Monday Memories—Like a Horse and Carriage

My sister, Rachel, wrote about her and Bert’s engagement on their blog this weekend, and it reminded me . . .


Calvin, a couple of mutual friends, and I took a Theatre and Cinematic Arts class together one semester at BYU. One of our assignments was to see On Golden Pond with Henry and Jane Fonda and Katherine Hepburn. On February 9th Calvin and I went to see it and then returned to my apartment afterwards. We were visiting in the kitchen when out of the blue, and off the topic, he asked if he could see my Bible. I retrieved it and he turned to Genesis 2:18 and had me read: “It is not good for man to be alone.” He told me to always remember that. It was as random then as it is in this paragraph.

A little later Calvin told me he needed to get something out of his pick-up and left the apartment. He was gone for a long time and his hands were cold when he came back in, but I didn’t think much of it until he asked me if I wanted to go down to his pick-up to get something with him. I said, “No. You just went down to get it, remember?”

He said, “Oh. That’s right.”

I continued to chatter and carry a conversation with a very quiet Calvin. I always resented when A.K. chanted “Jane Chatterbox” on the playground in third grade instead of Jane Chadwick, but that night I deserved it.

When there was finally a lull in the one-sided banter, Calvin asked if maybe I’d just like to go outside with him since I didn’t want to go down to the pick-up. I told him it was nice and warm where we were, but we could go outside if he really wanted to. He did. We did.

We stood just outside our door near the railing of our second story apartment. I huddled between my arms to stay warm and Calvin just stood there. We stared straight ahead. If he’d have had a pitchfork and we’d have had a white farm house behind us I have no doubt we could have been stand ins:

Except we were smiling. And my teeth were chattering.

Finally after a long time Calvin said, “It’s a loooong way down to the ground from here.”

I said, “Oh no, it really isn’t. It makes Brother Millet (our landlord) mad if we land in the flowerbeds, but sometimes when we’re late for class we just hop over the rail and jump to the ground.”

Calvin said, “Oh.”

Long pause.

Calvin said, “It looks like all the leaves have fallen off the tree.”

Now that was an odd statement, almost as odd as “it’s not good for man to be alone.” It was February 9th for goodness sake and trees should be bare. But, when I looked at the tree, to my surprise, there were still a few leaves curled and clinging. It was only appropriate I point that out. “No. Look. There are still some left.”

Calvin said, “Oh.”

Another long pause.

He continued with a wave of his hand, “But they are all falling down.”

“Yes. Yes. I guess they do fall . . . d.o.w.n.” I agreed.

Yet another long pause. Though the snow was falling and looked beautiful in the lamplight, it was getting rather cold and the conversation wasn’t stimulating enough to keep me warm. I hinted we go back inside. Calvin tried to revive the conversation, “The snow is sure getting deep.”

I’m not certain, but I think I countered that it indeed it was starting to accumulate but that it really couldn’t be considered deep yet, but that maybe it would be by tomorrow morning.

Calvin responded, “But it sure is getting deep out there,” and pointed to the edge of our apartment complex lawn. And then I saw it. Finally. Written in the snow were the words, “Will you marry me?”

This time I didn’t argue. Not one bit. But gentleman that he is, Calvin still gave me the last word.

When did you get engaged? Did you see it coming?

52 Blessings—Here Comes the Sun

February 7, 2010 sunrise

I just expect the sun to rise every morning. A given. It’s another one of those blessings, like air and water, which I often overlook. Sometimes the sunrise is brilliant, sometimes it just slowly does its job of coming up and warming the earth—either way it rises day in and day out regardless of my appreciation, or lack of. I appreciate that the sun is steady.

I’m grateful for the sun’s warmth and light, too. I appreciate that it provides light, even at night when it is supposed to be sleeping, through the moon’s and stars’ reflections. I am grateful for the new days with new opportunities that it provides. And rainbows. No sun, no rainbows.

Is there a blessing you really are grateful for that you often take for granted?

Life in My World—With an Unexpected Emphasis on Food

~I just hung up the phone with a very cheerful woman who sounded about my age. She excitedly said, “What time would you like us to come over?”

I figured Calvin had forgotten to tell me he’d invited people over for supper. And, what with a fridge full of leftover chili and split pea soup, what better way to get rid of it than on someone else? So I only hesitated for a split second and said, “Well . . . what time did Calvin tell you to come?”

She said, “Kevin? Who is Kevin?”

And then I paused for four seconds wondering myself who Kevin was.

