-Peroni. As I sat there giving our critters their after dinner treat it occurred to me that I could hide the pill in a piece of that. I didn’t know if she would find it or not and I had to make sure the dogs didn’t steal it from her, but it worked like a charm. Down the pill went, no fuss, no muss. Follow with a third of a can of cat food and Baby Blue is happy. Despite her love of the wet stinky stuff, I don’t normally feed her canned food. I like our animals to be on hard food because it’s better for their teeth.

Baby Blue has been on her medications since Tuesday and she is doing so much better. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve heard her sneeze at all in the last couple of days. I’ll have to pay better attention. And we were told (three years ago) that this may be something she will always have. So at that time, when the meds were gone and the sneezing and snotting returned, we just lived with it and have been living with it every since then.

I’m afraid to get my hopes up this time.



We are planning on being in Pennsylvania sometime around the first of May. If you don’t know already, let me tell you that my mom (our mom) is moving to Arizona to live with Patti, my oldest and much adored sister.

Momma has never wanted to go to a nursing home but at this stage in her life she needs more care than she is currently getting so something needed to happen and this was decided as being best for all concerned. I am not sure of her move date, I just know that it will happen in May.

Let’s call this one done!

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

 

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Hello, hello, hello!

My current desktop photo is a twisted vine holding a winter flower. Okay, okay! It’s a dead leaf, but don’t you think ‘winter flower’ sounds prettier?

I received a couple of comments about my last letter that I want to share with you but before I do that, just let me apologize for my negligence in posting February birthdays. I normally try to have those in two weeks before you need them to give the snail-mailers a chance to get a card in the mail in time, but I don’t know how important that is anymore. Most of us, these days, send our birthday wishes via text-message or FaceBook posting. Some even take the time to make you an electronic birthday card. Those are fun. And look at that would ya! It’s the first of February and January has slipped right past before I even knew it.

Let’s do February birthdays.

Stacey Lea Soden Ammerman, 2^nd; Brenda Jane Bowers Smith, 3^rd; Ella (Elsie) Lewis Smith, 5^th; Aunt Ester Stanton, 12^th (Momma’s aunt); Hope Cosentino, 17^th; Anthony McDonald, 17^th; Marie Isabel Soden, 19^th; Angie Smith Kraft, 23^rd; Kevin Lewis Kraft, 25^th.

YAY! Happy birthday everyone!

Especially my beautiful Aunt B who turns a beautiful 70 on Tuesday!

No one had any insights in how to keep your butter from picking up refrigerator odors. So I think I’ll switch to margarine. I’ve just about stopped eating butter anyway.

Only one person had any ideas at all about the name of my newly created FaceBook Page HIM and that was Jenn, our neighbor’s daughter from down the dirt road of our Mountain Home there in Pennsylvania.

“How about TIM; Those I Meet or TOM; Thoughts Of Mine?” she wrote.

Both very clever ideas.

Momma, once she had admonished me to keep my mind on what I was doing-told me I used the wrong spelling for the word sight.

“S-i-g-h-t is like eyesight and s-i-t-e is site as in place,” I said proving I did know the difference.

“That’s right,” she said, “and you used the wrong one.”

“I did?”

“You did,” she confirmed and proceeded to tell me where it was in my letter and you know what?
“What?” you ask.

She was right (but I bet you knew that).

Not the first time I’ve made that particular mistake and it probably won’t be the last time either!

One of our favorite things to do on Saturday morning is to go to the Golden Corral with our friend Margaret for breakfast. We are usually standing in the entryway at 7:25 waiting for them to unlock the doors at 7:30.

As you can imagine, when you see the same people there every week and every week, you become friends with them. Sort of.

There is the elderly couple who come in close to the time we are ready to leave. They are a very handsome and dignified couple. They look like they have been together for a hundred years. In fact, they often times dress the same. If he has a red shirt, she has a red blouse-adorned with a pretty necklace. It may not be an exact match to his shirt but it will be some sort ‘a shade of red. Often times they both wear khaki slacks with a belt-his manly, hers feminine and petite. He may sport a sweater vest and she a sweater. They compliment each other and just look like they belong together.

He helps her with her coat.

She gets two glasses of juice.

He spreads plain white paper napkins on the table for placemats with all the care of fine linen.

She gets the silverware.

Table set, they sit together on the same side and share a few minutes of quiet conversation before they hold hands and bow their heads in prayer.

