Tag Archives: Life is good.

Music soothes.

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Like the rest of the world, we had a hard time last week, listening to the news coming out of San Bernardino, California. Two circumstances brought it close to home: that the shooting was in a center that served adults with developmental disabilities, and that a school for the blind was directly across the street.

News folks talked to a leader at the center from the blind, announced that no one there was hurt, and they had in fact sheltered some who ran from the shooting site. We felt a small amount of relief.

Then we took a collective deep breath and went on with our lives. Amigo put on his costume for the Barbershop Bistro show, and we headed out of the house. Chuck and Amigo left their phones behind. I set mine on vibrate and tucked it deep in my purse. When we arrived, we set the sad world news aside for a little while.

The show had a 1940s theme. Here's Amigo.

The show had a 1940s theme. Here’s Amigo.

Just a few weeks earlier, we’d been at the local museum for the Festival of Trees. Can you find Amigo in the group? At first, neither could I. He fits in very well.

Jingle, Jingle, Jingle!

Jingle, Jingle, Jingle!

Music soothes. It can’t take away the violence, but it can take us out of the big bad world for a little while, lower our blood pressure, and celebrate being together with those we love.

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‘Tis the Season for the Tunes

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Subtitle: The Tunes and the Stories – The Christmas music CDs and the stories they bring to mind.

I did some sorting today. Here’s the result – or most of the result. I think a few are missing. I have La Petite’s She and HIm. Maybe she has my Michael Buble. And where’s the Josh Groban?

It's beginning to sound a lot like Christmas!

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas!

I sorted through our Christmas music collection and organized it – as best I could. This brought conversations like the following.

John Denver goes after the Ray Charles, or maybe I should file this under M for Muppets. Does Charlie Brown Christmas belong under C for Charlie, B for Brown, or G  – for Vince Guaraldi? Mannheim Steamroller almost needs its own section.

Pentatonix, the Blenders, Rockapella – and then a random compilation of a capella performers. Sting, Taylor Swift, the Swingle Singers, Take 6. Oh, and after Mannheim Steamroller come the Nylons and Olivia Newton-John. Wait a minute. Newton-John comes before  Nylons.

Amigo enjoyed reminiscing, too. I ran into a Malt Shop Memories CD – lots of oldies, lots of fun. He remembered that Jan and Dean had a great Frosty the Snowman on that collection.

Chanticleer, Charlie Brown (for now), Burl Ives, Al Jarreau, Spike Jones. That one must be Amigo’s. It goes well with his Dr. Demento collection, which includes the adorable ear worm “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” You’re welcome.

Chuck sorted through the collection many years ago looking for background music for something he was doing at work. In the process of sorting, he realized we had 10 covers of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Just for fun, we decided to burn a CD of all Rudolph. Before we could do that, we needed Burl Ives. We found him (he’s filed next to Al Jarreau, see above) and then found out we really needed Gene Autry. We found Gene Autry in an odd place for music – an office supply store. Years after creating the CD I call the Rudolph Compendium, we’ve found a few more. The Temptations? Really? Cool.

Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Franks fit in after Gloria Estefan – one of my favorites. Just think – Gloria came to the United States as a young refugee from Cuba.. She and her family were safe from persecution here, and she found her way into a career that brings joy to many. In fact, I think I’ll bring her “Christmas through your eyes” CD to school with me tomorrow.

It’s time to fill the cubicles with music.

Readers, do you have favorite songs around this time of year? Is there a story behind the song, or a story behind one special cover by one special performer? Please share.

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Winter, We’re Ready.

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The rain barrels are emptied and turned upside down.

The cushions are inside.

Onion and garlic are planted; we’ll see if they come up in the spring or if the winter critters dig them up. I saved a few bulbs and cloves, just in case.

The lawn and the leaves got mowed into mulch one last time and dumped on the garden plots.

Lawnmower is in the shed, and snowblowers are in the garage.

Winter jackets are in the mudroom, and the windbreakers have been through the wash and put away.