She continued, “Oh dear. I don’t think you’re the right number” and then she laughed loud and said, “But thanks for the invitation!”

I was THIS close to cleaning out my fridge.

~Cali and Ray came over yesterday. Ray had work in the area so Cali came and spent the day. We had a great day; I love it when she comes to visit. We didn’t do one thing but eat and visit. We had plans. We always have plans. But instead, we went to lunch then went to get a Blizzard. I had a gift certificate and Cali had a buy-one-get-one-free DQ coupon. It was only wise we include using them in our plans. Cali was amazed I have never had a blizzard before. Ever. Frankly, I was amazed. And what a great introduction to Blizzards it was. I had chocolate covered strawberry.

Then we came home and visited about all kinds of things—Abraham, what books we’ve been listening to or reading, expectations, goals, realizations. All kinds of things.

Ray and Calvin came home after their days of work and after supper we played a few rounds of dominoes. It was a great day. I only wish I’d have taken a picture.



~We replaced the wheat in our food storage this week. I bought some weevil-questionable wheat a few years ago thinking I could cure it. Nope. I couldn’t. It’s no loss, we’re using it as chicken feed (and my guess weevil wheat is a nice change of menu from plain wheat), but it felt good to get our storage wheat replaced nonetheless.



~Calvin has come home with a couple of bags of new pens, planners, notepads, etc. from the potato and grape conferences just like last year. But this year someone handed out these potato chips, too. They looked right colorful on the plate next to the bacon and tomato sandwiches.

Thursday Thinking—Published on Friday

I’ve been noticing talents lately and how much better my life is for people using theirs. I’ve thought about it while reading books, listening to music, and while interacting with creative people. I’ve thought about it while listening to others share their experiences. Frankly, I’ve thought about it a lot because it is everywhere. It is invigorating.

It seems easy to recognize others’ talents and a bit harder to recognize our own. I’m not sure why we hesitate to recognize things we are good at. Well, that’s not true. Yes, I do. I think we often hesitate to say we’re good at things because we don’t want to be a braggart. NOBODY likes a braggart, and . . . well . . . we people generally liked to be liked. However, true humility forces us recognize our talents and gifts so that we can be grateful for them and acknowledge where they came from. To never admit to or recognize our talents would classify us as ingrates. Are not braggarts and ingrates first cousins? And like a braggart, NOBODY likes an ingrate. It’s a fine line identifying those talents, it is.

A few years ago my friend Deb and I took a “Scrapbook in a Day” class from Stacy Julian. Stacy explained how to organize our pictures and execute our plan so that we could have a complete scrapbook, using 200 pictures, finished in a short amount of time. I chose to do my childhood and, following her suggestion, looked through my pictures and discovered there were four different categories that the pictures fell into. There were pictures of me, pictures of my family, pictures of friends, and pictures of events. Based on those pictures I categorized them into these topics:

All by Myself
People I Loved
People I Played With
Things I was Good At

“Things I Was Good At”—pictures of talents that could be captured with a camera. This scrapbook project made me brave the realms of braggart and ingrate and identify some talents. Talents like:

Music: Whenever teachers asked me what my talent was I could always say I played the piano. Though I was the church organist for several years while I was a teenager, I don’t think anyone’s imagination would stretch far enough to say that I was good at it. However, it was an acceptable talent when I needed one in a pinch.

Sports: I found I was athletic—much to my relief. I wanted to be good at sports and so it was a bonus that I was coordinated enough to play them.

Academics: I was not exceptionally smart, but I was an obedient and conscientious student which made up for my lack of natural ability.

Homemaking Skills: I learned to cook and clean by sheer necessity and though I learned sewing in 4-H, I never became adept at it. However, even without sewing skills, I knew how to make a home feel good. I was responsible for a lot of the duties in our home during my high school years because mom was not functioning. I learned how to have supper ready, the house tidy, and music playing quietly in the background to help make people happy. I learned that popping popcorn or baking a pan of brownies helped smooth over a lot of things.

But the talents that couldn’t be captured with a camera have been no less serviceable to me. In fact, they have been very rewarding.

Probably the talent that brought me the most happiness and peace was a desire to be good. I liked going to church. I liked reading the scriptures and saying my prayers. I liked jogging and walking. I liked family night. I liked giving service (though I didn’t particularly care for babysitting the _____ family, they were a contentious passel of kids; however, I did like the feeling when it was over.)

