We each look out at the world through a different set of eyes.

Are you trusting the right people?

About secrets…they’re not.

In wisdom, God gives us free will and proves to us we sure can make a mess of things.

A friends’ friendship reflects our friendship to our friends.

Those Acronyms Are Killing Me

All because of texting, language has transcended into acronyms that shorten words for the benefit of time and space, and generations. But when those acronyms follow us into our emails, well it just affects us all.

Teachers, listen up. 

You have to listen to your kids; they’re indirectly trying to teach us, by code, how to live in today’s world. Maybe they can’t tell you the difference between tense or gender, and they may not be able to scribble down a definition of acronym, but there’s not one that doesn’t know all about them and their structure, and they’re super-eager participants when it comes to researching a stream of information via Twitter. That’s what technology has done for us.

I got the FYI down, long ago. I use it all the time because I’m always trying to share information with my kids, and I found sending an email = Subject: FYI  and a link is a pretty snazzy way to do it. It’s lots quicker and easier than cutting an article out of the newspaper, laminating it, and mailing it to them so that all the great info can be kept forever and ever.  It was just great, until I discovered they don’t open any emails with FYI in the subject line! Phhhhhhh. . .

I don’t text because my friends don’t text–we still phone each other up, or email, or get together.  In fact, our cell phones aren’t even glued to our fingers,  because we’re all busy with everything else going on that makes the world turn, so texting hasn’t found its way up the priority list yet.  We just slide our phones into our pocket or purse, and occasionally even turn them off. So why, and to whom would I text?

Long ago somebody said, There’s no question that’s stupid; they should have added, Not asking questions is really, really stupid. I prove it every time I try to figure things out by myself.

The first time I saw LOL at the end of one of my emails, I thought, Aw, that’s nice. LOL-Lots of love. Except that I didn’t know this person all that well, so it seemed kind of out-of-place. But, I figured, they’re just the touchy, feel-y sensitive kind, and aren’t we a generation of  having to say “I Love You” at the end of every, single, stupid little phone conversation because somebody said we needed to do that instead of  just saying, Bye!— to the point that I Love You Good-Bye has really come to mean nothing when it’s said over and over and over and over and over. And everybody within earshot knows it really means I’m having to say I Love You, but I really want to slam the phone down with a simple Bye!  this time because it’s plain I’m mad as hell at this kid and what they just did at this particular time! but if I don’t say I Love You it might alter his/her self-esteem and/or precious ego!

And weren’t we a generation that, when we parted company, or land-line telephone conversation, we said, Love Ya, which meant nothing but, Bye! So Lots of Love didn’t seem so unusual after all.

Then a friend wrote LOL, and it didn’t fit anything like the Lots of Love kind of email remark I’d seen before. What in the world? so I had to ask, Whatdayamean LOL? She wrote back, Lots of Luck.

Aw, that’s nice. I needed LOL. “Thanks!”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her it meant Lots of Love and that it didn’t really fit.

I trust my kids to tell me about acronyms. They wouldn’t lie, and they certainly don’t get it wrong. It’s funny how your tech-world comes together when they finally sit you down and make you just listen to them on Texting/iPod/Twitter Education Day. Who woulda thought LOL could only mean Laugh Out Loud? You go through life thinking the world loves you and wishes you luck, only to discover they’re laughing out loud. Wha . . .?

Still, I love learning, and it makes me feel so clever to write emails coded with acronyms. All because of texting. What’s next?

LY (Love Ya)

Sands shift, leaves fall, water swarms . . . and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Sardines, Now That’s An Anchovy

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I opened a can of sardines in mustard, and arranged crackers and cheese around them. They made my mouth water, while James’ eyes filled with tears that a sardine mommy wouldn’t appreciate.sardines

There are days, not often, but times, that I really crave sardines and crackers. I really, really do. And I have to put off those times, because sardines aren’t exactly the kind of lunchbox thing you can take into your office–although they’re encased in their own little smell-proof, lock-down, zip-open can, there’s still the little question, what do you do with the open, empty container. It just can’t hide.

It’s not like sardines smell worse than anything in the world; how ’bout that skunk that paralyzed me at the door last night when I tried to let my pups out for one last potty before bedtime? Or the fertilizer stacked sky-high in stores that ’bout takes my head off each spring and sets my hay-fever in motion.  And, then there’s U.S. National Debt–talk about stink!

I never even offered sardines and crackers to James for lunch, instead, making him a couple grilled cheese sandwiches, pickle slices and chips, which  he took into another room after a couple brief comments.

