What does New Year's Eve mean to you? Resolutions? Parties? A quick trip home after work to stay IN, and not get into the party madness?
I have an old high school chum who posted that she will be in bed tonight by 9:30 or 10. Yay for us old farts over 50!
At my house, New Year's Eve means birthday time.
On this date in 1933 my mom, Elva Hasty [later Thompson] was born. It was the worse depth of the Depression and my grandparents didn't have much money, but they made do.
one reason I love this photo is because Mamaw looks a lot like Mom here - this was made shortly after they got married in 1923
The Butler sisters, Mamaw and her sisters [Mamaw on the far right in the dark dress]
Early photo of Mom and brother Don, and at right, Mamaw
Mom and Dad on their wedding day, 1957
Mom and baby Bruce, plus my aunt Myrtle and Robert and Raye
Mom and Dad in the 1980's, in Knoxville
this is one of my all-time fave photos, because Mama and Michael both look so tickled
I wish I had something exciting to report, but alas, we had a pretty quiet day. It was rainy and cold and yucky all day.
I walked Lola before the rain got too heavy.
I ran some errands.
I took Lesleigh to her sister's for some visiting time.
Michael and I watched the movie Snitch - interesting film. Very gritty. Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson has some surprising acting skills.
My mom will be 80 years old on Tuesday and we are having a little party for her. So there's a lot of planning of food and drinks and whatnot. I picked up a Honeybaked Ham, and I will of course make her a birthday cake. We will have "heavy hors d'ouvres." I've never had a party where there were light ones. You can usually eat enough for a meal...
Alesia has been seeing old friends and getting reaquainted.
Well, these are lazy days at the moment. I imagine most of my friends are in the same post-holiday haze, being lazy and visiting.
My major activity today?! Having lunch with my two BFFs.
The kids and I watched a good movie last night, Jobs, about Apple founder Steve Jobs. He was a fascinating man. The second half of the movie was problematic. It concentrated on business dealings and got so far away from the personal story that it was hard to follow, and hard to care. I have to give Ashton Kutcher props because he was excellent. I really don't care for him in anything but his characterization of Jobs seemed very nicely done.
I bought my brother the Walter Isaacson book about Jobs when it came out, and I skim-read it, and just that much exposure made me know the movie is deeply flawed.
To be fair, reducing anyone's life to a 2 hour movie would be tough.
The kids [Michael particularly] were paying attention. They were seeing a part of history that is "new" history, that has had a direct impact on them. As we started the movie, I pointed out that they were both holding iPhones, Lesleigh was working on a laptop, I was on my iPhone - we were all using technology directly influenced by Steve Jobs.
He was undoubtedly a genius but from all accounts not necessarily always a nice man. I imagine most geniuses are not always nice. They don't think the way the rest of us think, so it's not surprising.
Alesia continues to do well, I feel. She is talking about getting a job, which is good.
Yesterday was an interesting day for a lot of reasons, but the best reason was that my daughter came home for Christmas!! Yay!
She got a late bus and came in around 2 this morning, and her friend Jason picked her up for me. When she came home we had a wonderful reunion. She looks good, sounds good, and we are just delighted she is here.
We are having freaky weird weather, even for Hot-Lanta. Thunderstorms. And it's hot. Record-breaking hot. The high today will be 72.
The high tomorrow will be in the 50's, which is more normal. The rain will taper off.
I actually slept with a fan on last night. I would've opened the window but I need Michael to do that.
As irritating as it is to walk Lola outside and try to hold a stadium umbrella over her and me, I am grateful for this day.
I do not have to go shopping. My shopping is done.
I have a few more small things to deliver, little home-baked presents to some folks who have been sweet to us this past year, particularly sweet to Michael. He has a couple of steady customers in the babysitting realm, and he likes doing it, so I want to honor those folks and thank them.
Due to his work schedule, my brother is coming in Christmas Eve late in the afternoon and leaving the day after Christmas. So we will have him for just over a day, but that's OK. At least he is coming home. I hate remembering the years he was on active duty in some far-off post and couldn't come home at all. Those were Christmases when my father cried all day.