I also liked older people. My best youthful talents were probably used there. I spent a lot of time listening to older people reminiscing. Though my mind often wandered, I learned that if I gave them eye contact and asked questions they felt important. I practiced most on Emma Henstock. She broke her leg when I was twelve and I was asked to stay and care for her. I fixed supper, baked cookies, did her laundry, and cleaned her house. But the most important thing I did was keep her company. Until I graduated from high school, I would often spend nights with her to keep her company while she was convalescing through different illnesses and surgeries . . . and loneliness. Through her, I gained an appreciation for Lawrence Welk and licorice nibs.

Talents. Where would we be without them? In a sniveling black hole of ingrates and braggarts, that’s where. Do tell. Do tell. What talents did you develop as a child and what talents do you appreciate now?

Tuesday Tell-All

What is your favorite part of being a parent?

I love the teaching aspect. I love that it goes both ways. At first I thought I was the teacher, however after hearing Cali repeat my not-so-wise-words to her doll one morning I quickly realized who was really teaching whom. Being a parent gives you a hearty dose of being both a student and a teacher.

I also love the part of seeing a new and improved version of yourself. As I watch our kids reach and exceed mine and Calvin’s abilities there is such a sense of wonderment in seeing them achieve and knowing we were able to assist in the process. I do believe it feels better than achieving ourselves.

I also enjoy the camaraderie of being a co-parent—there is real satisfaction in having something so big and wonderful in common with Calvin as our kids.

A new thing I have just discovered and enjoy about being a parent is the spouses of our children—new family members that have 20 or 30 + years of experiences and ideas to share and teach. It’s a huge bonus of parenting—a two for one deal of the best kind.

And one last favorite thing I love about being a parent is being so unconditionally loved. Whether it is Ande telling me I am angelic, Abe hugging me tightly and with a choked voice telling me how much he appreciates me, Ty sending a daily e-mail with buongiorno princepessa in the subject line, Ray checking up on me, Cali telling me frequently that she enjoys my company, Grace asking advice for things she knows better than I, or Trevor calling to talk to “The Neighbor” . . . it is a grand gift to be loved so freely.

And there you have my favorite part of being a parent in one neat little bundle, Ande. Thanks for asking. (Up next week: Timely Tuesday)

Readers, what’s your favorite part of parenting?

Monday Memories--“Life is the Only Game in Which the Object of the Game is to Learn the Rules”

÷

Each day our high school math teacher would show us how to work a new problem, give us a fresh assignment, and then sit at his desk and play solitaire the rest of the class period while the students muddled their way through the lesson. Thank heavens I sat amongst friends who were both patient and a step ahead of me in math.

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Abe couldn’t get anybody to play Monopoly with him one Saturday. He sat the board up and hoped, but nobody would play. After awhile I heard things like, “Are you sure you want to make that move? You’re going to regret it” and “You’re going down.” I turned to look and he was playing himself. That game kept him entertained for a couple of hours. Surprise. Surprise. He won.

♥

One night, just a few years ago, we were playing Hearts. I dumped the queen on Cali one hand. Oh, it did torque her. She said, “But you’re the mom.” I explained that we were temporarily competitors, not kith and kin. She was not persuaded, “But, you’re always the mom.” She was quiet the rest of the game.

The next night we played again and Cali dumped the queen on me in an early hand. She said, “There. That feels better. All day long I would get mad about you not protecting me last night, and then I’d think, ‘Save it for the ring, Cali. Save it for the ring.’”

The rule of that game was clear: once a mom, always a mom, queen or no queen, heart or no heart. A rule I'd do well not to forget.

52 Blessings—Games

My niece, Rachel, came to spend the weekend with us and we played a few rounds of Speed Scrabble this morning while we waited for Church to begin. As I was spilling the tiles, I thought of what a great thing games can be—providing conversation and interaction in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. (Granted, sometimes it takes effort to keep the atmosphere relaxed, and that’s why Calvin and I don’t play the marble game Aggravation anymore, and seldom play on separate teams. :0)

My current favorite games are Dominoes and Banana-Grams. I especially like it when we play for milkshakes . . . and I don’t lose. Funny I’d never realized before what a blessing games are in my life until this morning; they have lots of good memories attached and lots of possibilities promised.

What’s your current favorite game?

Thursday Thinking—Einstein

Did you know Einstein was considered incredibly handsome? I didn't.