“Oh no,” we were told when we asked about them. “It’s a second marriage for both of them. His wife died and her husband died and they got together. They’ve only been married for a couple of years.”
There is the young man who comes in and sits by himself. If he gets there before us, he takes our table, then we have to use our backup table. He is dressed for work and he never makes eye contact or tries to engage anyone in conversation. He just sits there quietly, by himself, eating and getting up only to refill his drink glass or get a fresh plate of food. Then you look and he’s gone, a dollar bill sitting on the table.

There’s the elderly couple who are just so danged delightful. He was Navy and he liked my second-hand-store Navy tee-shirt. That’s how he started talking to us. We speak almost every week now, exchanging pleasantries as they stop by our table on their way to the door. They brought their kids and grandkids in for breakfast over the holidays. They are a very handsome family.

And the elderly lady who always shows Mike what’s on her plate as she passes by. It’s a game they have developed over time and now play every time she’s there. She’s a hoot.

There is the pair of elderly men who come in just about every Saturday and most Sundays too, I suspect. Bob and Jim. I had a hard time remembering which name went with which gentlemen for a while and Bob was getting aggravated with me, I could tell. But he has since forgiven me as I haven’t messed up their names in a long time now.

Bob is a bit of a local celebrity as his picture has been in the paper several times over the last month or so. He was recently honored with a Community Impact Award for his involvement with Hope House.

“What is Hope House?” you ask and I don’t blame you. If you don’t live here you wouldn’t know what it is.

More than a decade ago, Bob joined a group of local pastors and community leaders to open Hope House, a non-profit organization that offers a food pantry, emergency aid and a thrift store to assist the needy. Today, Hope House serves more than 600 Lake-area families every month.

There are others that we see on a regular basis too but you know what? As I write this it occurs to me that I have used the word ‘elderly’ a few times. In fact, it seems to be a reoccurring theme here. Thinking about it, I guess us old people get up and around earlier than families with kids do. However, they do start to trickle in about the time we are ready leave.

Roger is the manager at our Golden Corral. Yesterday morning Roger greeted us as he unlocked the doors.

“Is Sue here?” I asked. She’s our favorite waitress.

“Of course!” Roger answered. “Sue’s always here.”

“One of these days we’ll come in and she won’t be here. She’ll be sick or something,” I speculated.

“Oh no,” Roger said, “she’ll be here even if she is sick. If you stay home you don’t get paid.”

Ain’t that the truth. And in fact, Sue did have a headache that morning but she never let it stand in the way of taking good care of her guests. That’s us. That’s what they call us you know.

We continued our conversation on the way to the register. “I bet you wouldn’t know what to do if we didn’t show up here on Saturday morning,” I teased.

“Sure they would,” Mike joined in. “They get along just fine without us when we go to Pennsylvania.”

“Yeah, but I have to go for grief counseling every time you leave,” Roger said with a straight face and I laughed.

Hey!

Check out my new pickled red beet egg jar. Isn’t it cool? It will hold twenty-four hard boiled eggs and two cans of red beets.

Miss Helen had me do a few things for her last week with one of those things being cleaning some old jars out of a cupboard.

“I’ll never use them again. Would you like to have them?” she offered.

And I was tickled pink to have her old jars. This one is just perfect for

making homemade pickled red beet eggs. Another one, with a pretty lid, I can see holding beads or baubles in my glass shop. And I will always think of this special lady every time I see the jars.

Sometimes, when I’m writing, I need a little break. After I finished writing about the jars Miss Helen gave me, I decided to do just that. Take a little break and call my mama. After she had given me all of her news and with my new pickled red beet egg jar fresh in my mind, I decided to mention it to Momma.

“And I even made my own pickled red beets,” I proudly told her. “I bought the plain beets and that way I could control the sugar and other additives. It doesn’t need all that sugar, does it?”

“I don’t know. It makes it good though,” she said. She was quiet for a moment. “How did they taste?”

I hem-hawed a little bit. “Okay…I guess.” Not as good as I remember them being, but I didn’t say that.

“Did you use salt?” she asked. She knows of my proclivity to not use any salt. She believes food needs to be cooked with salt to taste good and she is absolutely right. However, you do get used to the taste of food without salt.

“Whatever Betty Crocker said to use,” I told her. Holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, I pulled the cookbook out and flipped to the right page. “It says ½ tsp salt. I four timesed the recipe so that would be two teaspoons, but I honestly don’t remember putting any salt in it at all.”

“Does it taste plain?” she asked and you know what? It did. I couldn’t have told her what was wrong with them but she nailed it anyway.

“Yeah,” I said but I didn’t want her to know how surprised I was that she guessed so I just said ‘yeah’ like it was no big deal.

“Salt makes sugar sweeter,” Momma said. “If you use salt, you don’t need as much sugar.”

