Memory

It's been a month since my dad passed away. His passing began on Christmas Eve and was completed just after midnight on Christmas night. Most of the hard things about a loved one's passing, fell to me to cope with. Making phone calls and decisions. Supporting my mother through it all. Helping my husband through his own unsettled memories of a death at Christmas long ago, suddenly raw and aching. It's been a somber month and I've just begun to feel like I'm coming out of a blanket of fog and numbness that enveloped me .

What I'll remember is how truly joyful he was about a year ago when I accepted a job and decided to move close by. The summer sunsets we watched together from the porch, the time spent talking about the variety of birds at the feeder. He told a lot of stories in the last months, about times he was a boy and then a younger man in the service. He was loosing touch with small daily things, but remembering clearly things from 70 years ago. He talked about his mother canning food during the war years and how his father's shoe shop smelled. He talked about some choices he'd made in life and things he might have done differently. He reconsidered some of his relationships and wished to make ammends where he could.

He wasn't always the ideal father and there are many things better left alone. But in the last years, he became a better man. And I was so blessed to have the last 10 months to know him.

Handmade Pay It Forward

I have a very creative niece who recently gifted me with a lovely handmade tote bag. It has become the perfect place to keep my current crochet project. She sells her lovely bags and card wallets on her blog, and I'm always checking to see what she's been up to.

Today, she snagged me into an interactive, totally Internet art project called the Handmade Pay It Forward. I firmly believe in totally unencumbered acts of kindness and try to " pay it forward" at any given opportunity. Sometimes I even make up the opportunity! And that is the premise behind this project.

There's lots of other creative people playing in the universe; if you'd like to investigate further, just Google "handmade pay it forward" and I hope you'll want to play along, too.

In a nutshell, it's about sharing love through our collective hearts and hands. So, if someday you'd like to receive a random token of happiness, just agree to the few conditions and keep the faith.

Here's the deal...

• anyone with a blog can join.
• the first three people to leave a comment with a valid email address (I need to be able to contact you!) on this post will receive a handmade gift from me.
• I will send your gift within 365 days. in return, you have to pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog (whatever you want to make, no rules or limitations.)

I've been known to dabble in many crafty areas, so I have no idea what I might come up with to send you!. I can only promise that it will be executed to the best of ability and hopefully will be something you'll enjoy.

Number 1 Reason To Not Drive After Dark

It was a dark and lonely night. No moon. Just me and then a deer. It ended worse for the deer. Fortunately, I wasn't speeding and I saw the deer in time to move almost all the way into the other lane, but I still hit the poor huge animal.

Guess my first stop in the morning is a body shop.

Update... Lucky for me, the car is driveable. The estimate for total repairs is $5 more than the Blue Book value on the car! Other than the headlight, I think I'll turn a blind eye to cosmetics. It's running pretty rough this morning, so I dropped it off at the shop to have them check it out.

As far as collisions go, this could have been much worse. At least the deer didn't come through the windshield and I was able to drive home.

Ashes of Christmas

The holiday season is officially winding down. Trees are appearing on the sidewalks and 70% off ads are plastered everywhere as we face the drudgery of January. It's always been a long, hard month for me with days of routine nothingness made worse by the excitement of the holiday season. I was always one to decorate the house, even the bathrooms got some festive touch. I collected Santas. In financially good or bad times, there has always been a happy little girl anticipating the Santa season living inside me.

It was different this year. Everything related to the holidays seemed like just one big chore that I was happy to avoid. I didn't bake. Didn't buy gifts. Only sent a few cards to elder relatives out of obligation. Even the music of the season which I usually start playing in late November held no interest for me. There was no real cause, it just didn't feel right.

And then my father unexpectedly died late Christmas night. The drama started unfolding in the wee first hours of Christmas morning and less than 20 hours later, his soul went home. It went too fast, yet it all seemed like slow motion at the time. Time has still not fully adjusted for me.

There had been one occasion this fall when he and I were talking, and I told him about my work in hypnosis. He wanted to experience it, so I lightly hypnotized him. While he was floating in the haze, I spoke to him and encouraged his body to be healthy. I also told him that whenever his soul knew it was time to go home, he should go and find peace. We never spoke again about it.