I’m trying to finish Einstein by Walter Isaacson before another month goes by. I’ve been listening to it on my iPod and a chapter here and a chapter there has turned it into a several months book. Einstein’s life was sprinkled with irony; I do love a good irony, and it was not lost on him. Einstein not only saw the irony in his life, he could laugh about it. One being that he resisted, yea even detested, authority and yet would become one.

Einstein is full of scientific terms—quantum, photons, relativity—and scientific applications. During those paragraphs it is as if I’m hearing a conversation in Spanish with my high-school-Spanish-I-class vocabulary and doing my best to catch a word or two. I feel a bit of achievement every time I recognize something in Einstein, especially if you will remember, because I barely passed Physical Science 100 a year ago. But, after the scientific paragraphs are the people paragraphs, and those don’t need interpreting and are interesting and worth . . . wading . . . for.

I especially enjoy Einstein’s conversations with others. Niels Bohr, the man who helped us understand how the atom is structured, was a friend to Einstein even though (or maybe because) they argued and debated about one of those scientific terms that I don’t recognize. The gist of the matter is that a natural process was evading scientific formula. Einstein could not accept that there was randomness to the process, he was certain that it could be discovered and purportedly told Niels that famous line, “God does not play dice in the universe.”

To which Mr. Bohr supposedly replied, “Einstein, don’t tell God what to do.”

That’s all. That’s all I’ve been thinking about; I don’t have a summary, I don’t have a moral to the story. I don't have an application to my own life, I don’t have another thought on that thought. I’ve just been thinking about these two brilliant men arguing and including God in that argument and whether or not his games include dice.

Wordless Wednesday

Thanks to Alyson Keeley Photography

Tuesday Tips—More Than You Bargained For

(this is a mega-sized can that looks mini-sized in this picture)

Today I made chocolate-covered nuts and paper-covered nut-containers for gifts.

Tip 1: Spread newsprint over workspace. Newsprint is a great investment and available at your local newspaper office. They are roll ends that are too small for the machine, so the newspaper offices are usually willing to sell them very inexpensively or give them away. We use newsprint for lots of things, but today I used it to cover the counter.

Tip 2: Before there was Mod Podge there was Elmer’s Glue diluted with a little bit of water, before that, well I’m not sure but it probably had something to do with boiled hooves. Both Mod Podge and diluted glue work well for this project, albeit Mod Podge is more expensive. Today I used Mod Podge because I was out of Elmer’s glue.

Tip 3: When working with tissue paper for covering containers, apply the Mod Podge to the container with a brush and then adhere the paper and layer with more Mod Podge. (Better yet, just follow the instructions on the container.) However, when using heavier paper, I have found it is easier to thickly apply the Mod Podge to the back of the paper and then apply the paper to the container. After you have applied the paper to the container let it dry and make the chocolate covered nuts.

Tip 4: Unwrap all of your leftover Christmas and Halloween chocolate and put into a bowl. Make sure your bowl is dry. Microwave just until melted. Make sure you don’t microwave the chocolate too long. Make sure you remember that there is enough wax in the candy that it can hold its shape and markings even when it’s melted.

Tip 5: Add the nuts from the emptied canister to the melted chocolate, stir until well coated and then drop by teaspoon into mini-cups. You can use any kind of nut you like, salted or unsalted, or if you have salted but they’re too salty, rub them in a towel to brush off some of the salt.

Tip 6: After the chocolate covered nuts are cooled and dry, line the canister with paper shreds or tissue paper and stack the nut cups gently inside. Add a ribbon and a few embellishments and your gift is wrapped. Cost for a mega-size can of chocolate covered peanuts (I forgot to look at the ounces before I covered the can) is approximately $2.00 with free chocolate, $3.00 without. (And a whole lot of nuts left over for other things, too . . . like this recipe.)

As long as you’ve got the Mod Podge and fun patterned paper out you might as well cover a few extra canisters and some rolling pins, too. (The rolling pins take several coats of Mod Podge, but the good thing about them is you can roll the pin to get the air bubbles out. I spray these with varathane for durability and protection after they are dry.)

Tip 7: If you happened to take all of your photos in poor light, then just doctor them up with photobucket.com effects and post them like that was the original plan.

Tip 7 1/2: If you have a card embossed by the Cuttlebug I told you about a few weeks ago and it has a small tear in it, Mod Podge it to a nut can and you have a gift. And, if you can still tell there might have been a small tear in the card, then add a ribbon and embellishment.

And there you have Tuesday Tips. Have you got a tip to share with us today?