Gloves and mittens sit in the back hallway where the baseball caps used to be.

I have pumpkin spice coffee in the coffeemaker.

I’m ready, Winter. Bring it on.

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Questions. I have questions.

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When the Coneheads cue the jingle and sing “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” does Barry Manilow get royalties?

What would life be without rhetorical questions?

Do Tarek and Christina El Moussa ever make anything simply stand out, or does everything have to “pop”?

Does the super El Nino mean we might not have a white Christmas?

Do I work in an office of chocolate hoarders?

The last one deserves explanation. Halloween was a rainy night, and many folks in our area had leftover candy. I brought leftovers to work and dumped them on a tray in the closet that functions as a teachers’ lounge. Less than an hour later, another staff member had doubled the size of the pile. By lunch, there were two flavors left: Whoppers malted milk balls and Dum Dum suckers. By the end of the school day, even the Whoppers were gone. The only piece of candy left on the tray was a Dum Dum succker – Mystery Flavor.

One solution is this: we’re teachers. We get enough surprises in a normal day. Mystery flavor? Like Bertie Botts Every Flavor beans, it might be ear wax or vomit. It might be bacon – or it might be chili pepper. I wonder how long the Mystery Flavor will sit in the closet-lounge before someone either takes it or throws it away? We could almost have an office pool on the topic. Heck, I’m losing the office football pool. Maybe I could win this one.

But in the meantime, I’ll wonder and ponder these oh-so unimportant questions.

What was I talking about, anyway?

Readers, what are the irrelevant questions in you lives at the moment?

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Observations from a fall day in 2006

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Here’s what I said on an autumn day nine years ago. Photo credit goes to La Petite. She was already talented with a camera back then.

Things I can do now until the cold weather strikes:
*Clean the bunny litter boxes outside with the hose
*Take small amounts of easily digestible compost out to the bin
*Shake rugs out on the deck in my stocking feet
*Take out garbage and recycling without a coat or jacket
*Rake leaves (a simple pleasure)

I can’t:
*Harvest from the garden, the last frost did it in
*Sit out on the backyard swing, it’s just a bit too cold to enjoy
*Leave the windows open, because the heat is on

But I can enjoy:
*Coffee or tea or hot spiced apple cider in a favorite mug
*A wood fire blazing in the fireplace
*NFL or college football on television
*leaves falling outside as I read a book in the cozy, warm den

Know what, readers? Not much has changed. I now compost through the winter with a second bin closer to the house. I still carry the bunny boxes outside, and after I empty them in the compost or in the garden, I rinse them with water from the rain barrels instead of using the hose. It’s windy enough today that I don’t feel the need to rake leaves, but I don’t mind the chore. I pile the leaves, like the biodegradable litter, on top of the raised beds. No wonder my tomatoes grow so tall!

Readers, how about you? Do your fall chores stay the same each year? Or differ greatly?

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Encore: Autumn Garden Chores

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Was this really only two years ago? So much has happened since then. I was looking forward to spring, not knowing what awaited me. I still look forward to spring – as soon as I can get the tomatoes indoors for the fall harvest.

I’m looking forward to spring. I know, it’s not even winter yet, but autumn is the season when I pull apart the fading foliage of my garden and take steps to prepare for next spring. Chuck got into the thick of it this year. Take a look.

Straw bales and repurposed boards

Straw bales and repurposed boards

Another Angle

Another Angle

Rather Awesome, I'd say.

Rather Awesome, I’d say.

Yesterday and today I took to the task of harvesting all tomatoes that could ripen indoors. The herb pots are already inside. Next, I pulled all the tomato plants and tossed them on the brush pile at the back of our yard.

We’re adding leftover potting soils to the new patch as I deal with most of the containers. If weather permits, I will dig out compost from the base of the brush pile and from the base of the compost bin and fill in what I can of the new patch. It’s going to be a raised bed, built inside the repurposed lumber that Chuck assembled so nicely. Whatever I don’t fill this fall, we’ll build up next spring.

