southerneveryday-blog

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Don't try this at home

Lessons I learned in the ‘60s

I spent a day in my hometown last weekend, driving down streets I lived on at one time or another, searching for places where stores and schools used to be, and being shocked that the forever-walk from the corner market to my Grandmother’s house turned out to be a short block long. I discovered the “park” where I hunted Easter Eggs at the base of Myrtle Hill Cemetery is now a huge granite memorial of some sort and you couldn’t hide an Easter egg on it if you had to. I had fun pointing out to Harold some of the landmarks of my life – like the back door to the police department where my Uncle Richard took me to pay my first-ever (but not last) speeding ticket. Some places just leave their marks on you.

It was a good trip if a little unnerving to see how drastically changed places had become or looked to me. Things change, time marches on and our youthful perspectives mature.

Growing up in the 1950-60s was an amazing experience. So many things happened during that time, both good and bad. And although humanity in the USA experienced some horrific growing pains during those two decades, we grew to be much better as a whole.

Today I was thinking about the important life-lessons I learned as a result of being a teen in the 1960s – lessons that I had to learn only once for them to last a lifetime. These are lessons that impacted my decision making process as an adult, something I just realized recently. I will be forever grateful for learning the following.

·       Q-T does not “tan”…it just turns the skin a pumpkin-pie orange. The self-tanning products on the market today are so much better and make un-tan-able people like me have at least a semblance of some “sun”. Not so when I slathered Q-T on my whole body, face included, just before a prom one year. Big mistake!!!!

·       Baby oil mixed with iodine does NOT a sunscreen make. Nor does it support a tan. It just greases a body like a Butterball turkey at Thanksgiving going into the oven. The result is similar to the turkey – dried out and/or burned skin. I burned badly about a month before my wedding day. Big mistake.

·       If you have black hair and you want blonde hair, don’t be fooled into thinking that pouring a bottle of straight peroxide on it will turn it Troy Donahue yellow. Rather, your hair will look much like the Q-T tan I mentioned before only worse. Orange – a horrible orange. I have my brother to thank for this life lesson. He tried it on himself just before school pictures one year. He didn’t tell Mother what he was going to do. I remember where I was when he showed her his peroxide-orange hair.  We have the school pictures to prove it. Big mistake.

·       Taking only one pair of shoes (brand new, never-before-worn loafers) to a two-day college orientation is not a good idea. You can’t look cute walking around campus with blisters all over your feet…it’s hard to fake that kind of pain. I did that and learned my lesson about wearing new shoes before breaking them in. Big mistake.

·       The “grapefruit diet” doesn’t work. Neither does the “egg diet”. And toasting bread does NOT burn most of the calories out of it. Who thought up these things?

The 1950s and 60s were good for giving us some things, like Elvis and The Beatles, t.v. dinners and transistor radios. We take the good with the bad in life, and hopefully learn from the things that weren’t so good. If we pay close attention along the way, we don’t repeat those things that weren’t so good….which is exactly why I am not walking around in orange skin and orange hair with blisters on my feet while eating nothing but grapefruit and burned toast …all the time thinking I look cute and cool. That would be a Big Mistake!

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Saturday Sampler 23

When I say “go to” recipes, the following pie has been my “go to” for as long as I can remember. Fast, light and most importantly, NO BAKE, this pie goes together quickly for one of those desserts that is sure to please most everyone who likes chocolate (like the whole world except my younger daughter and we are still wondering what happened in her young life to make her that way). 

 The original recipe calls for squares of semi-sweet chocolate, but I learned early on that powdered cocoa mixed with a little cooking oil is a cheaper substitute without sacrificing any flavor at all.

Top this wonderful pie with whipped cream and some toasted almonds to make it truly scrumptious. Oh my land, just thinking about this pie makes my mouth water! 

French Silk Pie

1 – 8” Graham cracker pie crust

½ c. butter or margarine, softened to near room temperature

¾ c. sugar

2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

1 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

Beat butter in mixer.  Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy (meaning several minutes). Add melted chocolate and vanilla.  Beat well.  Add eggs, ONE AT A TIME, beating 5 full minutes after each addition. Pie filling will become light and fluffy.  Pour mixture into pie shell and chill at least 2 hours. Serve with whipped cream.

*You can substitute 3 T. powdered Hershey’s cocoa mixed with 1 T. vegetable oil for 1 oz. unsweetened chocolate square. I do this regularly.

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My Personal Danger Zone

I take my Southern life in my own hands daily. Walking outside to inhale massive amounts of pollen, driving in a University town when school is in session, opening a can of tuna without checking the expiration date,  living with Harold….all those things can be dangerous if I don’t pay close attention to what I am doing and take precautions. But none of those things pose nearly the danger I face when I get up in the middle of a dark night to go to the bathroom.  Mature women may age – can I get an Amen?!

I understand the urgent need to visit “the necessary” in the middle of the night when I was pregnant. Not only is there a good reason for it – there was a sweet baby cramping the space occupied by my bladder and there’s only so much room that bladder can give up. I’m also convinced multiple nocturnal trips to “the loo” prepared me for getting up a hundred times a night when that sweet bundle moved from my belly to the nursery. Most of all, I knew there is an end to it after I delivered my baby. I can handle most anything if I know there is a beginning and end.

But as we women begin to “mature”, that same bladder is one of the first organs to decide it’s time to retire. Overworked for more than half-a-century, one day my bladder decided, “Hey, I don’t have to do this (hold it) as much anymore if I don’t want to. I’m taking a permanent vacation and going to let myself go.” Literally.

Making frequent trips to the Little Girls Room is ok during the day. A little “you’ve got to be kidding!” frustration, but ok. But having to get up in the middle of the night, sometimes several times, is pushing my patience a bit, not to mention my bathroom has become a danger zone.

Falling asleep isn’t as easy as it used to be (nothing is as easy as it used to be) so when I finally drift off into a wonderful dreamland, I get pretty perturbed when I’m prodded into an awareness (not fully awake-ness) by a discomfort that is hard to put a finger on. I’m mostly asleep so it takes a while to realize, “Hey, you need to go tinkle.”  Once I figure out why I’m uncomfortable I have to decide if I can “hold it” until morning. Hopefully, I can ignore the urge enough to get back to sleep.  I always lose that battle and a trip to the bathroom wins out.

So, I roll out of bed. I don’t get up…I roll over and roll off of the side of the bed. A slow and gentle roll, mind you, because I’m not sure what’s going to work – will my back catch before I can straighten up? Will my knees lock into place so I can get as far as the bathroom? Will my ankles work? Gingerly I make my way toward the bathroom where I am about to literally taking my life into my own hands.