He overcame a life threatening aorta aneurysm crisis and was in better health than at any time in the last year. And then on Christmas, it was time for him to go home. I wonder if his soul had told mine the time was close.

Snow Day

It's looking a lot like this picture where I live these days. The snow is pretty as it falls on evergreen trees and a twilight purple skies are beautiful against the snow covered corn fields. Christmas lights are especially pretty as they shimmer through the snow. Winter, seen from the inside of a cozy, warm home is lovely.

In reality, it's not so great. The white stuff comes associated with a lot of COLD. Morning temps in the single digits as I leave the house. Ice that takes 10 mins to get off the car windshield. Ruts in the parking lot that are 10" deep of packed ice and snow. Ugly black sludge on the sides of the road. White residue building up on the car. White knucles clutching the steering wheel driving in the dark on ice. Horizontal snow and lip chapping wind. There's more, but you get the picture.

On the up side, the state of Nebraska has some pretty cool real time video of road conditions in many locations, so you can see the winter wonderland you're going to have to drive through. I was told this is an unusually snowy December and it doesn't usually get like this until mid January. This must be a special treat just for me. Lucky me.

Life Rule: Never Give The Drunk The Camera

Here's proof of why one of the Life Rules is "Never give the drunk the camera." Never mind the designated driver; I think we should have had a designated photographer at the Christmas party.

Internet Today

This week, the sister I consider the least web savvy sent me an invitation to Facebook. In itself, this seems like a normal event, but it really surprized me. Why? Because for years I have thought of myself on the cutting edge of most things internet and although I knew of Facebook, I hadn't seen the need to get my face booked. I think my grasp on new and exciting is slipping away....and I don't really care.

When it started, sampling every new toy in the internet toybox was great fun. There were ideas and visions I'd never dreamed, and the first time I wrote code and it became a visual reality was a thrilling moment. I completely embraced the vitual communities, pets and places. I managed a solid business without ever seeing most of my customers, and when I did see them, it was ok if they didn't look as I'd imagined, but when the conversations weren't as scintillating
as the email exchanges, I'd feel a little let down. They probably felt the same about me.

Now, my internet use is vastly different. I use it as an everyday item, like the cup I drink my coffee from. It's always there, does it's job as a coffee cup but if I tried to make it be a champagne flute, it might not do so well. If I want to know anything, Google is my first thought. I get annoyed when the info I want is buried by layers of thoughtless navigation. I am happy when I find my answer in seconds. And although my main contact with most of my family these days is via the internet, I don't turn to it for friendship any longer.

Which brings me back to Facebook. I went and signed up out of curosity. I can't see myself getting too excited about it. Sure it's cool in a hot sort of way, but not in the way that sitting in a bookstore cafe with a friend is. If you're lucky, you might meet that friend on Facebook, but unless you move out of that realm, that's all they are -- faces. And until more people get out from behind their screens and actually come to the MeetUps or other meet and greets , its all they can be.