It’s another experiment: straw bale gardening. As long as we were expanding the once-triangular plot, we decided to try the bales. A year from now, when the growing season is done, the straw-based soil will become compost for the future. Planning ahead, we are.

But stay tuned, folks. There are still piles and piles of green tomatoes ripening indoors. I’m sure there will be stories.

So, readers, what kind of autumn tasks have fallen your way? Leaves? Lawns?

 

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Eating the Opponent: St. Louis

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If the Packers play the Rams often enough, I might be convinced to invest in a small home fryer for making fried ravioli. This time, though, we stuck with what we know we can make.

The neighborhood meat market had pork steaks on sale (coincidence? we think not), so Chuck grilled up a batch of St. Louis style pork steaks with an amazing marinade. He boiled up fresh corn from the farmers’ market and some of my freshly harvested carrots and parsnips. Oh, those veggies were good.

I made a St. Louis Mississippi Mud Cake – delicious. Absolutely delicious.

Frankly, between our menu and Aaron Rodgers’ arm, the Rams don’t stand a chance.

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Eating the Opponent goes Purple

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It was a day that wasn’t quite going right – a day to make the best of less-than-average situations. I decided to make our Eating the Opponent San Francisco from scratch instead of going to the store. We combined a home-made rice-a-roni style dish with a simple fish pan fried in butter to suggest Fisherman’s Wharf. I picked a few carrots, parsnips, and one turnip from the garden to enhance the rice-pasta dish. Rice and vegetables could cook well together, I thought.

The carrots were purple. The rice became purple, too.

Purple rice

Purple rice

It was delicious. After cooking in chicken broth, then adding a little maggi sauce, onion, garlic, and despite its hue, we enjoyed every bite.

I must remember these carrots when we play the Minnesota Vikings.

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Call the little girl with pigtails.

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I am a geek-type person. I work in a geek-type office full of people just like me. We’re not all alike, though, and sometimes there is a lack of understanding or odd communication.

Take our phones – please. The phones switched to a new provider with new highly-visual dial-pads. (That is a word. Dial-pads is a word. Hyphenated, even.) Here’s what it looks like.

Hello? Hello?

Hello? Hello?

I am a verbal-linguistic type. I would rather see an abbreviation on the phone or even a passcode to use the many features. As an example, it took me over a year to figure out how to transfer a call. On the old phones, I would put the caller on hold, dial the extension of the next person, and when that person answered, release the hold and let the two of them talk while I hung up and got back to work.

Deep sigh. I lost a few calls and I had to admit to more than a few parents that I didn’t know how to forward a call. I finally asked another teacher how to handle the task. She, another verbal-linguistic type, said:

  • Push the button with the little girl with pigtails on it.
  • Then push the button on the screen for the teacher you want.
  • Then push the little girl with pigtails again.

Got it! I responded. I had been messing up the process by using the hold button, the way we used to do it. Ahem. I can do this.

Which icon? Can you see the little girl?

Which icon? Can you see the little girl?

And then my verbal-linguistic friend and I found out we were interpreting the graphic all wrong. It’s actually three people. One person in front, with the outlines of two others behind him or her. Or it.

Readers, your opinions? What do you see — a group of people or a little girl with pigtails? I’m sure there’s deep meaning here. Let’s have an analysis party in the comments. Meanwhile, I’ll get back to work.

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Oooooooooh, tomatoes!

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There really ought to be a theme song for tomato season. We could sing it to the tune of Oklahoma.

But back to reality, I’ve had a lot of tomatoes become ripe and on the way to ripe. I pick most of them so we can eat them and the wild things in the neighborhood can not.

Tomatoes in the sun

Tomatoes in the sun

from left to right - ripening

from left to right – ripening

tomatoes for freezer

tomatoes for freezer

and last but not least, yellow pear.

and last but not least, yellow pear.

And there’s more where those came from, folks. Lots more.

Readers, do you have an abundance of tomatoes? What will you make with them? You can leave a comment here, and you can see more gardeners with an abundance of something on Harvest Monday at Daphne’s Dandelions.

 

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