In the three years I lived in my rental house just north of where I live now, I saw a red Cardinal bird one time. I had previously lived just down the road and used to feed many cardinals, but for some reason, the rental had none. No matter what I did I couldn’t get a Cardinal to visit, but now I have them again. I don’t know why this makes me so happy, but it does. Continue reading “Yes! I Have Cardinals!!”
My mother loved her Hummel figurines and I’m pretty sure she had more than these two but they are the ones I have. She did not give them to me, I had to sneak them out of her house when she was in the nursing home with Alzheimers and her moron of a husband was left with everything.
I don’t have much from all that my mother owned. Her husband was a drunk and by the time he died, everything had been lost or sold, but I’m glad for what I do have and these two figurines remind me of when I was a kid. The Bookworm Girl (and probably the other one too) sat on a little shelf in the kitchen near the windows that looked out onto the big backyard. My mother used to wash my hair in the kitchen sink and I would lay up on the counter with my head back in the sink – then when she was done and I’d sit up, that Hummel was right at eye level. I remember looking at it while she dried my hair with a towel.
I came across the “Little Tooter” and “Bookworm Girl” a few days ago when I was unpacking a box of things that had been lugged around from house to house through all my moves of the past five years. I was happy to see them and glad they were still in one piece. They now sit on the shelf in my kitchen. I wonder what my mother would think.
My favorite Thanksgivings took place long ago when I was a kid. There were no microwave ovens to quickly heat the cooling food, but I remember it always tasted great. All the Aunts and my grandmother pitched in to help get everything ready and my sister and I (if it was at our house) had to set the table. I couldn’t wait for everyone to arrive – it was exciting!
We had turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, boiled onions and carrots, cranberry sauce and homemade pies made by my mother, Nana and Aunts. My Nana used to make “Monkey Faces” which were little mincemeat cookies and also mincemeat pie. It was the only thing I wasn’t crazy about. What the heck is mincemeat anyway??
The meals I remember best were when we ate in our big living room with a couple of tables put together, or at my Grandmother’s house. She lived at the bottom of my driveway and her house was small, but some years we’d all cram in there and it was great. My cousins and my sister would share the kids table and we usually ended up laughing at something and couldn’t stop. Then we’d get in trouble, and that would make us laugh more.
After I grew up I really didn’t like Thanksgiving. It was a family time and I didn’t have much family. My parents had split up and I had moved south to live in Florida. My husband had a big family but they lived up here in the north. Thanksgiving became a day of work for me. In fact, for a few years I worked in the Flower Shop of a local grocery store and I did have to go to work for the morning on Thanksgiving Day. Then I’d stand in the kitchen for hours cooking the whole, huge meal by myself, and then spend more hours cleaning up. Before my mother got Alzheimers, she’d come over and bring Pecan pie – my favorite. Unfortunately she also brought her bum of a husband which totally ruined the day.
Then one year my husband and I and our kids took our pontoon boat out on the Intracoastal for Thanksgiving Day. My mother’s idiot husband had stuck her in a nursing home by then, so we really had no family. Going out on the boat was a good decision and it was such a good day. I hadn’t enjoyed that holiday so much in a long time. I cooked the turkey days before and packed turkey sandwiches for the boat. It was a peaceful day of family togetherness, cruising around and fishing, and I wondered why the holiday couldn’t always be so good.
Happy Thanksgiving to my faithful readers, and to all the ones who stumbled across this post. May your Thanksgiving Day be yummy and peaceful.
Name one thing that everyone hates. Ticks! What good are they? What purpose do they serve? They are nasty, blood-sucking things that leave itchy welts when they bite and cause concern over Lyme disease for all of us who live where deer ticks are found.
What I know is that having animals that go outside means they will bring ticks into the house and then they will end up on you. I used to comb my cat Richie when he came in from hunting all day in the woods and fields, and sometimes I would find 11 ticks on him at a time. It used to be that we got a break from the ticks after Spring, but this year Fall is bringing them back. I recently pulled a couple off my other cat.
In Florida I always sprinkled Borax around to keep the flea population down and it kills other things too, so I did a Borax experiment with a tick. I closed in a jar with borax in the bottom and waited to see if he would die. I waited for days and he didn’t die. So I flushed him like I usually do.
My landlady used to burn them with her lighter, and my neighbors loved the fact that their chickens ate them.
It is snowing now, so I hope this means the end of ticks until Spring.
