80!

 

80!

That’s how old this handsome guy is. Our neighbor Lamar turned 80 this past week and Miss Rosie hosted a lunch for him.

This is not all of the people who attended the small but fabulous lunch, but it is what’s left of Lamar’s most immediate family.

In the back row is brother Larry with Lamar next to him. The middle row is Miss Rosie with her arms wrapped around Larry’s wife Lois. Then it’s his sister Loretta. Lena, seated in the front, is the oldest of the Kipp kids.

“We need one with everyone in it,” Lamar said and went off to find someone to take the picture for us.

Stacy took the photo and did what a lot of people do; she put us in the middle of the frame. 

Luckily, I’m pretty good at editing. The additions to the photo, besides Mike and me, are Ernestine, Miss Rosie’s cousin, seated in the front on the left. Joyce, on the other end in front is Lamar’s widowed sister-in-law. And just behind Joyce is Shelby, Joyce’s caregiver and great-granddaughter!

For a birthday gift, I made Lamar a homemade card. Inside I tucked a coupon entitling him to one homemade cheesecake. For some reason he thinks I make the best cheesecake.

Rosie and Lamar were just back from a weekend trip down to Lancaster County to see their girls and celebrate two birthdays. Both Lamar and their daughter Jenn share the same birth date.

“You might be surprised to hear that when we were out with the girls, he turned down cheesecake,” Miss Rosie said. “He said yours is the best and he’d just be disappointed if he got one, so he didn’t.”

Now, Miss Rosie didn’t tell me this until I’d called her with a problem I was having.

“Since Lamar likes my cheesecakes, I’m going to make him one for his birthday,” I told Miss Rosie.

“It would be better if you gave him an IOU for one. We’ll likely have leftover cake from the birthday lunch, Ernestine is making him a pineapple cake, and I’ve got some peaches here I have to make into something before I lose them.”

“Well, I already made it,” I confessed. “And that’s why I’m calling. When it was baking, a whole bunch of sugar wept out. It’ll either be good or it’ll be the worst cheesecake I ever made!”

Then I told Miss Rosie what I’d done.

“Remember when I was making Stupid Pie?”

“Yeah?”

“It calls for the egg whites to be whipped with a teaspoon of baking powder and that made the whites stiffen faster. I decided to try that with the cheesecake recipe because it calls for the egg whites to be beat until stiff then folded in. Do you think that’s what made it weep?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

I asked Copilot, my artificial intelligence buddy, about it later. Also, in my question, I included the only other element that was different from usual. One of the cream cheese blocks that I was using was really soft.

Copilot says that baking soda in egg whites is not generally a good idea. Although you get peaks faster, it can destabilize. Cream of tartar would be better choice. But it thought the culprit was likely the extra moisture in the cream cheese.

“The liquid was likely water, not sugar. Sugar caramelizes or crystallizes, it doesn’t pool,” Copilot said.

All I know is when I noticed something was burning and pulled open the oven door, there was a puddle in the bottom of the oven. I shut the oven off, pulled out the cheesecake and the wire rack, got a bowl of hot water and a dishcloth, and as carefully as I could, sopped up the mess. It seemed syrupy. I’m really surprised I didn’t burn myself but I wanted to get the mess cleaned up as quickly as I could and the cheesecake back in the oven to finish baking. But before I did that, I put it on a cookie sheet. I didn’t need a repeat.

To be honest, I was just as glad that an IOU for a cheesecake would work better for Lamar and Rosie, since I was curious how this one turned out. After it cooled, I had a piece. It was okay. At least I didn’t have to throw it away. I froze some and gave some away.

          “Who did you give some to?” you wanna know.

          Who did I give it to? Well, let me tell you!

          The last big rain we had? The one that flooded the neighbor’s yard because the ditches couldn’t handle it?

          Sally had called the township and either asked or told them they needed to clean the ditch out. I don’t know which. They came out pretty quick and cleaned out the ditch.

          Mike went down and talked to Joe, the supervisor.

          “If you buy the pipe, we’ll put it in,” Joe told Mike.

          “Why?” I asked Mike when he told me later. “It was like a once-in-50-year downpour! None of the ditches or pipes anywhere could keep up with it.”

          “It needs replaced, Peg,” Mike told me. “It’s getting full of dirt.”

          Both Mike and our neighbor Vernon ordered pipe and it was delivered this week.

          Mike let Joe know the pipe was here and they came out and put it in.