I

Top 100 Movies

The AFI released its Top 100 American films; the teal ones are the ones I’ve seen. What have you seen?
1. Citizen Kane
2. The Godfather
3. Casablanca
4. Raging Bull
5. Singin’ in the Rain
6. Gone with the Wind
7. Lawrence of Arabia
8. Schindler’s List
9. Vertigo
10. The Wizard of Oz
11. City Lights
12. The Searchers
13. Star Wars
14. Psycho
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey
16. Sunset Boulevard
17. The Graduate
18. The General
19. On the Waterfront
20. It’s a Wonderful Life
21. Chinatown
22. Some Like It Hot
23. The Grapes of Wrath
24. E.T.
25. To Kill a Mockingbird
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
27. High Noon
28. All About Eve
29. Double Indemnity
30. Apocalypse Now
31. The Maltese Falcon
32. The Godfather Part II
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
35. Annie Hall
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai
37. The Best Years of Our Lives
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
39. Dr. Strangelove
40. The Sound of Music
41. King Kong
42. Bonnie and Clyde
43. Midnight Cowboy
44. The Philadelphia Story
45. Shane
46. It Happened One Night
47. A Streetcar Named Desire
48. Rear Window
49. Intolerance
50. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
51. West Side Story
52. Taxi Driver
53. The Deer Hunter
54. M*A*S*H
55. North by Northwest
56. Jaws
57. Rocky
58. The Gold Rush
59. Nashville
60. Duck Soup
61. Sullivan’s Travels
62. American Graffiti
63. Cabaret
64. Network
65. The African Queen
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark
67. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
68. Unforgiven
69. Tootsie
70. A Clockwork Orange
71. Saving Private Ryan
72. The Shawshank Redemption
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
74. The Silence of the Lambs
75. In the Heat of the Night
76. Forrest Gump
77. All the President’s Men
78. Modern Times
79. The Wild Bunch
80. The Apartment
81. Spartacus
82. Sunrise
83. Titanic
84. Easy Rider
85. A Night at the Opera
86. Platoon
87. 12 Angry Men
88. Bringing Up Baby
89. The Sixth Sense
90. Swing Time
91. Sophie’s Choice
92. Goodfellas
93. The French Connection
94. Pulp Fiction
95. The Last Picture Show
96. Do the Right Thing
97. Blade Runner
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy
99. Toy Story
100.Ben-Hur

Got Cats? You Gotta Get This!

I am a cat girl. Always have been. Always will be. Right now, I have 5 living with me. And you know what that means....the little darlings shed everywhere and although I vacuum, it's never enough. Meet the Furminator! A cat lover's secret weapon against the shedding.

All that hair came from 2 small cats in one short grooming session. I used the Furminator on them about a month ago, and this is all the loose hair that's accumulated since. Can you believe it?

The Furminator cuts only the dense undercoat, leaving the top coat smooth and silky feeling. You use it just like shaving your legs and my cats don't mind it a bit. A couple words of caution... Furminate first, then vacuum your room and don't wear clothing you expect to leave the house in shortly after the grooming session!

At first it seemed a bit pricey, but it really is worth twice the price. So, I don't make a dime on it, but you gotta get a Furminator!

Life in a Cubicle Was Just Not Interesting To Me

Last night on 20/20, John Stossel was interviewing some NY socialite named Fabian Basabe whose life seems to consist solely of parties and more parties. He's the son of some wealthy guy and married to some wealthy daughter of a wealthy family. He apparently tried working once and didn't like it. He said(as closely as I remember) , " I saw a cubicle once, and it just didn't seem all that interesting to me". The thought of " sitting in there all day, and eating lunch at the desk" was just not interesting to him. Well, DUH!!!!

As much as anyone may like their job, spending 8 hrs a day in the cube farms of corporate America is generally not going to be all that stimulating. But we do it . Lots and lots of us do it. And wish we had windows. Or doors.

So, I thought I'd share my own little corner of of the farm. I'm lucky at my current job, the color scheme suits me. I've worked in much worse daily conditions. I have a very nice, soothing blue and light gray environment. The walls and desktops are in nice condition and nothing appears to be falling apart. The walls are actually high enough to give everyone some privacy, but we really need to work on the whole door thing. Speaking of which, have you guys seen the CubeDoors site?

So here's my daily view. See the lovely ergo keyboard my employers got me on my first day? And my very nice large monitor? I am well cared for. The little corridor leads to the break room. My cohorts in marketing and web design are all clustered nearby. We spend more time with each other than with our families. I think it's fair to say each of us would prefer it the other way around, but the electric company has NO sense of family values. So it's hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go!

World Most Expensive Free Green Bean Recipe

I got this great recipe card in a teaser mailing this week. Gorgeous recipe cards for all the courses of a wonderful meal. Doesn't this look awesome... it really tastes great too. I happened to have farmer's market fresh green beans the day this came in the mail, so I tried out the recipe. It was almost enough to entice me to sign up for the convenient every 3 week mailing of wonderful recipes. Almost.