Up next week is Tuesday Tell-All. If you have a question, please post it in the comments and I’d be glad to look up an answer for you. In the event you are every bit as smart as I think you are and don’t have a question, then it will be Timely Tuesday instead.

Monday Memories—The Secret Ingredient

In Taste of Home magazine there was (is?) a page where readers share the secret ingredient they add to make their recipe “special”—a-tablespoon-or-two-of-grape-jelly-added-to-my-spaghetti-sauce type tips. If Mrs. Duffy turned Ms. Melbourne were alive, she could have written in lots of ideas.

First she was Mrs. Duffy and then about half way through my grade school years she became Ms. Melbourne. She was our school cook. She cooked in the lunch room upstairs of our old brick school building. She made the noodles for chicken and noodles. She also made the bread, cinnamon rolls, hotdog and hamburger buns she served. On bread days she made extra loaves to sell to the teachers and then bought potato chips and ice cream bars for our lunches with the money earned. I thought she was one of the best cooks on earth, and I wasn’t a hungry girl. I grew up around good cooks.

One of my favorite lunches was served on Fridays: tomato soup. At first I thought it was homemade because it didn’t sting my throat like Campbell’s tomato soup, but her recipe didn’t taste a thing like mom’s. I saw industrial sized cans of Campbell’s soup on the lunchroom shelves and that only added to my confusion. For years I wondered what her magic ingredient was. Years, and I do mean years later, I realized all she did was add milk instead of water. Ms. Melbourne’s tomato soup secret was milk.

The same thing happened with her apple crisp. The top was rich, thick, and crusty. Always looking for a recipe that matched hers, I finally found one in the newspaper twenty years later that tasted just like hers:

Apple Crisp

1 ½ cups packed brown sugar
1 cup flour
10 Tbsp butter (butter tastes best, but margarine may be substituted)
7 cooking apples
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine sugar, flour, and butter in bowl until crumbly, set aside. Peel, core, and slice apples. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to the apples and pour into greased 9” x 9” pan. Cover apples with crumbly sugar, flour, and butter mixture, spreading evenly. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour until topping is crisp and apples bubbly. Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, dollop of whipped cream, or with half-and-half.


I still think of her every time I make it.

Ms. Melbourne added maple flavoring to her cinnamon roll frosting. Just a tiche, but it transformed them from a regular cinnamon roll into a donut realm. If I’m not frosting our cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting, you can bet they’ll have maple in them.

She also introduced the school to taco burgers. She browned and crumbled hamburger and served it on her fresh baked buns, then added grated cheese and chopped lettuce to it. I don’t know if she was out of taco shells that day, or if she didn’t have enough hamburger to give us each a patty, or didn’t want to make sloppy joes. All I know was they became a regular.

I thought Ms. Melbourne’s son was the luckiest kid alive to get to eat her cooking every night, but one time we went trick or treating at her house and her house didn’t smell anything like the school lunchroom. She confessed she didn’t cook much at home.

I’m certain Ms. Melbourne had no idea how often I would think of her through the years or how often I would imitate her recipes. But more than a little of this or a little of that, the secret that I learned from Ms. Melbourne is to never underestimate that what you’re doing won’t have an impact somehow, somewhere, on someone.

52 Blessings—The Village

The Green’s are Ty’s host family. They feed him each Sunday, offer him their home every long weekend, play games with him, take him to the movies, and allow him the use of their car, washer, and dryer. They host his guests, set him up on dates, host him and his guests, advise him, keep him company, give him hour long rides to and from the airport, and include him in the things they do. They have invested heavily in Ty and are his family in every sense of the word; he loves them like his family.

The Phipps were Ty’s host family before the Green’s. Like the Green’s, the Phipps’s included him in their family. When Ty had his wisdom teeth pulled, Julie drove up to the Academy, retrieved him, and took him to their home to care for him, even though she was convalescing from foot surgery and couldn’t walk. When Julie knew they wouldn’t be at the academy when Ty returned this fall, she asked the Green’s to take care of Ty.

Other families have done the same for Cali, Abe, and Ande. Each one of our children has more than one adoptive family to call their own—families who watch over, provide opportunity, offer support, love, encouragement, and camaraderie.

I wish I were poetic. I wish I were articulate. I wish I could somehow convey to our Heavenly Father and these families how much I appreciate them in helping Calvin and me take care of our family. It is no small task to make a family and then to include others in that circle is generous indeed. I will forever be indebted to the Greens and all the other families in the village for rallying around and including our kids. What a blessing. What a blessing.