Mike and I watched for a little while.

Joe posed for me, flashing the peace sign.

When they were done, they used the bucket of the backhoe to put the address marker back in for us.

“That’ll put it in farther than I could pound it in,” Mike said. 

Our driveway entrance is done and hopefully it doesn’t flood again and upset Sally.

They were almost done with Vernon’s when I thought to offer them a piece of cheesecake. Heaven knows I don’t need to eat it all! Devon, the backhoe operator, accepted my offer but Joe said no and stroked his stomach like he’s trying to watch his weight. I gave Devon two pieces. They weren’t very big anyway.

This is what 66 looks like. This old woman had a birthday on Saturday. Hair down, no glasses, paint shirt, sitting at my desk.

This is 66 with my hair back, glasses on, out to birthday dinner with my handsome mountain man. My gray is more obvious with my hair back.

Miss Rosie gives the best gifts! This year she gave me two birthday presents! A beautiful shirt that says, “Not perfect, just forgiven.” Underneath that it has a Bible reference of 1 John 1:9.

Do you wanna know what 1 John 1:9 says?

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 

This verse emphasizes the importance of confession and God's faithfulness in forgiving sins, highlighting a key theme of repentance and forgiveness in the Bible.

          Miss Rosie painted this church scene on a piece of slate, and I keep finding new things to love about it. The flowers, the broken fence. The white church with its green roof feels like a quiet, restful place, nestled in a summer landscape. The rainbow overhead isn’t just decorative — it’s a promise from God that He will never again flood the world.

          I love that she chose slate as her canvas. It’s rugged, earthy, and imperfect, just like me! Her brushwork is simple but intentional. I love the colors, and the care she put into it. It’s more than a painting. It’s a prayer in pigment.

          After I was done oohing and aahing over the gifts, I offered them a piece of the less-than-perfect cheesecake. Miss Rosie took hers home but Lamar didn’t see anything wrong with it — so I gave him a second piece to take home!

          Speaking of less than perfect, I repainted the cat portrait and though not perfect, I like it much better than the first time I painted it. The green isn’t as vivid as the first time and some of my peeps like that. The green really bothered them. For me, it was the area on the forehead that bothered me. I had trouble and overworked it to the point the paper was breaking down.

          I also strung the cats.

          I hung it up and took a photo.

Then I sent it to my peeps.

“I like the beads on the branch,” my beautiful sister said. “But the beads on top of the cats might look better if they were more colorful and fun!”

“I don’t have any,” I told Phyllis.

“Do you have paint?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Then you have colored beads!”

Phyllis was right but I was working with what I had. I didn’t try to paint them because they were varnished or shellacked or something. They were shiny anyway and I wasn’t sure how they would take color. I went out in the old art room and found some beads that were raw. I was sitting and painting them, getting paint all over my fingers, and thought, the heck with this! I got online and ordered colored beads.  I’ll work on restringing it next week. Then it goes in the mail with the cat portrait to its new home in California! 

          We went for a golf cart ride on our back roads. The dogs love to go for rides! I took pictures.

          Purple Loosestrife.

          A white milkweed.

It was a nice ride until a car went past and we got dusted.

Hatch was sitting in the grass when we got home. He still doesn’t want to be friends but he runs from us less and less. 

Now I have two white lilies on my pond!

Boneset is blooming. 

We went two places this week. We had Big Red inspected and these are the photos from that trip.

I took a few pictures of this old truck and went up to sit on the porch.

Right off I noticed the sign that reads, “NO ALCOHOL OR TOBACCO ON PREMISES”

It wasn’t until I went to set my coffee on the makeshift table and see the ashtray with cigarette butts in it that the contradiction strikes me.

Turkeys with babies!

The other place we went was into Dushore to pay for our pipe at the Agway store.

Look at the hillside full of Bergamot!

Mike and I had lunch at Mary Beth’s Westside Deli. He likes the bacon cheeseburger and I usually get the Westside Cheesesteak.

Afterward, we went up on the hill and checked in on Pop, Momma, and brother Mike. My beloved Aunt Marie is there, too, as well as some of my cousins. Mike and I often talk about buying a plot so we have an earthly remembrance of our time on this earth. Since we’ll both be cremated, we don’t actually need a plot and I’m not sure that either one of us cares that much about having a marker, but maybe future generations will. How do you feel about it? 

Let’s call this one done!

Done!