There are "more than 1000 recipes" and each mailing will include 12 of them. Yum- o you may be thinking. Each mailing is just under $9 when you include to postage. You do the math....you could buy one hell of a lot of cookbooks of your choosing for around $750! Of course, you won't get the nice little plastic storage box to keep them in that you do get with the cards. You're on your own when it comes to storing that many cook books. I use to collect cookbooks. Now my recipes are in my computer and I've kept only a handful of my very favorite actual cookbooks. I kind of miss them, but space becomes an issue sooner or later. But I have wandered, so back to the recipe cards.

When I was a new bride, I joined one of these clubs and I really learned a lot about cooking, I made almost every recipe. But it seems to me that they were around $3 a pack and there was a finite number that you agreed to at the beginning of the club. Times have changed.

Anyway, here is this really great recipe. Make it before the cold winds blow.

Herbed Green Beans

• 1 lb green beans
• 2 teaspoons butter or olive oil
• 3 large thinly sliced shallots
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced fresh basil leaves
• lemon wedges for garnish

1. Bring 1/2 inch of water to a boil in a large 10 inch nonstick skillet. Add the beans, simmer, covered over medium heat for about 8 minutes. You really should cut off the tips of the beans, they can be unpleasant to eat. Drain in a colander.

2. Heat butter in the skilet unitl melted. Add the shallots and sugar. Cook about 2 minutes or until softened and a pretty golden color. Add salt, pepper and the green beans. Stir gently and cook another 3 minutes to heat through.

3. Remove skillet from heat, add lemon zest and basil. Spoon onto serving plate, Garnish with lemon wedges and serve immediately.

I Am a Lucky Woman

I'm a lucky gal...my husband bakes bread! I asked him to share his recipe. It's a pretty basic recipe, but for whatever reason, whenever I try to make it all I get are hockey puck loaves. In his hands, alchemy happens and something divine is the result.

This is not a recipe for the beginning baker, the instructions are sparse and assume that you already know a little something about baking bread. One trick I have observed, since I got my Zoji bread machine a few years ago, he does let the machine do the kneading for him. Then he forms the loaves and bakes in the oven. Go for it.... may the goddess of the harvest smile on you too.

Classic French Bread
Makes 2 loaves

1 cup cold water
1 cup boiling water
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 Tbl salt
1 Tbl sugar
2 Tbl shortening
6 cups about flour

Mix all but flour and let proof for at least 5 min (10 better). Stir in flour a little at a time til dough feels right (sticky but doesn't stick to fingers). Then knead until it's smooth and elacticy. You might use all the flour, you might not. Allow to rise covered in a greased bowl at least 45 min, punch down and rise again for at least 45 min.Make into loves (2). Cover, let rise for at least an hour. Slash the top of the loaves with a knife. Brush on a glaze of 1 egg white and water,beaten together. Set oven 350 deg, place a pan of water in oven in the bottom rack. Bake until golden (about 40 min) and internal temp is about 180 deg.

You can add 1 Tbl each in the mix stage of parm cheese, minced garlic and italian seasoning for some awesome garlic herb bread.

Your Lucky Day

Well, this could be your lucky day. A blog my sister told me about is offering a cool prize, just for visiting the site. So go visit, 5 Minutes for Mom and register for a 37" flat screen LCD HDTV, compliments of Best Buy. Viral marketing at it's finest!

Sounds of Summer

We're fortunate to live nearby a national park, Homestead National Monument. Among other cool things they do is have a campfire program on summer evenings. Last night, we enjoyed The Little Brown Jug band. Outstanding bluegrass fiddling mingling with smoke from a small fire ( it was after all, still 90 degrees at 8 pm) and the night sounds of woodlands in summer. They played just over an hour and I wish it had been two. A perfect twilight entertainment.
State parks often have fun evening events too, check out your park system, do something different this summer!

More Birds

The baby Barn Swallows have all flown the coop, so to speak, and not a minute too soon. They had only been gone one day when the apartment manager came to knock down the nests. He'd been by about 2 weeks ago and wanted to do it, but we insisted that at least the babies needed to be out of it before he did so. He thought we were being too soft hearted and went off grumbling. I think he's been watching it as much as we have,but with a whole different interest level.