Life in My World

I just came in from the shop. Calvin is putting the finishing touches on the cedar chest he is making for Grace and needed me to help lift it up on the saw horses. (Believe me when I say strong, sturdy gal was on his list of qualifications when we got married.) An old song was playing on the radio when I walked into the shop and he asked me to dance to it right then and there, in front of the fire in the stove, and See-more chewing on his bone. It was the making for a romantic novel, especially because the details of my wet-hair-dried-natural, no make-up, and my paint splattered, baggie clothes could be carefully omitted.

(I borrowed this picture of a used books store in Italy from Ande's blog)

While reviewing life in my world this morning, I discovered that what I read pretty much defined it.


I finished Why Gender Matters by Dr. Leonard Sax and also presented a lecture “Male and Female Created I Them: Moses 2:27” for the LDS institute lecture series held at the college. Interestingly enough my reading also included The Family: A Proclamation to the World, Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, and Julie B. Beck’s talk, Teaching the Doctrine of the Family. It was faith building to see how the reading collaborated without my effort.


After reading a few chapters of Writing & Speaking for Business I have discovered that I am too dependent on spell check. Though I faithfully use a calculator only to “check my work” like my school teachers taught me, I let spell check have free rein in my life. This book is by no means compelling reading, more like taking-your-medicine reading, but I do hope I’m better for it when I’m finished with it.


I finished all but 30 pages of Bell Canto by Anne Patchett. It’s a good thing a friend recommended it, and also taught me the symbolism I missed in it, or it would have just been a novel about an opera singer. I am ignorant in matters pertaining to opera. Can’t say I’d recommend the book, can’t say I loved it, but can say I learned something from it and appreciated my friend’s views.


The Proper Role of Government by Ezra Taft Benson was a great 28 page read. Can say I recommend it, can say it was inspiring, and can say I learned a great deal from it.


The Book of Mormon, in particular the book of Ether and the book of Moroni, was also on the circuit this week. Hands down I’ve read this book from cover to cover more than any other book (even counting the Little House series :). It changes me every single time. It changes others. Watching and feeling the miracle of that change has been an exciting part of my week.


I just started The Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani last night and am only on page seven. She wrote, “Our farm will never be as beautiful as the houses and gardens in town. Anything that’s pretty on the farm is wild. The fields covered in bright yellow dandelions, low thickets of tiny red beach roses by the road, and stalks of black-eyed Susans by the barn are all accidents.” I think we’re going to get along just fine in this book.


And on that note, getting along fine, I made Jill’s-Michelle’s-Hannah’s Miracle Bread this morning. Usually bread takes me several hours on Saturday, but not today. It is true; the recipe really does only take an hour. I followed the all-white directions but added half wheat-half white flour and the loaves are beautiful and taste good, too. Thank you Jill, Michelle, and Hannah. Now I need to go and finish the batch of rolls that are rising and do the laundry and ironing. And maybe, just maybe, read.

What have you been reading? Does reading define you some weeks?

Thursday Thinking—God Bless Massachusetts

Do you remember in The Sound of Music when Frauline Maria is saying her prayers that first night before she goes to bed? She blesses all the children, but for the life of her can’t remember the name of child number five. Finally, after the thunder storm scares all the children out of their beds and into her bedroom, she realizes it is Kurt who she forgot so she looks heavenward and says, “Kurt. God bless Kurt.”

I use that line a lot in my head, substituting of-course because I don’t know Kurt.

Massachusetts. God bless Massachusetts. I watched the senatorial election this week in Massachusetts with great interest. All fall/winter I have wondered where our government leaders’ choices would take us forgetting all about Massachusetts’ emergency election and how that could change senate voting. This week I’ve been thinking about senator-elect Scott Brown’s comment when questioned by a debate moderator about filling “Teddy Kennedy’s seat.” Mr. Brown said, “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrat’s seat, it’s the people’s seat.” I do believe he did his fellow Massachusetts’ans', Samuel Adams and cousin-in-law, Abigail Adams, proud in that sentence. Self-importance is such a shaky platform; I’m glad he feels a responsibility to represent his people not his own agenda.

I’ve also been thinking about green salads and what makes them good. We have a birthday dinner to attend tonight and I’m to bring the salad. Why is it that green salads prepared by others are always better than the ones I fix, even if I add the same ingredients? A mystery. Do you have that problem? I think I'll make a pistachio pudding salad instead. That's green.

What have you been thinking?