We watched on TV yesterday Remember the Titans, and it's an excellent film. I have a weird quirk in that I really like movies about football but I don't watch football games. Well, sometimes I watch - if UGA is in a big game, for instance - but I get all excited and scream and yell and nobody wants to be in the house with me during those times, so I have to refrain, which is not tough, since my understanding of the game itself is limited.
However, I have a lot of Facebook buddies who live in Knoxville, where I spent a lot of my growing up years, and there are many of my female friends who never miss a University of Tennessee football game, either in person or on TV. They publish posts on game day which are incomprehensible to those of us not watching., but sometimes funny.
We also watched Roxanne, a movie I love because it's set in the mountains of Colorado and is such a sweet, funny film. I see by the IMDB site that it was filmed in British Columbia. Wow. When it was made, Steve Martin was 41, and he had the athleticism and grace of a teenager in that movie. He is the master of physical comedy, and an actor that I love to watch because he's always so graceful, even if the film is a clunker.
Here's a clip. If you haven't seen this one, check it out:
I had a horrible flashback a few minutes ago. Just looking at a video on Facebook made my heart hammer and my breathing quicken - and not in a good way. Nope.
My friend posted video of her son's class folk dancing.
Two words I despise. Two words that bring back a flood of horrible memories.
FOLK DANCING
Sixth grade. Everyone in the sixth grade at Cedar Bluff Middle School went to Tremont. What is it? It was called [then] an Environmental Education Camp.
It was 1974. Learning about the environment had evolved from the realm of hippie child stuff to regular middle class suburban kid stuff.
Here's what I remember. The first day, we got off the bus, got something to eat, and went on a hike. Then we went back to the camp, ate a horrible dinner, and then went outside to folk dance in the parking lot.
We couldn't watch TV. There were no TVs there. ACK!
There were many things wrong with Tremont, to me. I didn't learn anything about the Environment. For me, a chubby unpopular kid, it was a NIGHTMARE.
I didn't belong to any cliques of popular girls. I didn't even figure in the orbit of the popular girls. The boys? Well, they either ignored me or barked at me.
I was So Not Cool.
First of all, I didn't have the right shampoo. Every girl who was cool used Clairol Herbal Essence or LemonUp, which had a plastic lemon for a cap. I think I had Prell.
Secondly, the forced marching hikes. In the mountains. Which were always covered in fog. [Hey, they aren't called the Smoky mountains for nothing.]
I didn't like to hike. In the rain and mud. Blindly following the child in front of me, who had better hiking boots and chewed the right bubble gum and had the right shampoo.
My "hiking boots" came from K-Mart. My dad was not going to spend big bucks on boots I would wear... once? Ever? Mine were beige plastic and looked like they were designed for a large doll. My feet hurt all.the.time.
I digressed. Even now, my feet hurt from the horrible memories..
I remember the folk dancing in the parking lot most of all, though, because it involved [HORROR OF HORRORS] boys touching me.
We had been practicing folk dancing in gym just so we could folk dance in the mountains. Just like our ancestors. Except I bet the ancestors didn't hate it.
To a bunch of 12-13 year olds, folk dancing is nightmarish. For me, it was nightmarish times infinity.
Boys didn't want to touch me. I was taller than most of them. I had boobs [scary!] and I was chubby dork. I wore dorky glasses.
My teachers that went with us, Ms. Carey and Mr. Gayle, were extremely ODD. That's putting it nicely. Ms. Carey had no lips, and had Very Bad Hair. Every day. She hated me. She liked to scream at any group of kids that included me. She looked like she had menstrual cramps, 365 days a year.
She screamed at me one day so much my dad had to go to the school the next morning and get ugly, but then, she left me alone. I think she didn't want Mr. Perry to get his ass kicked because I think that's what my dad had to threaten to do.
Mr. Gayle was.... well, a bit effeminate. He taught Social Studies. He liked to pull out his ukelele and sing songs. Right after lunch he liked to sing "I was eating white worms!/ Down by the riverside / Down by the riverside." Folk music with words rewritten by the Addams Family. He had a bad comb-over and he liked certain boys to sit up front, near him.