I ate all my sardines, rinsed out the can with scalding hot water, wrapped it in a plastic bag, took it out to the trash can, and hauled the can down to the road where, I expect, somebody will carry it away and ponder what in the world was in there.

Yes, some odors are offensive, I understand that. That’s probably why they started salting them down and calling them anchovies. There really is a correlation between sardines and anchovies of some kind – and cyclical weather events that cause ocean warming, or something like that. So there’s something good about ocean warming–little anchovies grow into big, fat sardines. Because, haven’t you noticed that sardines are fatter these days–instead of five or six in a can, you have three fat ones–so maybe they’re getting some of that hormone-induced processed food that gets trashed and poured into our oceans, huh, Michelle? who is concentrating on altering our food choices rather than changing the way food is altered?

Go ahead, salt your pizza with anchovies, I’ll take sardines.

If you had to plant, care for, and harvest a crop, and it was the sole item you had for food for an entire year, what would that crop be?

We each contribute a share to the craziness in this world.

Pillows are soft because heads are hard.

We make mistakes, and we make wrong choices, but the idea is to not make them twice.

Understanding is most clear when you can see plainly, like hearing better with your glasses on.

The only thing we own in this world are our responsibilities.

We come to understand life through its opposites: dark and light, wrong and right, in and out, cold and hot, smile and frown, love and hate.

What would we witness if our ‘eyes were opened’?

I Ate Kale!

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A couple weeks ago there was an entire section of my newspaper devoted to kale, a very green member of the cabbage family. I never chose to grow kale in my garden–it just looked so other-worldly, and never interested me.

I was wrong.

Kale has garnered a lot of attention lately because it has climbed to super-food status, which means it is exceedingly healthy for me/us. Actually it didn’t rise to that status–its always been there, but who knew?

I like cabbage, I reasoned; I make cole slaw don’t I? I steam cabbage, or splatter my salads with thin slices of the purple variety. But kale ? Its leaves look so tough and prickly–and all that curly curled my lips, so I always passed right over it at the grocery store. I’ve never cared for lacey stuff.

Nobody I know eats kale, nobody I know serves it. Restaurants don’t offer kale on menus (perhaps only in America), so I had no experience with kale. 

I’ll be brief here. I chopped and tossed together  the shredded kale with olive oil, walnuts, bleu cheese crumbles, red onion slices, and, yes, balsamic vinegar. I omitted a few thin items, and added some others that seemed to complement my idea of the recipe–resulting in the discovery of a great new salad. It was tender, tasty, unusual and very, very inviting on the plate in a green kind of way, not cabbage-ish. And they tell me it’s exceedingly good for me/us. I can believe it.

I think I’ll go out and plant some in my garden.

A flower withholds all its glory until an appointed time.

Do you combat your way through life like everything is so important…take things for granted, with little or no emphasis on anything being of any importance . . .or live life in the middle?

What are the thoughts of the lone cowboy as he rides mile upon mile of fenceline, or the single sailor whose boat crests wave after wave at sea?

Chicken Salad

What to do with left over chicken? Seal it up and stick it in the freezer.

With friends coming tomorrow, I decided to whip up some chicken salad to feed them. A couple of months ago I de-boned a rotisserie chicken and prepackaged it into small servings for the freezer; I love my little hot-sealer. I thawed, then chopped the chicken, slayed some walnuts to a decent tiny size, sprinkled olive oil through it, mayo, scissor-cut chives out of my garden,  and even added a splash of my secret ingredient–vinegar. The flavors are blending in the refrigerator as I write. You’re going to love this, Charlotte, Debbie. I hope.

I can’t say enough about those pre-baked chickens. They’re one of those things that go everywhere and anywhere, and ready when I need something the most. Small packages don’t take long to thaw.

Try dropping left-over chicken salad into crepes. Whoa. Then you can always earn a smile with chicken tacos. But if you don’t want to mix or blend, use your de-boned rotisserie chicken to make your family plain ‘ol chicken sandwiches with slices of avocado and tomato, (Lay some alfalfa sprouts on it to make a perfect hiding spot so the kids won’t know they’re getting such good stuff. If they discover something strange, tell them they’re the most slender tree on earth. Mine believed it. Made alfalfa sprouts very munchable. :-))

Just don’t think you can get by using that canned chicken cra . . . uh, stuff (phew!) without an across the table  thumbs down.

Ever notice how problems fall to the lap of those most capable, or willing, to solve them?

How would life look if you knew absolutely, without doubt, the people in your life are there for a reason?

The Sock Drawer

It’s been increasingly difficult to fit all my husband’s socks in his sock–drawer. I finally decided to do something about that.

“I don’t have any grey socks,” he told me a couple of weeks ago. So I bought him some grey socks, but there was no room for them in the sock drawer. I removed clumps of socks, and found beige socks I had bought two years ago, still brand new, unopened. He certainly never knew they were there because he never peeled back the top layer of socks.

I pulled everything from the drawer and started separating socks by color. There were grey socks, brown, black and navy-blue, multiple socks in every shade of beige and taupe, white work socks, boot socks, and stylish athletic ankle socks for when he wears shorts.  

It all starts with parental training–the decisions we make in raising our little guys. We really know that, don’t we? Reminds me of a friend who had three boys and socks were always a problem.  She finally decided to assign each kid a sock-color: one wore only black socks, another brown, the third would wear navy–to simplify the laundry. It was the boys’ responsibility to pull their socks out of the clean-laundry pile, fold them and take them to their drawers, and it worked very well until boy #3 became old enough to follow the pattern of his big brothers, but he just couldn’t ever get it right–he mixed a blue with somebody’s black sock, or a brown with a blue, and his brothers were always coming up one short in the sock pile. Then his parents discovered he was color-blind.  So this smart mom changed his color to beige, and everything worked exactly right after that.

As parents, we don’t catch everything right off, which I discovered when my nine-year old son wanted to play baseball. They put him in outfield and he’d run and run and run in every direction, but he never could catch a ball, or even come close. Who knew he was near-sighted? I felt awful, what if he’d gotten whacked in the head by a fly ball!?!

But back to the socks. James doesn’t even know what’s under the first layer in his sock drawer. He doesn’t know what’s under the sink/s, or what might be have been pushed to the back of a shelf. He’s never looked into the far reaches or the lower realms of the refrigerator, and certainly not under the bed. He has no idea which books are on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, so I could hide Christmas presents in plain sight and he’d never see them if they weren’t chest-high or eye level.

So, I conclude that men should just eliminate shelves and cabinets in their houses, anything lower than waist-high. In fact, we could just line our walls with medicine cabinets–they’re eye level and only a few inches deep, and nobody has to bend over. 🙂

Hot Bread is Hotest on Valentine’s Day

My family loves hot bread, which is exactly the reason I never make it.

I mean, we really, really love hot bread. I remember now–it’s something that melts in your mouth with butter cascading off every side until you have to lick your fingers because who would waste that in a napkin?

James dropped by the grocery store for me yesterday, for milk and eggs. He came home with a can of biscuits–for breakfast tomorrow, he told me. I thought about hot biscuits all night long, even if they were the canned ones.

My family picks on me. If others are sharing a meal with us, for instance, James might say as the food is passing around, “Hey, anybody want hot bread?”

“Oh yeah!” they’ll ALL say.

Then he tells them, “Well we don’t have any.”

And of course everybody looks at me. I just shrug, “Sorry.”

Okay, here’s the real deal: We like hot bread way too much. And so whenever I have hot bread, nobody eats their supper, but everybody reaches for the last hot roll. Along the way, I just quit baking bread.

Like, who remembers the year I served those freezer rolls for Thanksgiving–the ones you have to thaw, and when they rise, you stick them in the oven, and the house smells like you’ve been working with dough all morning?  And our stomachs were pinging over the smell of fresh bread baking–never mind the turkey–and everybody stood around waiting for me to take them out of the oven, and when I did, I turned around twice and (do you remember) five of those little dough balls came up missing before I could set them down? Well, do you remember?

So I have to tell you this–with Valentine’s Day barreling down on us, I’m thinking, something special, need to make something very special, because James and I made a pact years and years ago–we spit on our hands and shook over it, that, a.) I would never ask him to take me out to dinner on Valentine’s Day, ever again, and b.) He would never agree to take me out to dinner on Valentine’s Day, ever again.

Ditto for Mother’s Day. We just won’t do it! Those are the two most horrible days to enjoy a nice dinner out. I know James will take me out any other day. Some lessons don’t need to be re-learned.

So, I think I should surprise James with hot bread on Valentine’s Day. I’ve been thinking about this–he’d really enjoy hot breakfast buns, or should I serve hot honey buns? Sweet buns, or spicy? Buttery and scented with cinnamon?

Decisions, decisions . . . he’s really pretty easy to please–as long as he has meat and potatoes, and hot  buttered bread.