It was sad watching them try to come back and finding their home gone. The mama made many attempts to feed the kids, big fat juicy bugs dangling from her beak. Eventually they seemed to understand and we discovered that there is definite Barn Swallow language for being po'd.

This photo is a little guy that's been living in a small pine tree near our patio. He was making a lot of noise the other day, so I went investigating. There's a small nest and this cutie was hopping all over the tree. Still haven't seen any adult birds, so not sure just what kind this one is.

Fair Time!

How long has it been since you've been to a real county fair? Not an overtly commercial attempt at a fair, but a real agricultural centered county fair. It'd been ages since we'd gone to one and we made up for it by going two nights in a row. We saw concerts, pigs, cattle, horses, canned produce, a gianormous cabbage and all sorts of other things I'll share in the next day or two.

Tonight, a shot of the midway. We're way past the wild rides, so our big event was the ferris wheel. Rides sure have gotten wilder it seems, and the addition of strobe ligthing makes them seem a lot wilder. I'll stick to the old fart thrills. Nice for photos if not excitemet.

Alligator Wrestling in Nebraska

The highlight of the Gage County fair last night was the opportunity for kids to catch a wild alligator. The owner of the Wild Game show that's presenting this challenge, says the allogator was found locally.They were mobbed. It's a real alligator alright, about 6 ft long and it splashes and squirms so the kids think they're really wrestling a monster. And then, once you get the creature caught, for a measley $5 you can have a Polaroid of the moment. Uh huh. I guess it doesn't matter that the gator's jaws are duct taped shut.

It's a scary world

Apparently human kids are not the only ones that return home after they've flown the coop. All 5 kids were back in the nest this morning! It's a scary world for us all.

The Next Food Network Star

Last night was really disturbing on the Next Food Network Star. One of the contestants, Jag, was revealed to have lied about his culinary background and his military service. He was one of the final 2 contestants and I think he probably would have won. He'd been given a chance to correct the misstatements and did not do so. Then he was confronted by the show and he resigned. I hope it was a forced resignation. It's not that his military record has anything to do with his cooking ability, it has to do with integrity and trust.

This has been one of my favorite shows to watch in the past. This season it has been really lackluster, bordering on boring. The challenge ideas have been interesting, but none of the contestants seem to have any natural leadership ability or strong enough personalities to keep you interested in their show. I think Alton Brown had in right a couple of weeks ago when he suggested sending them all home!

To me, the contestants who were in one to one choice situtations with Jag over who was being eliminated really got the worst of this whole deal. Had Jag not been such slime and continued under false pretenses, one of the others may have had an opportunity to really rise to the occasion and shine. I hope The Food Network does something nice for these double losers. I wish when Jag's lies had come to light, TFN would have restarted the whole comptetition.

I'm a huge TFN fan. It's appointment tv for my household. In the summer doledrums of reruns, we watch our favorites over again and give the boring shows a second chance to grab us. Unfortunately, there are a couple of really boring hosts... I hope the new season brings the sparkle back to TFN and that Alton Brown shaves.


PS... Alton Brown is my favorite host, but the boy really needs to buy a new motorcycle or something for his midlife crisis and get over the beard thing.

Class Photo & Graduations

Here's the class photo of the fledgling Barn Swallows. This is the last shot I got of them all together, on Saturday morning. By Saturday night, one of them had taken off to explore the world. In typical teen age fashion, he or she didn't even leave a note! We'd been gone for the afternoon, so we didn't see the take off, but we were glad to not have found a bunch of feathers in the grass.

Today, there's been some wing flexing activity in the nest. I think the next two that will be taking off next have been hopping from the main nest to the little secondary nest and flapping their wings a lot today. It's like they just discoverd them They raise them up above their shoulders and flap wildly for 20 seconds and then turn around to see if their sibilings noticed before settling into a new spot in the nest.

One little guy tried climbing from nest to nest by scaling the wall inbetween, eventually he tried his wings. I was so excited to get this shot of a Barn Swallow's first flight!