I actually never had any problems with Mr. Gayle. He made some of the boys uncomfortable though.
Anyway, I digressed...
back to Tremont and Folk Dancing.
I am going to have Flashback Nightmares tonight, I know it. Somewhere, in a box in the garage, I still have the journal I wrote while at Tremont.
It details the list of horrors: the hiking. the food. the FOLK DANCING.
I sincerely hope that other children are not tortured that way any more. I hope in 39 years [OMG it's been nearly FORTY YEARS!! ACK!] some progress has been made.
Now, I love nature. I think kids should be outside, in nature, all the time.Lord knows it's better for their brains than just looking at videogames and phones all the time.
I like to look at nature while sitting in a rocking chair on a screened-in porch, with a glass of sweet tea beside me. That's as close as I want to get.
To be fair, the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is a vastly different place than it was in 1974. Looks like it's actually a fun place, now. Of course, the fact that I am not an oversized, dorky, socially-awkward 12 year old makes a huge difference. I should have gone as a third grader, or a tenth grader. Adolescence is bad enough without the torture of Folk Dancing thrown it.
If you want to see a very cool video about Tremont check this out:
Well, I suggested to my friend Kristy a while back that she let me make some loaves of pumpkin bread for her to give as client gifts this year. She said sure, make me 10 small loaves.
I didn't think it would be a big deal. Truly didn't.
Last time I got the old Christmas baking assembly line going was a number of years ago, and I had a boyfriend helping me. He lived in a house with a big kitchen. It was great fun. I was, of course, a lot younger and more fit.
I also had to go to two different stores yesterday, for prescriptions and whatnot, so by the time I got home and started the pumpkin bread it was after noon.
This photo shows some of the loaves. Two were in the oven.
The tricky part was figuring out the baking time, since they were smaller than the loaves I usually make. The first batch, three loaves, I baked together. Took them out after 30 minutes. Not done. Fifteen more minutes. Not done. Ten more minutes. Not done.
Finally it occurred to me that since these loaves were 80% as big as the regular loaves, they probably needed close to an hour, just like the regular baking time. DUH.
After that it went fairly easily, but I was soooooo tired by the end of the day.
I failed to take a photo of the end product, but there were nice plastic domed lids, and I put some nice gold ribbon and curled it. The end product looked very professional. That's what I was going for - something that looked professional but tasted homemade.
I debated about using nuts and decided against nuts, since I didn't want to send any nut-allergic child to the ER. That would send the wrong message.
Will signings are suspanded until after the holidays. Who wants to think about wills and estate planning around Christmas?!
I've put the Pumpkin Spice bread recipe on here before but I will do it again at the bottom. The recipe will make two big loaves or 4 small loaves. What makes it so good are all the spices. Don't skimp on the spices!
I also made this Milk Chocolate Fudge, except I used semi-sweet morsels. Fudge can be sickeningly sweet, and that's not good. Michael had a fit over the fudge; most of it was a gift. I will make more.
This morning, I made something I hadn't seen since I was a kid and we used to make these, oranges studded with cloves:
these make the house smell wonderful!
I am not sure what else I am going to make, except I know I will make a pecan pie. Mike says that's what makes it feel like Christmas, to him, pecan pie.
To me, Christmas means Rocks. I may make some this year. My dad loved these cookies:
Rocks [cookies]
Recipe of Cephia Henderson Adkins, Courtesy of Diddy Thompson
1 t. soda 1 t. cinnamon
2 egg yolks 1 t. cloves
3/4 c. butter 1 t. vanilla
1 1/2 c. flour 1 t. to 1 T. water
1 1/2 c. sugar 1 box raisins
1 c. chopped nuts (preferably pecans)
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks, well beaten. Sift flour, spices, and soda together, and blend well with butter and sugar. Add water, nuts, and raisins. Mix well. Drop by teaspoon on cookie sheet and bake in 350 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes. I use part butter and part margarine, and rarely add water unless the dough is too stiff after testing a few in the oven first.