“So you think I should put some salt in it?” I asked.

“You don’t have to put salt in the whole thing,” she said. She didn’t even sound condescending. “You can pull a little of the juice out and add a little salt to it and taste it.” (You might be surprised to know that that would never have occurred to me. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t.)

So, yeah. I did that. After I hung up the phone with her, I did what Momma suggested. And I’m guessing I forgot the salt because that was exactly what it needed. I had to call her back and tell her so. She laughed, but I suspect that she knew it the whole time. She is such a smart lady and beautiful too!

Something that has been on my ‘books’ for a while now is the last family night that we had with the kids.

Mike and I had done a little antiquing in Jefferson City (the capitol city of Missouri) and we found some antique stores that had been there for a long time but we hadn’t known they were there.

One of the most remarkable items that we found was an actual branding iron with an L brand. In all of our travels, all over this country, it is the first and only branding iron I’ve ever seen. Mike’s last name-as you well know-is Luby. It was an omen. A sign.

“Mike, you should buy this,” I told him. As much as we both wanted it, it was just too much money to sink into a dust collector at the time.

“We could brand Itsy,” I kid even now as I reminded him of our find.

“We could brand you!” he was kidding too (I hope).

Yeah. I wouldn’t like that, but the image of cowboys branding little dogies flashes through my minds eye.

We walked around this huge-wait a minute-HUGE!-antique store and I spotted this old fashion rocking horse. I wanted to buy it for Andrew.

“He has all kinds of riding toys and you think he’ll be happy with a rocking horse?” Mike asked and made me realize how silly I was.

I dismissed the idea. Maybe I just like the idea of a rocking horse and Andrew wouldn’t really enjoy it. But the longer we walked around looking at things, the more I thought about the rocking horse.

“It’s really in pretty good shape,” I told Michael, “and it’s only four dollars.” The thing that kept going through my head is that high-tech equals high stress. Sometimes-a lot of times-simple is better. It let’s you decompress, you know what I mean? And if he doesn’t like it…heck!…what’s four bucks?

“Whatever,” Mike says and to me that means yes. So I picked it up and handed it to him.

Another thing I found and felt like I might be wasting a dollar on was a wooden box full of…I don’t know what they are, nor do I know what they were for. But they were bright and colorful and there were a lot of them and what’s a dollar? I picked them up intending to ask you about them.

“What Peg! What are you talking about?” I hear you ask.

I’m talking about a wooden box full of plastic pieces in different shapes and colors, all with notches in them. Andrew played with them some but Kevin made some pretty cool sculptures while we were playing Skip-Bo.

 

So how about guys? Have you ever seen these before? If so, what are they? And no, there was nothing in or on the box.

Andrew…

My little heart.

Andrew is so smart!

The evening was winding down and Mom and Dad were thinking about heading for home.

“Get your coat,” Dad told Andrew.

Andrew, in true kid fashion, deployed the distraction method. He got on his rocking horse and started rocking.

The adults continued conversating er, conversing.

Andrew got off the horse.

“Let’s go home,” Mom said.

And guess what Andrew did?

If you guessed got back on the horse, then yep, you would be right. He got back on the horse and started rocking again.

We continued talking. Thinking we were sufficiently distracted, Andrew got off the horse again. He hadn’t gone more than three steps when Dad said, “Get your coat buddy.”

Andrew made a little noise like ‘oops’ or something, then he did an abrupt about face and jumped back on his mighty steed.

This continued for three or four more rounds until Mom and Dad had had enough.

Skip-Bo…

What can I say about Skip-Bo?

I love Skip-Bo. Mike and I play several times every day. Our deck is almost completely worn out! In fact, Mike’s has gotten me out of bed at 6:30 in the morning by sitting at the table and shuffling the cards. And I hopped out of bed and joined him in thirty seconds flat. Okay, maybe it was longer than that. I don’t know which one of us likes the game more.

We have taught Gary, our maintenance guy how to play and almost every morning he comes up for coffee and a round or two of Skip-Bo before they get on to whatever jobs they are going to get into that day.

Mike is so stinkin’ lucky! I’m tellin’ ya! He wins more than his share of the time and he also gets more skips than the rest of us.

“He’s such a skip magnet!” I told Gary.

“You mean chick magnet,” Mike corrected, but no, that isn’t what I meant.

Gary and I have tried all kinds of ways to foil Mike’s luck including choosing his stock pile for him to letting him choose and then swapping with him. It doesn’t seem to matter though. He always ends up with lots of skips.

Let’s call this one done.

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike