Retail Therapy

A couple of weeks ago I was battling an episode of depression. When I finally overcame the inertia that accompanied it, I did what every red-blooded American woman does when faced with a difficult situation--I went shopping.

First I stopped by a consignment shop just to kill some time and found a lovely hand-decorated vase for only $8. I checked in at Target, WalMart and Kohl's but found nothing I felt like spending money on. Even all the low-priced items at Dollar Tree didn't tempt me.

Then I went to Hamrick's where it was Senior Citizens' Day, got an extra 10% off already "on sale" items and paid $100 for clothing (2 swimsuits, a pair of capri pants and shoes) that was already cheaper than at almost any other place in town. Finally I ordered on line a couple of more pairs of capris, in colors I hadn't been able to find locally, for a "bargain" price even including shipping. (Just hope they fit!)

WOO HOO! I felt better than if I had spent the same amount of money with a professional counselor--and I got new STUFF to boot!

It's not as if I really needed those things--except maybe the swim suits. And some of the capris in my closet are looking a little "tired" so I just bought their replacements before they completely gave out. It didn't help the U. S. economy much--the clothing was made in China, Guatemala and Dominican Republic--but it brightened my outlook on life considerably.

I'm fortunate I can afford some "retail therapy" once in a while. Maybe I should budget for it under "Medical Expenses".

Murder, They Write

One of my favorite pastimes is reading, specifically mystery books by female American writers. They seem to have a way with plots and words different from men. They create quirky characters and delightful dialogue in interesting settings both in cities and small towns. Rarely is there graphic sex and/or violence (rather than a murder or two, of course). A few of my favorites are Susan Wittig Albert, Marcia Muller and North Carolina's own Margaret Maron. I can go to the library's Mystery shelves and find more enjoyable books by other authors than I can possibly read in my lifetime.

I've written before about the pleasures of using the Public Library. In a cost/benefit analysis it beats buying books or downloading them to a Nook or Kindle hands down. The choice of publications is amazing, and includes "talking books" and videos in addition to standard fare.

But, best of all, there are lots of mysteries. Yay!

Funeral Favors

In the past couple of years my collecting obsession has extended to buying decks of playing cards--mainly Congress brand bridge cards by the American Playing Card Company. It is amazing how many designs have been printed. I have only a very few. Because they sometimes came along with the Congress cards I bought on eBay, I have acquired a number of other decks from other manufacturers--single decks as well as double decks and gift sets that include a score pad and sometimes bridge tallies. (I have a small collection of tallies, too.)

I had originally planned to give them as gifts, but now I have more decks than I have friends. Daughter Cathy, ever the planner, says that when I die she's going to give them to funeral attendees as "funeral favors". Hope I have time to collect lots more in the meantime!

Will's Egg Salad

Grandson Will is so funny making egg salad for himself. Perhaps he is dreaming about becoming a chef. I have to mash up the boiled eggs. Pieces fly all over the kitchen when he does it. Then he adds mayonnaise and mustard and dashes of every seasoning in my spice cabinet except cinnamon and nutmeg. He says it tastes great. I'm just glad for him to eat it. Like so many kids, he's a picky eater. Now if he would just get interested in cooking vegetables....

Just Gotta Write

Every once in a while, as I have been lately, I get on a writing kick. Don't know where it comes from. All I know is it's there and I have to give in to it. I can understand writers needing to put pen or pencil to paper (or fingers to computer keyboards these days) to share their thoughts or tell a story. I'm no good at thinking up and/or telling stories, but I do like to preserve my mental ramblings from time to time. That need I have to express myself with words--whether anyone reads it or not--is being satisfied by my postings to this blog. Thank you blogspot.com!

I can't compose on the keyboard. I have to write it out in longhand first. I use a lot of notebook paper which I buy on sale at the beginning of each school year. I read, re-read and edit to try to make sure I've used correct grammar and sentence construction. I had some good English teachers more than a half-century ago who helped me learn that. (Thank you Iris Hunsinger at Central Junior High School, especially! Whenever I split an infinitive I think of you!)

Now I'm off to think and write about some other subject. Can't wait to see what it is, can you?

Y'all Come!

I love entertaining. That means cooking for someone (besides myself) a special recipe or two, or an old family one, setting the dining room table with china and silver and enjoying unhurried conversation and fellowship. It can also mean preparing goodies for lots of people to choose from in a buffet setting. Having an event catered takes the fun out of it.

People make jokes about Martha Stewart's entertaining style, but I appreciate the effort and attention to detail she and other TV hosts like Sandra Lee expend to make a meal visually enjoyable as well as tasty.

I love eating on china with silver (or silverplate) utensils and drinking from goblets instead of glasses. The only down side is having to clean up afterward. (Where are the butler and maid when I need them?)

People of my generation received china, crystal and silver as wedding gifts. Mostly it's packed away "for the kids/grandkids" or displayed in a china cabinet and brought out only on rare occasions. What a shame! It was made to be used, folks! And what better way than by entertaining.

So come on over, y'all. Just let me know ahead of time so I can get the table set!

Hail to the Pill Container

One of the world's greatest inventions (along with the microwave bacon cooker) is the divided plastic pill container. I was going to say "pill box" but there are different meanings for that phrase. It comes in a variety of configurations, but my favorites are the single daily dose boxes that hold a week's worth of pills. I have one in the kitchen for morning meds and one in my bathroom for nighttime pills. There is a third one for pain medication so I can keep track of how many of those I've downed during a day.

I load them once a week. Then I can see whether I need to order prescription refills or stock up on any supplements in plenty of time before they run out. Recently I did forget to re-order my sleeping medication and realized it on a Saturday night at bedtime. Thank goodness CVS is open 24 hours!

By looking at the container(s) I can tell if I've taken my daily doses--great for those of us who get short term memory losses.

My containers are fairly large to accomodate multi-vitamin pills, calcium plus D tablets of a size that would choke a horse, plus fish oil capsules in addition to my smaller prescribed medicines. I won't bother listing the other supplements I take hopefully to make up for an inadequate diet or improve some condition or other in some small way.

What I haven't been able to find is some pill to safely counteract my craving for sweets and other fattening foods. Believe me, my pill containers would be full of those!

The Lost Art of Letter Writing

In discussing my blog posts, daughter Kim mentioned the old practice of writing letters. My aunts wrote each other almost daily. When I was away from home I could count on getting a letter from my mother written each week when she was at "Ye Olde Haire Repaire". Even travelling abroad you could get mail through the American Express office in whatever city you were visiting if the correspondent knew about when you'd be there.

Now it is really a lost art. So much of history has been learned from letters written to and by now famous and not-so-famous people. We glean information about their lives and times that otherwise might be lost. In centuries to come are historians and other researchers going to be able to access emails or Facebook posting or Tweets for information about people's everyday lives in the way letters can be studied?

My father was a great letter writer. Even as a teenager he typed (!) letters flawlessly with correct spelling and grammar. He and my mother wrote letters to each other daily when he was in the Navy during WWII. And, wonder of wonders, they each saved them all! I am in the process of putting them in order (they've gotten mixed up due to being transferred from box to box over time) but it's slow going because I keep wanting to stop and read them.

One letter, written by my mother in 1935 (the year before they were married) to Daddy on his birthday, was sort of sticking up out of a pile of other correspondence, so I chose to read it. She said in a P.S. "Don't you think this will be a "sweet" note for our children to read some day--". How prophetic! We're so glad it was saved!

The letters my children wrote to me are a treasure, as are the few from grandaughter Hannah. She writes beautifully. Grandson Will's handwriting (both cursive and manuscript) is almost illegible. What I would give to have a letter or two from him preserving it!

I have a drawer full of stationery and note cards collected over the past 30+ years just begging to be used. (Some may be older than that. Remember the old Easerase paper we used to type on in college? I still have some.) Too bad I don't have anyone special to write to. And too bad I'm too cheap to spend postage to write friends and family when a phone call or a computer note will do. I'll just have to leave it up to someone else to preserve "the lost art of letter writing".

Even MORE STUFF!

Along with flatware, I also collect dishes. I have the nice Centura by Corning dishes we got when I got married. We also got a nice set of real china (Lexington by Oxford) of which I have 12 place settings. I got a new set of blue and yellow painted dishes from Pier One when I moved into this house. (I don''t remember whether I have a set of 8 or 12 place settings.) They were replaced a couple of years ago with 12 place settings from WalMart in a modern design that matches my new kitchen decor. I bought a set of 16 place settings of Christmas dishes at Brendle's (remember that store?) a number of years ago. Of course I have to drag them out every year for the holidays. When Aunt Tony went into Assisted Living I got her china--8 place settings, more or less. When Mother and Herb replaced her everyday Wedgewood dishes they (the dishes, not M and H) went into storage in my attic. (Cathy has Mother's old china.) When former mother-in-law Phid gave up her apartment, her dishes were stored here, too. On a whim a couple of years ago I bought a 4 place setting set of yellow Fiestaware but one of the cups was missing so I have only 3 of those. It doesn't fit well into my dishwasher so it's going to either find a new home or go into the attic too.

I have enough dishes of various styles to serve more than 60 people. And, with the flatware sets I wrote about earlier, enough knives, forks and spoons to go with them. Oh, such an estate sale my family is going to have when I'm gone!

More STUFF!

Among my many collections of STUFF is flatware--knives, forks and spoons of various sizes as well as serving pieces. Our father always insisted we eat with sterling silver. It was one of our parents' first purchases when they married. (My brother uses it now.) Though our dishes were a cheap Blue Willow pattern and our glasses were often old jelly jars, the table was set with a tablecloth and properly arranged knives, forks and spoons, even though due to the menu some might not be needed.

When I got married we were given a sterling service for 8 plus numerous serving pieces which we did not use daily. Instead, Grandma Fowler got us a full set of Oneida silverplate (I don't remember the pattern) using Betty Crocker box tops and other General Mills coupons. After the divorce I got the sterling silver. It had been monogrammed which I had removed. I replaced the Betty Crocker silverplate (which I think later went to Kim) with another silverplate pattern which I used until I got tired of polishing it. I felt Daddy turn over in his grave when I switched to stainless steel flatware.

Meanwhile, I had inherited a set of silverplate from Great Aunt Lola and another from Aunt Tony. The latter was quite tarnished and did not come in a chest, so I put it away in a shoe box.

For a couple of years I used inexpensive stainless every day. Then I found a beautiful set of very nice stainless at an estate sale. It looks like Aunt Lola's silverplate. (If I'm not careful the two get mixed up if we've used both at a gathering.)

Recently I decided to sell some old sterling silver that had been gathering dust and tarnish in the cabinet. (Got an excellent price from Ashmore Rare Coins!) That prompted me to look at Aunt Tony's silverplate again. I spent many hours cleaning and polishing it. I even splurged and bought a couple of matching serving spoons from Replacements, Ltd. I used them for the first time at lunch today along with Aunt Tony's lovely china.

Lordy! I have 6 sets of eating utensils! I can set places for more than 60 people!

Sad thing is that I do very little entertaining these days. But when I do, I'll have plenty of knives, forks and spoons for everyone!

See You at the Pool

For the past several years I have been part of a water exercise group at the Spears YMCA. Most of the class members have MS (multiple sclerosis) which affects their muscles and movements to varying degrees. I am fortunate that they let me stay in the class though I no longer am there because I provided transportation for one of the class members who can no longer drive. I even substitute as leader when the wonderful teacher, Wyn Hrdlicka, is absent.

Water exercise is great! No one care what you body looks like--it's all under water anyway. It's kind of a nuisance getting dressed afterwards (I wear my suit under my clothes coming from home) but the good feelings after wiggling around in the water for 45 minutes are well worth it.

You can exercise at many levels of intensity. Just as with walking, if you can talk while doing it you probably aren't getting an aerobic workout, but even low intensity water work is beneficial. For people with MS and other neuromuscular problems, just being able to move without the negative effects of gravity is good. Can't move one or both of your legs easily? As Wyn says, "Any right leg will do." We use buoys and plastic foam noodles to be able to stay balanced and/or suspended in the water. Every muscle group gets a workout but never to the extent that it is unpleasant.

The back pain I used to be afflicted with is gone and I feel a good tiredness after each session.

See you at the pool?

Mmmmmm...Bacon!

When it comes to comfort foods, bacon is one of my big 3--along with chocolate and ice cream. I am grateful for whoever discovered and perfected the idea of cooking it by hanging it up across plastic bars in the microwave. I love the little flavor bits that drip down into the tray in the process, too.

I was sad to find out that pork in any form is not good for dogs. I used to give my dogs a bit of leftover bacon grease to (supposedly) add shine to their coats, but had to stop when I found out that enzymes in pig meat or fat are harmful to canines.

I love bacon in all kinds of foods--crumpled in sour cream with chili sauce for Bugle Dip, wrapped around water chestnuts and sprinkled with brown sugar for Bacon Doodahs, and wrapped around sea scallops and baked as well as in a salad. None of those fake bits you buy from the store; gotta have the REAL THING.

While I was growing up Mother cooked bacon and eggs and a couple of pieces of toast every morning for her breakfast. We kids could choose that or cold cereal to start our days. The bacon grease was always strained and saved in a can on the stove to add to vegetables cooked for dinner. It pains me mightily to pour it into the garbage now.

On low carb diets bacon is a acceptable food item along with whole eggs. That's enough fo make me want that for my diet regimen. Egg whites cooked in a pan coated with non-stick spray just does not satisfy the way whole eggs do! And with bacon...mmmm.

I want to thank Oscar Mayer et al for their delicious contributions to the titilation of my palate.

Love ya, bacon!

Cleaning Out Stuff

Today I decided to clean out my two kitchen desk office supply drawers. I found more STUFF than one person should ever have--43 black or blue ink ball point pens--12 from Bank of Oak Ridge! Three other pens have red ink and 6 more are roller ball or felt tip types. Need a mechanical pencil? I counted 19 in my pencil and pen basket. And there are a bunch more all over the house. Regular pencils? 10 plus 2 red pencils. There were paper clips and rubber bands galore--some of which came from my mother's desk. She died in 1999. There were 4 pairs of scissors, 3 tweezers and 2 cuticle nippers but only one toenail clipper. The four nail files and 5 emery boards go along with them.

I thought I was running low on eraser sticks, so I recently bought 3--which now go along with the four I found among the pencils and pens. There were old stamps (again from my mother's collection) and numerous little sticky note pads of various sizes. There were felt-tip markers and highlighters of various colors--mostly pink and yellow--and 5 glue sticks that weren't dried up. (Several more were.) A stapler, 2 boxes of staples and a staple puller-outer were there too along with 4 rolls of Wite-Out correction tape and one bottle of correction fluid. (I'm prepared when I make mistakes.)

I even found a little bitty magnifying glass. (Now I have to put it where I can find it next time I try to read that little bitty phone book type!)

There were 4 hand-held calculators (dollar-store type) though most times I use a larger desk-type one. Or just use a pencil or pen on paper the old fashioned way.

I found penny wrappers, extra leads for mechanical pencils and erasers for regular pencils, extra credit cards, old business cards (for me and others) and a bunch of deposit slips for the Bank of Oak Ridge (which I use when I go steal their pens).

And 2 chop sticks.

Now my problem is figuring out how many of what to put back in the drawers and what to do with the rest!

Wait, wait--don't tell me!

I'm Hooked!

I am an addict. I admit it. It started a year and a half ago when Cathy introduced me to the pleasure it could bring. I started slowly with one or two at a time. Now I can't get enough and at times it consumes me to the point I don't want to do anything else.

What is this evil obsession? SUDOKU puzzles!

They're free from the Internet and I print out as many as 40 at a time and keep them on a clipboard on the dinette table where they beckon me to forget housekeeping, reading or watching TV--the things "normal" people do in their spare time.

I started out at the Easy level, then moved to the Medium level where I stayed quite a while. Then I took on the Hard ones and find I can solve most of them without an error--though I goof up enough to know I'm not quite ready for the next level--the Evil ones.

Once I start one it's hard--yea, nigh impossible--to stop. If I find I've made an error and can't find it on my own, I look that puzzle number up on the website (www.websudoku.com) and fix it. I just can't quit until it's neat and complete.

So I'm warning you! Once you learn how to do them and find that it brings you pleasure you may get hooked, too.