My aunt Ceph never wanted to share the recipe, but my aunt Diddy found the recipe written down on a scrap of paper years ago.
SPICED PUMPKIN BREAD
3 cups sugar 1 cup vegetable oil [you can use olive oil and it works fine] 3 large eggs 2 cups pumpkin 3 cups all purpose flour 1 teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Beat sugar and oil in large bowl to blend. Mix in eggs and pumpkin. Sift flour, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, salt and baking powder into another large bowl. [Note: I never sift.] Stir into pumpkin mixture in 2 additions. Mix in walnuts, if desired. I’ve also used pecans, and those were great, too.
Divide batter equally between prepared pans. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool 10 minutes. Using sharp knife, cut around edge of loaves. Turn loaves out onto racks and cool completely.
Mommyblogs usually detail the exploits and antics of little kids, and that's fine, but very few bloggers talk about their teenager and the cute, funny, sweet, etc. things they do.
So I wanted to tell you some of the reasons why I love hanging out with my son.
We were going to school this morning and he looked up at the big fat moon in the trees and said "I wish I had my camera. That's the perfect shot."
We went out last night to see Christmas lights, and picked up Chinese food and brought it home - a rare treat. How many teenaged boys like to drive around with Mom and see Christmas lights?
Every night, Lola gets in her little doggie bed in Michael's room, and he covers her up with her little yellow blanket and kisses her goodnight like he's tucking in a baby. Never has a dog been so loved.
When Mother calls him to make her a drink he always does it. In fact, he rarely refuses to do anything she asks, and when he does there's some pressing reason. He takes good care of his Granny.
Despite being VERY excited that I got his car registration fixed up yesterday and the car is now drivable, insured, and registered, he didn't go nuts when he got home yesterday. We sent him to Home Depot to get some keys made and he came right home. He is excited, but he's not running around like a chicken with no head.
When we see the Salvation Army man with the bucket, Michael always wants to put money in, and we do that. He knows what it's like to be homeless and hungry and he always tries to help.
Michael has babysat a couple of times for a friend of mine who has a little boy adopted from Russia, Alex. Michael likes Alex. The last time he sat with Alex he came home laughing and said "He wore me OUT!" Then he proceeded to tell us how cute and smart Alex is. Mike talks to him like a person, but he can also play with Alex. He has an innate sweetness and patience with younger kids that is rare and beautiful.
I get frustrated with Mike at times - what teen is perfect?! - but I feel SO very blessed to be his mama.
A friend of mine said not long ago, "He [meaning Michael] wants to see you happy so BE HAPPY." [my capitalization]
The remark irritated me to the max. How could I simply "be happy"? Am I not entitled to feel grief and resentment for all the trials I've endured in 2013? Why should I have to plaster on some fake smile and pretend to Be Happy?!
The more I pondered the absurdity of her statement, the more my Inner Voice was saying "CHOOSE IT."
I have had a lot of things to deal with in 2013. Here are just the highlights:
Trying to deal with physical problems that led up to my hysterectomy in July.
Dealing with the onslaught of medical bills since my surgery.
My son's having a head injury.
Having to put Coco down.
Continued worry about my daughter.
I could [and sometimes do] think obsessively about all of these issues and more. I could go over them again and again in my mind, trying to reason out solutions to the issues.
I am prone to not handling things well. I worry. I fret. I root around in my own head until the dirt flies everywhere and I feel mentally like Pigpen, walking around in a cloud of his own dirt.
What GOOD does that do, though? What does it accomplish?
The best thing I can do is think of all my blessings, with gratitude. I am grateful for so many things. A warm house. The company of my mom and my son. My cute Lola. Great friends.
Happiness is a CHOICE.
It truly is.
"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be" -- Abe Lincoln
Being glum and worried all the time accomplishes nothing. I know this.
So what if we are not having an elaborate Christmas? We will be together.
I am repeating this as my new mantra: Happiness is what I choose. In 2014 I will remind myself as often as I need to that for the sake of my family and my own sanity, I must choose happiness.
Instead of dwelling on all the unhappy things, I will simply choose happiness.
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