Being mostly asleep, I am in danger of doing one of several things on any given night because when I get up to go to the bathroom at 2 a.m., I don’t open my eyes. I may as well be blind folded because I’m not going to open my eyes! I want to stay asleep as much as possible during this brief interruption in my night.  

My bathroom is a danger zone because all of the following things that have happened to me on more than one midnight-bathroom run. 1. Running into the half-opened door pretty much knocking myself out for a few seconds. 2. Stubbing my toe on the chest of drawers that has been in the same place the last 15 years. 3. Misjudging where I am and missing the toilet completely as I’m trying to sit down. 4. Worse yet, lowering my bottom down and hitting toilet water because the person I left sound asleep in my bed forgot to lower the seat before he turned in for the night. This happens mostly in the winter when the water is cold! 5. Sitting down, sound asleep, eyes closed and reaching out to find there is no toilet paper left on the roll! This is frustrating as I have to decide how long I can sit there, mostly asleep, eyes closed without falling off of the toilet. I won’t go into detail how I solve this problem. Believe me, you don’t want to know. 6. Stubbing my toe on that same chest of drawers on the way back to the bed…the chest that has been in the same place the last 15 years.

I think it’s pretty unfair that women have to endure all the things we have to endure in life just because we are female. We will talk about those things at a later date, but for right now, having weak bladders as we age – excuse me, mature – is right at the top of the list. There are enough danger zones in every day life without one of them being my very own bathroom at night.

It might help if I bought a night light.

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A song, a kiss and a hug

Well, let me begin by saying there is a good reason people need to look at written-down recipes when they share them with friends. Like me. I may have gotten the ingredients right (all both of them) but I should have double checked the oven temperature. I gave you the wrong one and I apologize. Thanks to my friend who texted me to double check biscuits baking at 285 degrees! Hopefully no one has tried to make the biscuits yet because I bet you are still waiting for them to get to that “golden brown”.  The correct temperature is 385 degrees.  Now, go try that recipe!

Since I’ve started the week asking for forgiveness, it seems like an appropriate time to talk about “church ladies.”  I don’t mean “talk about” them, as in gossip or, you know, be mean.  I just want to share with you some of the more colorful ladies with whom I have attended church over my life, women who simply by being themselves delighted my soul.

The first such lady I remember is a woman in the congregation where I grew up and whose name I don’t remember at all. I’m sorry about that. But I remember where this lady sat every Sunday – to my right on the other side of the aisle about three rows behind the pew where my grandmother and I sat every Sunday. The Body of Believers with whom I have always worshiped sing hymns accapella (without instruments), therefore we all sing out with gusto whether we can carry a tune or not. We figure the Good Lord overlooks our more tone-deaf members and hears our hearts. At least, I hope He does!

Anyway, this wonderful lady must have had some theatrical training, possibly even for the opera. Her soprano voice was strong and clear and came from deep within her diaphragm. It was also loud and about half a beat behind the rest of the congregation. As a child, this intrigued me. Never once did I think she lagged behind the rest of us on purpose or to show out her Carnegie Hall vocal chords. I just thought she had a lot of voice to offer and it was hard for her to keep up with the tempo of the rest of the congregation. I was in awe of this church-lady’s voice….not because it was so pretty but because there was just so much of it!  The lesson I learned as a little girl and carry with me to this day was that we all praise God in our own ways with the unique gifts He gives us. And boy, did He gift that lady!

When Harold and I were newlyweds we lived in Biloxi, Mississippi, a choice made for us by the U.S. Air Force. I was scared. I had never lived this far from home. Biloxi had been hit by Hurricane Camille the previous year and still showed scars of that deadly storm.

The congregation with whom we worshiped in Biloxi was an interesting mix of military that regularly filtered in-and-out as assignments changed and life-long Gulf-coast residents.  Among the life residents with whom we worshiped was a family of three elderly people, two sisters and their brother. I loved this family because their joy in being “in church” was sincere and infectious. The brother, Robert E. Lee, (no joke) always had a smile on his face coupled with a word of encouragement for everyone. One of the two sisters took Paul’s instruction in Romans 16:16 quite literally, “Greet one other with a holy kiss.” And she did! I never knew whether to embrace this lady’s heart-felt desire to give each of us a peck on the cheek every Sunday or to hide in the ladies restroom until services began. I chose to welcome those kisses given by a lady who truly loved the Lord. The lesson I learned as a young married far from home was God’s love sometimes shows itself in ways I may not be expecting, like a kiss on the cheek from an elderly lady I barely knew. But little affections, freely given from pure hearts, can fill in the cracks of a frightened young home-sick soul. Welcome them!

Then we settled in Athens to raise our family here and this is where my life was touched by an angel in the form of the incomparable church-lady, Miss Lillie. What my Biloxi church-lady did with a kiss on the cheek, Miss Lillie does with a hug. Lillie has to have an extra chamber in her heart that opens itself to engulf every person she meets with love, love, love. Miss Lillie’s hugs are legendary – they are that good. Whether you are in the church parking lot, sitting in a pew on Sunday or looking for a sale on Breyer’s ice cream in the frozen food section of the grocery, Miss Lillie will open up her arms when she sees you, draw you into her loving embrace and fill you with a warmth you didn’t know you needed. The lesson I have learned from Miss Lillie is the healing power of a hug given with unconditional love. I’m glad Miss Lillie is in my corner and if she gets to heaven before I go, I want her standing just inside the Pearly gates waiting for me with one of those hugs!

I have been blessed to know these “church ladies” and to be on the receiving end of their special gifts. I want to be a church lady like that one day!

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Correction on those biscuits.  385 degrees.  I should have used my recipe card after all!!!

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Lowell's Biscuits

Most the time when I share a recipe I have to look at my recipe card to be sure I don’t leave out any ingredients. But this time I’m writing this from memory. With only two ingredients, it’s hard to mess up!

This recipe comes from a wonderful “church friend” of ours, Lowell Rainey. Lowell is one of those guys who can fix or build anything. (I wish he lived next door to me!) In addition to his carpenter and fix-it skills­­­, Lowell can cook...and one of his specialties is biscuits! Lowell’s biscuits are so famous the church ladies request them for special pot luck suppers. Lowell’s daughter told me he also makes strawberry jam in the spring. Her favorite way to eat these biscuits is the day-after he makes them. She cuts one in half, spreads butter on top and pops it under the broiler to toast a little. Then she slathers her Daddy’s strawberry jam all over it and says “it’s like eating strawberry shortcake for breakfast.” Sounds good to me.

The first time I made Lowell’s biscuits, I handled the dough a little too gently because that’s what one typically does with biscuit dough. The result was delicious biscuits that were so light they fell apart as I tried to get them out of the pan. So forget the “handle with care” rule because these biscuits benefit from a little kneading after you’ve mixed them up. But just a little – enough to hold the dough together.

 Try these fast-and-easy-and-oh-so-good biscuits. Like my friend Diane said after she made them the first time, “Delish!” I agree!!!!

  LOWELL’S BISCUITS

1 ¾ c. White Lily Self-Rising Flour

1 ¼ c. heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 285 degrees. Liberally grease a cake pan or a 10” cast iron skillet.

Stir flour and cream together in a bowl. Turn dough out on a lightly floured surface. Knead gently 3 or 4 times, max. Form into a log shape. Cut log in half, then cut each half in half, then do it again to make 8 biscuits.

Place biscuits in pan and brush tops with melted butter. Bake about 20 minutes or until golden brown on top. 

Note: If using cast iron skillet, stick it in the oven for a few minutes to preheat before putting biscuits in it. Also, I use a serrated knife to cut my dough. Run knife through some extra flour before making each cut to keep dough from sticking.

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Another day, another race

This is a season for races, what with the Kentucky Derby running tomorrow and all. As I was pulling weeds today (which is a race in itself and at the moment, the weeds are winning by a full length, to use a horse racing term), I started thinking about something that elicits both a positive and negative emotion deep within my soul and it involves races. I am talking about “Field Day” in elementary schools.

I have the utmost respect for all teachers which goes to ultimate respect when I consider what all they have to do during Field Day each spring.  Keeping order within four walls every weekday must be a challenge for these educators and their para-pros, but to do so on the wide open playgrounds with the whole school running around must be a nightmare. More power to them! Respect is the positive thing I was referring to.

To say I don’t like Field Day is a major understatement. I detest Field Day. That’s the negative thing.  There is absolutely nothing about Field Day that I personally like, which is pretty confusing given we didn’t have Field Days when I was a kid in school. At least not that I remember.

The closest Northside Elementary ever came to a Field Day was a “May Day” celebration we had one year, complete with a May Pole. I think the reason we celebrated “May Day” (whatever that is) was because we had a visiting teacher from Australia and this must have been an attempt at “International Relations” or an “International Cultural Experience”. Sometime during the one year Miss Dix from Australia was with us we all learned the song “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree”, which I thought fulfilled the cultural experience requirement. I guess that wasn’t enough so we had May Day. There wasn’t much to it, as far as Field Days go.

Well, thank goodness Northside didn’t have Field Days because, if you remember from earlier posts, in the 1950s girls had to wear dresses to school, even on snow days, so things like potato sack races and three legged races would not have been appropriate and definitely not viable for equal-opportunity-racing against boys in blue jeans and sneakers. Make no mistake, we could have beaten any of those boys, but none of us wanted to make them feel really badly for eating the dust of us girls in dresses!

Had there been Field Days during my elementary school years, you can rest assured there would have been a day each year my teachers could have counted on me being absent.  I would have found a way to fake sickness enough that my Mother would have taken me to my Grandmother’s house and made me take a dose of paregoric, which I would have gladly done to avoid Field Day. Foot races have never been my thing.

So, I’m wondering why I don’t like Field Day if I never participated in one? And the answer is, I have absolutely no idea. I just know I avoided Field Day like the plague when my girls were in school. I served as homeroom mother and PTA president and most anything else that needed a volunteer at Barnett Shoals Elementary, but I was conveniently “indisposed” on Field Day every year.

Maybe it was because summer is not my most favorite time of the year. Something about sweating just makes me feel sticky and a zillion kids sweating all over Field Day does not sound like fun.

 Maybe it was expecting Field Day lunch to be a peanut-butter-apple-jelly sandwich out of a sack with an apple. Yuk.

Maybe Field Day reminds me of being picked last for soft ball and Red Rover back at Northside.  That would make a lot of people want to avoid a day of “team building races.”

Well, whatever the reason, I am not a fan of Field Day, even though my kids loved it. Specifically, I’m not that crazy about three-legged races and sack races. But what am I afraid of? No one is going to choose me to be on their foot-race team at my stage of life. Now that I think about that, I would actually welcome being the last one picked!

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And they're off!

I grew up in a “meat and potatoes” family. Literally.  We had meat and potatoes for dinner every night. The meat was mostly fried and the potatoes were mostly mashed. While other little girls went to ballet or music lessons after school, I went home to peel the potatoes and put them in a pot of water so Mother could them on to cook when she got home from work.

But food isn’t what this is all about. By “meat and potatoes”, I mean there wasn’t a lot of creative thinking in my house. We did family life the same way most all the time because 1) it worked for us and 2) everyone was too tired to be creative. Besides, there was no Hobby Lobby or Michael’s in those days. The closest thing to seeing something creative happen was watching Kaptain Kangaroo create something with blunt-end scissors, construction paper and tape or brads.

When I began having children, “Creativity” took a hold of my life and I’ve never been the same. I use this part of my brain whenever the mood hits me (which is pretty often). I try to be creative all over the place, not limiting myself to just crafts.

One of the creative things I like to do for my family is put little twists on the regular things of life to give them an extra bit of joie de vivre. It makes living day-in-day-out more of an adventure …definitely not meat and potatoes. Creativity is particularly fun when I take special days or occasions and add a little Neal silliness to them. I use these times to call my scattered chicks back to their Mama Hen, if only for a few minutes. Such an occasion is about to happen!

We are coming upon a weekend that my family has enjoyed for so many years that I can’t even remember when it all started. Kentucky Derby weekend! Now, none of us have ever been to the Kentucky Derby and will probably never go. I don’t think any of us have ever had a mint julep and wouldn’t be able to tell you how to mix one if it was the Final Jeopardy question. Only a handful of us have ever been on a horse, unless you count the pony ride at the Coosa Valley Fair. And I’d wager you could count on three fingers the number of us who have ever officially “placed a bet” on anything at all.

But come Kentucky Derby Saturday, this Crazy Mom is scurrying around texting, emailing or phoning my daughters to get their picks in for which horse is going to win The Derby! Honey, we are going to the races, Neal-style!!!!

This is the way it works: I provide a list of the horses that will be racing Saturday and submit it to all of our family members (which includes Unkie and Angela – who are members of our family just because they are). Each member chooses a horse they hope will win, based on name only. It is against our rules to look up jockeys or check the odds or get any information at all unless it’s a photograph of the horse. We are looking at names (and/or appearance) alone, here. The little kids have a lot of fun choosing a horse based on its name and the older kids become philosophical in their choice. Just pick a name, for pity’s sake!

All picks are due to me by noon Saturday. This year I have allowed each family member to choose a second horse in the event their first choice is scratched on Saturday. I’ve had that happen in recent years and sometimes it’s hard catching up with a kid who is on the baseball field to get another pick just before the horses enter the gate. I keep a tally of who chooses which horse.

And that’s all there is to it. I put $2 in the “purse” for each family member. Winner takes all…and if there are multiple winners, the spoils are divided amongst them.

Last year the Kentucky Derby we were visiting the Grands in NC on Derby Saturday. At some point as we were all screaming and the horses were making their final turn at Churchill Downs, Palmer, then six-years-old, pulled his first tooth! If I say “Kentucky Derby”, Palmer reminds us about the tooth. Just after Always Dreaming was victorious in his run for the roses, we turned around to see this little kid holding a tooth! It was an exciting day for us all.

Over the past year we have added another angel to our family and the purse has gone up another $2 to a whopping $34! I’ve never won, even one year, but I think this will be my year. I’m feeling so confident of my victory I’m already making plans for how to spend my windfall right after my horse wins. Of course, I have to pick a horse before that can happen…and I’ll do what I always do. I’ll choose the horse that no one else picks. (His name should be “Leftovers”.)

I know it’s the bigger things in life that makes us who we are, gives our families backbone and strengthens each of us when times feel like they are just too hard to bear. But I’m counting on the silly things we Neals do as a family to pop up in my children and Grandchildren’s memories long after I am gone, giving them stories to tell and memories to cherish.  And when the day comes that someone else has to gather picks for the Kentucky Derby, I hope someone will put $2 in for me on a horse with a good name!

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Saturday Sampler #22

Welcome to my recipe file.  Glad you could make it!

I’ve had some recipes in my time that I considered really outstanding and really easy. This recipe for Ham is at the top of my list. We use it when we go to the beach and make sandwiches or omelets or salads all week from one ham. We also use it at Christmas because not everyone in my family is a fan of turkey (they must get that from the other side of in-law side of the family). 

When we finish with the ham, we use the bone to make French Market Soup, recipe to follow soon. It’s good to know that a ham bone can be frozen for use later in this soup, so don’t feel like you have to pull out the stock pot immediately.

I hope you enjoy this ham as much as our family does. It really can’t be beat!

Easter/Beach/Thanksgiving Ham

 1.       Get your yellow pages out or go on-line and look up the number for the nearest Honey Baked Ham store.

 2.       Call the number about four days before you want to pick up your ham. Ask for coupons.

 3.       Order the biggest ham they have, bone in (because you want to make soup later).

 4.       On the day of pick up, arrive when the store opens because if you wait too long, the line will be out the store. In some cities, like Raleigh, there will be a designated policeman directing traffic in and out of the parking lot. You want to avoid this at all costs. Go early, even a day early.

 5.       Don’t faint when they tell you how much the ham costs. It’s worth every penny.

 6.       Take it home, swipe a piece and make a ham sandwich before anyone gets home. They’ll never know the difference. (The ham sandwich is really good if you use real mayonnaise and white bread, but who buys white bread anymore? Maybe for a ham sandwich….)

 7.       Layer slices on a pretty plate and serve. Left over ham will last about a week.

So, this is an early April Fool’s joke…the joke being I don’t really have a recipe tonight but Honey Baked Hams are no joke. They are the real thing when it comes to a great ham. And the French Market Soup recipe I will share soon is definitely no joke when I say it’s a wonderful soup.

Happy Easter tomorrow!

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Baskets and Chocolate Bunnies

Walk in almost any store these days and you will see an aisle filled with Easter baskets, brimming with candy and toys piled on top of glistening green fake-grass and wrapped up with brightly colored cellophane and ribbons. They make me happy thinking about the children who will wake up Sunday morning and find the Easter Bunny has left one for these creations on the kitchen table or maybe at the foot of their little beds. I can imagine their excitement as they tear into the baskets filled with chocolate Bunnies, jelly beans and toys they may or may not ever play with.

I remember looking at the commercially-filled baskets in Redford’s Five and Dime store when I was a little girl. There always seemed to be a set of Jacks and a Bolo Bouncer in every basket along with a Chocolate Bunny. I admired these baskets from afar…a far, far afar! Because my brother and I never got one…at least, that I remember.

Saturdays before Easter were so exciting at my house. Daddy boiled a pot full of eggs then let them cool in the refrigerator. After supper Mother pulled out the Paas egg dye kits. She would dissolve little color-tablets in cups of a hot water and apple cider vinegar concoction. There was a little wire spoon that we used to gently lower the white egg into a pink or blue or yellow or green cup. The egg would swim around in the hot water for several minutes before we’d scoop it out, all brightly colored, and move it to an empty egg carton to dry. After a while we tired of the solid colors and started ‘experimenting’ by lowering only half of the egg into one color, then flipping it over we’d lower the other half into a second color. It made for interesting eggs!

In addition to the colorful dyes, the kit provided egg-tattoos that looked a lot better on paper than they ever did on the eggs. Maybe we didn’t know how to apply them correctly, but those tattoos did give a little texture to an otherwise solid color. If you squeezed your eyes almost closed and looked at the eggs, you might be able to make out a bunny or a chick….or maybe not.

After the eggs dried, we carefully put them in our baskets, the same old baskets we had for years. The eggs looked pretty sitting all together in the basket when we went to bed. The next morning they still looked pretty sitting all together, all by themselves – no chocolate bunny, no jelly beans, no Bolo bouncer.

But it was all ok, because I had a pretty dress with a poufy crinoline, black patent leather shoes, a hat, white gloves and a new purse to wear to Sunday school. Becoming a princess was more important than any cellophane around a basket.

Dana, my cousin, always had a cellophane covered basket. I didn’t care. As long as my dress was pouffier than hers, she could keep her chocolate bunny and jelly beans. I had my priorities in order for Easter…crinolines were everything - baskets were lower on the Bunny totem pole.

There were two “best parts” of Easter.  The first best part was walking into Sunday school, confident I must look like a ballerina on top of a jewelry box. The second best part of Easter was the egg hunt at the base of Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Ignoring the graves above us, Dana, David (and later Jenny) and I searched all over the grounds for the hard-cooked eggs my Daddy and Uncle Tommy had hidden for us. There were a few wrapped chocolate marshmallow eggs thrown in with the boiled ones, but mostly we searched for the pink, blue, yellow and green ones. Uncle Tommy always had a “golden egg” that we tried to find. It was never golden, but we knew which egg was designated as the “golden” egg and if one of us found it, we would be rewarded with a dollar bill. That was big time in the 1950s.

Over the last few weeks I was privileged to fill four Easter baskets with candy and goodies for middle-school aged boys. These baskets, along with dozens of others filled by members of our church, will be given to families who are fostering children waiting to be adopted. I had so much fun gathering all kinds of this-and-that things for four boys I will never meet. I took time arranging all the goodness in baskets, then wrapping them in cellophane and tying them up with bright curling ribbons. I’ve had a lifetime of admiring similar baskets in stores, so I knew exactly how to do it.

Filling those baskets filled my heart with joy and my mind with thankful memories of plain baskets of hard-boiled, hand-dyed eggs. I realized, as different as they were, the fancy baskets I put together last week and the plain baskets of my childhood Easters had something in common. They were all filled with love. And love is the story of Easter, isn’t it?

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Maximum Pouf

In a Southern girl’s life, there are events we look forward to because we get to “dress up”. Occasions that come to mind are Prom nights and wedding days.  These are opportunities when we put on extra make-up, maybe get an “up-do” at the hands of a hair stylist, wear fancy jewelry and really fancy dresses. We work on our look all day and then as we walk out to an admiring audience of parents or a boyfriend or fiancé, we anticipate exclamations of “You look beautiful!” or “You look like a princess” or “Wow!” 

But in my whole life, I don’t think I have ever felt as “pretty” as I felt when I was a little girl on Easter Sundays. After months of heavy sweaters, cumbersome car coats and stretch tights that never stretched enough or thick bobby-socks, the anticipation of wearing a frilly dress, new white socks and shiny, black patent-leather shoes had me counting down the days until Easter.  White gloves and a hat completed my ensemble and I was all dressed up, ready for the compliments and whistles that were sure to come from my Daddy and Uncle Tommy. Those two men could make me and my cousins feel like little Miss Americas when we were dressed in our “Sunday best”.

Little boys, like my brother, weren’t as keen about getting cleaned up on Sundays. I can’t imagine trading filthy t-shirts and blue jeans in for their Easter coat and bow tie, even for one day, was anything less than torture. If my brother had been given a choice, he would have worn his football cleats to church. Had he been able to find a way to sneak them in the car and swap them out for his fancy two-toned Sunday shoes, he would have! (He used to do that when he went to school, so why not Sunday school?) My brother and his friends didn’t care about looking like a miniature version of their Daddies, even for one day a week. They just endured the starched shirts and tight shoes until they could get home and change clothes.

I, on the other hand, could have stayed in my Easter dress all day because of one piece of clothing that turned this freckled faced, pony-tailed little girl into a ballerina every Sunday – my crinoline!

For those who may not know what I’m talking about, a crinoline was a slip worn under a dress. The skirt was constructed of layers of stiff ruffles which made your dress pouf out. I believe the term these days for that pouf-look is “ball gown”.  Crinolines were made out of all kinds of material and you purchased one depending on how much you wanted your dress to pouf out!

Some crinolines were made of horsehair, a really stiff and scratchy material. They were the best because they kept their shape and gave the maximum pouf-effect (something we all wanted – maximum pouf). But the price we paid was itchy legs and “don’t do that” looks from our Mothers when we tried to scratch during the sermon.

Other crinolines were made of stiff fabric that didn’t scratch like the horsehair. They were much more comfortable to our skinny little legs, but the downside was once they were laundered, the stiffness was pretty much gone. No amount of starching and ironing put that original pouf back into those crinolines.

There were also soft, nylon crinolines, worn mostly by teenagers. These half-slips gave little pouf so if you wanted more volume, you layered several crinolines on top of each other beneath your skirt. They came in bright colors, making a pretty sight if they showed when we walked. I had a red one! I loved the softness of the material but the elastic in the waistband stretched after a few months, so my wonderful red ruffled crinoline kept slipping down when I walked. It isn’t cool to be walking down the hall at school and feel your slip beginning to slide down.  One day at school, I was finally fed up with tugging to keep it around my waist and not on the floor, so I threw it in the trashcan in the girl’s bathroom.

Back to Sunday school crinolines.

One year Mother came home with a new slip for me that was a show stopper! Around the hemline of the slip’s skirt was a pocket into which a metal strip was inserted then snapped to make a giant circle. The result was Scarlet O’Hara flitting around Atlanta in “hooped skirts”, the circumference of which was close to that of – well, the world. My hooped slip was not quite that big, of course, but it provided that maximum pouf other crinolines couldn’t give. I thought this was the coolest slip ever and couldn’t wait to get to church to show my Grandmother.  

The next Sunday, wearing my hooped slip, I sashayed myself down the aisle at church and into the pew where Mama was waiting for me. I sat myself down and whoosh – that metal hoop flipped straight up covering my face and revealing my legs and underwear! I thought my Grandmother was going to have a fit. I was mortified. My Mother grabbed my skirt and tried to push it down but the hard metal “hoop” had no give to it. I stood up and between my Mother and Grandmother we found a way to sit me back down in the pew without embarrassing my family and myself any further. I didn’t wear that hoop crinoline again.

My cousin, Dana and I compared notes about our crinolines and found we both had an inflatable slip! These special crinolines had a plastic tube around the hemline that you ‘blew up’ exactly like you would blow up the rings around a plastic wading pool for toddlers. We were basically wearing a ring of a baby pool. It seemed like a good idea, but the reality was it gave little pouf not to mention the air began leaking out about mid-sermon. You can’t exactly bend down and re-inflate your slip just before the congregation stands to sing four stanzas of “Just As I Am”. The blow-up crinoline didn’t provide the element of excitement of my metal hoop slip and it certainly didn’t give me the volume I desired for my dresses, so it was not my favorite crinoline.

At some point, I outgrew crinolines. It has been a long, long time since I wanted my skirt to pouf out like a ballerina. Nowadays, I do everything I can to hide anything that poufs out on my appearance.

But, I’d wager there is one thing that hasn’t changed. If my brother had a choice, I bet he would wear football cleats instead of dress shoes any chance he got!

(Photo below is me, my cousin, Dana, our great-Uncle Lester and my brother, David. Easter 1957)

[southerneveryday-blog]

A different normal at Easter

Easter is coming! I have visions of flowers and green grass and blue skies with puffy clouds wafting through the skies after a long, cold winter. Easter! “Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail.” “In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it…” Easter eggs – dying them, hunting them, making egg salad and eating them.

Of all the holidays, Easter holds some of my sweetest memories from childhood. Easter was fairly cookie-cutter year after year in my home. We had simple traditions and it was easier to do the same thing every year rather than come up with new ones. But if you have a good cookie recipe, that’s exactly what you want - more of that same good cookie! And the cookie-traditions we cut for Easter every year were some good ones. (We never actually had cookies at Easter. We had chocolate cake.)

Thinking back over Easters in the 1950s and early 1960s makes me feel fuzzy and warm and bunny-soft inside. Not that there was anything special about Easter in my family – far from it. Like I said, we did the same thing year after year, but those things were just good, family-time things – and my childhood was not always made up of good, family times. I guess that’s why I hold Easter memories so dear in my heart. Easter was the way I wanted my family to be all year round. And the good times, like those at Easter, held me together the rest of the year when joy and security were scarce.

Now, every family is different. It’s what makes the world go round. And our Easter celebrations were ‘different’ in a normal kind of way. I say they were ‘normal’ because we did the normal things families do to get ready for Easter. We all got new clothes every year, we took baths on Saturday night so we’d be fresh and clean for church the next day, and we died eggs that we would use for our Easter egg hunt after our picnic lunch on Sunday. That’s normal, right? But then what was our ‘normal’ Easter starts weaving into the ‘different’ lane.

After worship at our individual churches, my cousins’ family and my family would meet up for our Easter picnic! Every year we gathered at a small playground that had concrete picnic tables with concrete benches. My brother and my cousins and I would play on the swings or see-saws while my Mother, Aunt Betty Jo and my Grandmother spread our fried chicken, potato salad and deviled eggs on the table. Then it was time to eat!

Now, we had all come straight from church, so we were all in our Sunday best. No one thought to change clothes to avoid spilled sweet tea or smeared chocolate cake on our dresses or down the guy’s shirts. In fact, all of my family photographs from Easter at this playground show the ladies in their high heels and the men still in their suits and ties. On a picnic!  Looking back, that just doesn’t seem right, but at the time, it was the ‘normal’ thing to do.

Weaving further into the ‘different’ Easter lane here, I have to confess, our picnic site was not just any playground at a park or a school yard. We had our Easter picnic and egg hunt at the foot of Myrtle Hill Cemetery, a famous landmark in Rome. I ask you, how many families can say they celebrated Easter in a cemetery every year?

As I think about it, picnicking at a cemetery does seem appropriate given Easter is a celebration of the death, burial and most importantly, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But believe me, the significance of the Lord’s death and resurrection was never part of the equation when my family chose Myrtle Hill Cemetery as our Easter picnic site. It was just a good place for a picnic, maybe because there was a play ground at the foot of the hill where many, many people were buried (and were still dead). And not many people had their picnics there on Easter Sunday. We pretty much had the cemetery to ourselves.

Maybe it was a little unconventional, but that cemetery/playground/picnic area made for a fun Easter every year. We didn’t visit Myrtle Hill Cemetery any other time of the year…just at Easter. And we never walked among the tombstones on Easter. We just hid our boiled, dyed eggs amongst the shrubs, tufts of grass and at the base of the few trees near our picnic table.

At some point, the Myrtle Hill Cemetery tradition ended as all of us cousins grew up. But the memories are still intact for each of us, and that is the intention of family holidays – to build strong, loving memories. It was a good, family thing.

(Check out the sweet little girl in the Easter photo below. Doesn’t she look happy? That’s me!)

[southerneveryday-blog]

Honey, you look flushed!

If I live to be 100, I will continue to be in awe of the sheer talent, creativity and “can-do” attitude of Women (intentionally spelled with a capital W!). Women are just amazing creations who rise to the occasion when there is no one else around or when a situation presents itself for “action”.  Women can do anything!

This is nothing new, if you are a Woman, but today I was reminded of just how ingenious we are when I went into a bathroom stall at church and the lock wouldn’t work. Ladies, I know you can all relate!

Making a quick stop for a bathroom break should be a simple task, but rarely is it. Usually we make a mad dash to the Ladies Room (sometimes marked Senoritas or Sheilas or Girls) because we’ve waited til the last minute thinking maybe the urge will go away. Actually, we are either busy talking to someone or trying on a pair of jeans or we are just too busy to think about stopping for a visit to “the necessary”, so when we finally give in to ‘nature’s call’ we make a bee-line for the bathroom.

Typically we are not empty handed when we scurry into ‘the loo’. I mean, we are Women, so we Always have multiple things in our hands, in our arms or hooked around our necks. There is always the handbags on our person, but generally we also have a jacket or a shopping bag, a diaper bag, a back pack or a kid, maybe two. And let’s face it, these days we have a cell phone in our hands. Today I had my purse, my jacket, my Bible and my notebook (suitable for taking sermon notes or making to-do lists, depending on how inspiring the sermon was).

Encumbered, we manage to get to the Ladies/Senoritas/Sheilas room and grab the only stall available. Once inside we start taking off all the “extra-added-attractions” only to find there is no hook for hanging stuff on. (Who designs a women’s bathroom without multiple hooks???) So, we start looking around for something to balance all our trappings upon. Usually the only surface available is the top of the toilet paper dispenser. Try balancing books and a purse and a cell phone on top of a skinny toilet paper dispenser, Guys! I bet you can’t do it!  But, Women can!

Now it’s time to get down to business so we turn around to lock the door….but the lock is either broken or the door is whoppy-jawed and the lock does not meet in the right places to connect. Nothing we do helps – the lock will not lock.  So, gingerly and with one hand, we lift our skirts or unzip our slacks and try to slip our “unmentionables” down all the time keeping one eye on our tower that is balanced on the toilet paper dispenser and holding the door closed with the “free” hand.

If we are lucky, we are able to sit down, but by this time the towering inferno is slipping off the toilet paper, so we grab that with one hand, hold our “unmentionables” up so they don’t fall to the floor. The door slowly starts opening, so using our heads, we lean over and butt our noggins up against to door to keep it closed ----all the while trying to relax to take care of the business that brought us into the bathroom in the first place.

Sometimes going to the bathroom, which should be such an easy task, is a first-class juggling act that demands a Woman’s highest degree of coordination, extreme flexibility and sheer determination. But we, being Women, are up for the challenge every time. We “get ‘er done”! In one swift and smooth motion, we flush, get our clothing back in place, catch our belongings as they begin to topple from the toilet paper dispenser just in time for the door to swing open on its own.  Mission accomplished!

Feeling pretty proud, we pat ourselves on our backs as we wash our hands at the sink, smiling at ourselves in the mirror and checking to make sure our lipstick is on our lips and not our teeth. Then it happens! Our hands are dripping wet when out of the corner of our eyes we see it: the paper towel dispenser is empty! Public bathrooms are out to get us!

Last summer we were driving to North Carolina when we stopped at an Interstate rest stop. I noticed a lady sitting on the curb in the parking lot near our car. She was still sitting there when we were about to leave and I told Harold I was a little concerned about her. So we walked over and asked, “Excuse us, but do you need any help?”

The lady looked up and said, “No, I’m fine. Triple A is on its way. My keys fell out of my shorts pocket and I flushed them down the toilet before I knew what was happening.” Did I mention public toilets are out to get Women?  I rest my case.

[southerneveryday-blog]

Saturday Sampler #21

Is there anything better than “breakfast” for dinner? (The answer is, “Yes! Steak and baked potatoes, chicken and mac-n-cheese, a big burger and home fries.” I could go on and on.)

Ok. So, I guess the question is, could there be anything EASIER than breakfast for dinner, especially when the refrigerator is fairly empty and you don’t want to cook much of anything anyway? The answer is, “No! Breakfast is perfect on nights like that!”

That is why we had pancakes and bacon for dinner tonight. Nothing much in the fridge and I still had dirt under my fingernails from pulling weeds all afternoon when I realized it was time to start dinner.

Athens has a wealth of good breakfast places and one of my favorite restaurants makes a Blueberry-Granola Pancake that puts my taste buds in high gear just thinking of them. I’ve been on a quest to come up with my own recipe for similar pancakes I can make any time in my own kitchen.

The following pancake recipe is a favorite “scratch” pancake recipe.  When I make these, I add the blueberries and granola after I’ve poured the batter on the griddle. The next time I make pancakes, I plan on incorporating the berries and granola with a gentle stir just before I pour the batter. I want to see if I can tell a difference.

“Quick” pancakes, like those made with Bisquick, are perfectly yummy. I particularly like the ease of the Hungry Jack boxed pancake mix. Just add water and you are good to go! But sometimes I like to make pancakes from scratch.

Add granola and blueberries to your favorite boxed pancake batter or to your favorite scratch pancake recipe. You will get a surprise texture when you bite into them that you may not be expecting. Skip the blueberries and add chopped pecans or sliced almonds for another twist. Want to really step it up? Add mini-chocolate chips to the granola and nuts! The sky is the limit!

The only thing missing to this stack of pancakes was crisp bacon and a glass of milk for a perfect dinner after a Saturday of weed-pulling and pressure washing the fence around our patio. They weren’t missing for long, believe me.

Enjoy scratch or quick pancakes soon for a fast and easy dinner!

Crunchy Blueberry Pancakes

1 1/3 cups Swans Down cake flour  (or 1 ¼ c. all-purpose flour)

2 T. sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 beaten egg

1 ¼ c. buttermilk

1 T. cooking oil

Stir dry ingredients together. Combine wet ingredients then stir into dry ingredients until blended but still a little lumpy. Melt a large pat of real butter on a hot griddle then pour ¼ c. batter directly onto the hot butter. When bubbles begin to appear, sprinkle with a heaping T. of granola and about five blueberries. Flip and cook for about two minutes more.  Serve with warm syrup.

[southerneveryday-blog]

A Southern Spring Cleaning

Well, according to the calendar Spring has officially begun. That’s according to the calendar. Parts of the country are covered in snow and others of us are battling winds, storms, tornados and finicky temperatures.  Snow isn’t common in the Spring in the South where I live. (Shoot, snow isn’t common most anytime down South.) But storms and tornado winds and finicky temps down this way means “Spring”!

An extra-added bonus to crazy Springtime weather in this neck of the woods is the blooming of everything wonderful like Dogwood trees and Azalea bushes and Jonquils. Bradford pear trees are snowy white (as close to snow this time of the year as we will get) and cherry trees look like trunks topped with cotton-candy pink. We may have a few chilly days, but our botanicals could care less – they are ready to burst out in color and fragrance.

This time of the year means something else to many a Southern woman – Spring cleaning! On warmer days, we open windows to let the fresh air in --- for a few glorious minutes before we remember that gentle breeze will also bring pollen inside, so the windows and doors are closed as quickly as they were opened.

Due to the yellow dust, folks in Georgia have to wait until “pollen season” is over to do any real cleaning, like window washing and cleaning patio furniture. During these weeks our Spring freshen-upping is limited to things that can be done inside like moving sweaters and heavy jackets to their keeping-place until next fall, washing the insides of windows and making lists of things we will do outside as soon as the air is clear again.

By the time pollen season is over, it’s usually too hot to do those things outside that made up our Spring cleaning lists, so we just turn that piece of paper over and make out a grocery list on the back – which we will forget and leave on the kitchen island when we head to Kroger for a “couple of things”. So Spring cleaning in Georgia is a challenge, for sure.

However, I have begun some “personal” Spring cleaning this week. I mean, what else do I have to do? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Yesterday, I woke early and was in my dentist’s office by 7:50 to have my teeth cleaned. It’s a semi-annual thing and if I didn’t love my hygienist and really like my dentist, I would dread this very expensive hour in a chair, my mouth wide open with someone else’s fingers and cold, metal tools playing havoc with my gag-reflex. No cavities! Great Spring cleaning!

Today’s personal Spring cleaning began with a liquid diet (nothing red or purple, no fruit juice with pulp, no fun) in preparation for a colonoscopy early in the morning. About 4:00 p.m. I began the actual “clean out” process that will last way into the night. Oh joy. (That’s a facetious statement.)Those of you who have gone through a similar prep can “relate” and “sympathize” and “empathize”. I guess I should feel better knowing most of my friends and family have gone through this barbaric but totally necessary process to stay healthy, thanks to modern medicine. (Somehow at this moment, it doesn’t.)

The liquid diet stinks for someone who enjoys chewing on food as much as I do. Typically, colonoscopy preps turn me against whatever clear-or-near-clear liquid I choose to drink all day. This time it’s lemonade. I don’t want another glass of lemonade for a long, long time. Even Chick-fil-A, Inc. lemonade doesn’t sound good…but one of their chicken sandwiches sounds like heaven!

The procedure is a piece of cake compared to the prep. If you’ve been there – you know what I mean. Tomorrow morning before sunrise Harold and I will make our way over to my Gastro-man’s office where I will be escorted back into a very nice holding area until my turn to be wheeled back to the surgical area, by which time I will be in a blissful sleep. When I wake up, it will be to the voice of my Gastro-man, a charming doctor who should be a poster child for Optimist International. He will be extra-cheerful and I’ll feign drowsiness as I try to forget he has just seen the worst side of me - my backside!

But this part of my personal Spring cleaning will be over by about 9:00 tomorrow morning and I will be headed back to my house with the knowledge that 1) I won’t have to go through this again for ten years (if all is clear) and 2) I am stopping by Bojangles for a ham biscuit and sweet tea!

I guess if I have to go through my own Spring cleaning, on the South side of this old gal, knowing Bojangles is waiting for me in just a few short hours makes it worth all the/my “effort”.  (Yuk!)

[southerneveryday-blog]

Saturday Sampler #20

Welcome to my recipe file! Glad you could make it!

March is a month of celebration for our family. We have three birthdays and an wedding anniversary in March.

Tomorrow is my younger daughter’s birthday - my baby. So funny, but when she was a little girl I never imagined not being with her on March 18. Even when she was in college, Harold and I would drive up to Nashville just to surprise her on her birthday.

But our children grow up, move away, get married and have families of their own. And for many of us Moms, that means we don’t get a chance to hug our babies on their birthdays. (For my young-mother friends, take this to heart. Enjoy every opportunity to celebrate everything with your little ones! Time will slip away before you know it.)

If I was going to be with my daughter tomorrow for her birthday, I would make her favorite carrot cake using a recipe that comes from a life-long friend. That recipe makes a giant cake that is out-of-this-world good! I will share that particular recipe with everyone at a later date.

But since there are just two of us here in Athens, I wanted to bake just a small-ish carrot cake in honor of my crazy daughter’s birthday. I’m sure she will enjoy a celebration with her husband and kiddos and her extended family of Tennessee in-laws, and I know her Mother-in-law (my “friend what likes me”) will sing “Happy Birthday” extra loudly for me.

This moist cake is easy and is baked in a square pan. Since it is only one layer, frosting it is a snap!

Carrot Pineapple Cake

Stir together:

1 ½ c. all-purpose flour

1 c. sugar

1 tsp. each: baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon

½ tsp. salt

Add:

2/3 c. cooking oil

2 eggs

1 c. finely shredded raw carrot

½ c. crushed pineapple in syrup

1 tsp. vanilla

Beat all ingredients until well blended, about 2 minutes. Pour into a greased and floured 9x9x2” pan. Bake 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Cool. Spread top with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Mix together until smooth:

3 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

4 T. margarine, room temperature

1 tsp. vanilla

Dash salt

2 ½ c. powdered sugar

Stir in:

½ c. chopped pecans

[southerneveryday-blog]

Operation Treehouse: Day 2

You know that book, “Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars”? Well, I believe every word of it! I haven’t read it (don’t think I ever will), but I have a feeling I know what it is all about from the title, and I believe it!  Maybe I should write a book, “Ruhanna is from Venus, Harold is from Another Planet Entirely!” I could write chapter after chapter about how the two of us communicate on different levels and with different words and with completely different understandings about what we are communicating about!

My book would be all about projects “happily married couples who can’t communicate” should never attempt.

One chapter would be about how we tried building a fence together one time. The only thing that saved that project was a professional put the corner posts in for us…we just had to fill in-between with slats. We did make a pact to “play nicely” together just before we began nailing. The fence is still standing and so is our marriage.

Another chapter would explain how one way to save a marriage is by NOT wallpapering anything as a couple. Hanging wallpaper is not a “team sport”.  The first thing Harold and I wallpapered together was one lousy dining room wall with no doors, no windows, just a single electrical outlet. Seemed like a simple thing to do, but half-way through the wall I had to call a Christian neighbor to come referee during the second half. We needed all the help we could get to keep us from wallpapering each other and I figured having Jesus on our side couldn’t hurt. We never wallpapered together after that.

A third chapter would be about reading maps.  Nowadays, couples have a better chance at surviving a road trip together because of GPS systems in cars (not ours) and on phones (on mine but not Harold’s…flip phones don’t have apps). For the vast majority of our married life we have depended on road maps to get from here to there when traveling. When we happened upon a traffic accident or road construction that tied traffic up for miles, Harold always told me to get the map out and find an alternate route. That never, ever turned out to be a good thing. I am map-challenged. I would either hold the map upside down and send us the wrong way, or I’d think the map looked like we should turn left when it was actually a right turn, and trying to read a map would make me car sick so I’d be hanging my head out the window with the map flapping in the wind while trying to figure out where we were supposed to be going. It’s a wonder Harold didn’t put me out on the side of the road to find my own way home on more than one occasion.

The current chapter I’m thinking about will be all about how a married couple shouldn’t try to build a tree house with their young Grandson. This is especially true if the couple has no idea what they are doing since they have no “How to Build a Treehouse” instructions or patterns. Throw in an inability to communicate with each other on technical matters and you have a recipe for disaster.  

Well, maybe “disaster” is going a bit far. Maybe it’s a recipe for “a challenging day of not saying the things you’d like to say to each other because your grandson is standing there with you.” That’s how I’d describe today – the day I promised to hold poles outside instead of cleaning blinds in the house. Thank goodness we have almost 48 years and a huge library of “looks” we have given each other – looks that convey far more than angry words could. We used those a lot of “looks” today.

I would also include in the Treehouse chapter several instructions like this one in particular:

If you feel you HAVE to try building a treehouse, do it on a warm day. Sub-freezing temperatures and ridiculous wind chill factors are not conducive to successful treehouse building. Cold, cold weather makes it hurt twice as much when a 2x4 falls five feet down from a tree directly on your shin (mine). Thirty minutes later, the feeling isn’t any better when that same 2x4 falls five feet down from a tree and lands directly on your right forearm (also mine). I know these two things as truths and I have the bruises, skinned shins and perhaps a fractured right forearm to prove it. (I may include personal photographs in this chapter to drive home my point.)

I guess the final chapter of my book would have to include ways to maneuver through the challenges in the previous chapters so that your marriage remains just that – two people still married to each other.

I’m not sure why Harold and I have made it through all our trials and tribulations when it comes to doing projects together. By now we should know better.

Maybe we are still married because we wouldn’t want to attempt the impossible with anyone else.

 Maybe it’s because we know no one else would have put up with each other’s apparent ineptness in the do-it-yourself projects we try.

But, honestly, I think the reason we keep trying something new that we both know we shouldn’t try is – at the end of the day, we’ll both be laughing about our near-misses or our total failures…..while we are in the E.R. having forearms X-rayed and shins bandaged.