Merry Neighborhood Christmas

Last night my jet lag finally caught up with me and I passed out at eight at night. This meant I missed a traditionally wonderful neighborhood Christmas party. There was just nothing I could do to keep my body going and I had a busy day planned for today to get ready for Christmas.

I slept until five this morning. When I awoke and discovered how early it was I made myself go back to sleep so I could try and get back on East coast time. Big mistake because in my fitful half sleep I did something to my back and woke up with a pulled muscle. So much for my busy day. I have limped around, trying to do the least taxing jobs I could do, icing my back and taking the strongest pain meds in the house. Best laid plans.

But what does it really matter? I have Russ, Carter and Shay Home. We have no other family coming for Christmas since they are testing out being in Florida for the holiday. Our friends the Toms, who have no other family either, are coming for Christmas Eve dinner and they are the easiest guests since they are more like family.

As I was upstairs washing a sweater for Carter the doorbell rang and Shay was barking a greeting to someone. I went downstairs to find our friends the Aldridges outside in their new to them antique pick up truck with their famous dog Norman in the back in his bed. They were delivering holiday cheer. Cheer indeed. This is why I love living in our neighborhood for the last 24 years.

Having good friends just drop by to wish you a Merry Christmas with their dog is the reason I don’t want to go anywhere else for the holidays. Thanks to Mack, Elizabeth, Liza and Caroline and of course Norman for bringing a smile to my face and making my back feel better.

Merry Christmas to you and all of yours. If you can’t be with family this time of year drop by your friends, they are the family you choose.

German Differences

Thankfully we all got home yesterday, all without sleeping for at least 24 hours. Carter spent four months in Germany and a Russ and I spent 9 days. Together the tree of us spent three days in Prague and I have to say I liked it better than the parts of Germany we were in. Carter definitely has some strong feelings about Berlin and they are not all positive.

I looked back on my photos I took and something struck me, everywhere we went in Germany it was grey most of the time. The three days we had in Prague were the only days we saw blue sky’s. I think that I had a little seasonal disorder. It did not help that we were there on the shortest day of the year so there was only a chance of seeing any sun from about nine in the morning until three in the afternoon.

That grey, cold, drizzle and dark is not a mood enhancer. Perhaps that is why beer is so helpful there. Russ did enjoy a different beer everyday. He declared that the Bamberg smoked beer was the best. He said it was like a cross between scotch and beer.

Today Carter went out and did some Christmas shopping. She came home and said, “I am having Culture shock. The guy at Chipolte was so nice. He asked me how my day was going and we had a whole conversation.” In Germany they were much less familiar and use a real economy of words. You can imagine I stick out like a sore thumb.

Not that people weren’t friendly, it was just different. One example was the day we walked 2 kilometers up hill to a castle that was closed. On the way up we passed a school group of kids and their teachers walking down the hill, no one thought to mention to us that it was closed and there was no need to keep walking up the hill. As we were walking down the hill with our driver there were people walking up just like we had done. I asked him if we should tell them the castle was closed so they did not have to find out the hard way we did. He looked at me with an odd look, and said, “No, we shouldn’t tell them.”

One of the places we went that I did really like was Potsdam. It was where the summer residence of the king of Prussia was and it is a lovely little city, not ruined during the time it was ruled by East Germany. Prince Frederick the great built Sanssouci Palace and it is considered a little Versailles. We saw his grave and there were potatoes left on it I. At first I thought they were stones, like on Jewish graves, but then Carter explained they are potatoes put there by Germans because Frederick brought the potato to Germany. The Germans do like their potatoes. Too bad they have to go a ruin them by making them into potato dumplings.

Next to Frederick’s grave were the graves of all his dogs. I thought that was so nice his dogs were buried with him. That was until Carter told us that he left instructions for his dogs to be buried with him. Three of them were already dead, but the remaining dogs were killed so they could be buried at the same time. Made me think a little differently about how nice they were buried together.

Overall, it was a great trip, but not a holiday. I am happy to be back in sunny, friendly Durham with all my people and dog safe and sound.

Just Get Home

After a semester in Germany and a trip with her parents Carter was more than ready to come home. To celebrate twinkle thing being over we did a major splurge last night and went to eat at Tim Raue, one of the top 50 restaurants in the world. I had made the reservation months in advance and somehow we lucked into be seated at the Krug Table, that looked into the kitchen.

Both Russ and Carter had studied the Tv show about this place. Turns out our waitress is featured in the show. The Asian fusion did not diss appoint and neither did our waitress who visibly shock with excitement when she would place our food in front of us. It was a once in a lifetime experience. The food was indescribably delicious.

The only problem with going our last night is we had very little sleep to catch our early morning flights home. Carter had a ticket from her school program and was following us a few hours later. Russ and I had a 3:30 wake up to catch the 6:30 flight to Paris.

Unfortunately while we were on our flight to Paris Carter was at the Berlin airport being informed that her 9:45 flight tNewark was not going until 4:00 and that she had no connecting flight to RDU now. “You can rent a car and ride to NC from NJ.” The airline person told her. When Carter said she was 19 and cold not rent a car, they basically told her tough luck.

Not able to contact us she made the executive decision to buy a ticket on Delta that involved three flights. It was a fortune, but all she wanted was to get home. By the time we landed in Paris she was able to each us and tell us her plan. It was a highly stressful situation for her as well as us.

She got her first flight from Berlin to Amsterdam. Russ and I got on our flight to RDU from Paris and they told us the WiFi was out. I could not hold back the tears. I had no idea where she was and if her flights were on time. Then as if my tears had worked on the technology, the WiFi started working. She was on her flight to Detroit. Unfortunately it sat on the runway for an extra hour, butting her connection of her final leg in jeopardy.

We got home, and have been texting her through the whole trip giving her instructions on how to make it through customs fast enough to make her flight. We have been awake for 23 hours waiting to see if she makes it. If she does we will have to stay up another 3 hours to get her tonight. I have never wanted to pull an all nighter more than this.

You Are Never Too Old

When you have been on a trip just a day or two too long and you are getting tired of museums, historical spots, and looking at stuff what should you do to fill your time on the last day? Go to the zoo!

This morning we just could not muster going to another good for us, mind enriching site. We had a leisurely breakfast trying to fill the time, ran an errand to replace Carter’s original Birkenstocks and had packed our bags so that we made sure they were balanced in weight. Then Carter came up with the brilliant idea to go to the Berlin Zoo, a place she had not yet visited.

Off on the S train we headed. Going to a zoo in the winter on a weekday is the way to go. The place was empty of many other visitors, but full of the most glorious animal exhibits. Russ downloaded the zoo app so we knew when everyone was going to be fed. We got to see bears of all types, from polar to pandas. Wolves, hippos, zebras, antelopes, rhino and birds.

The two houses we liked the most were the big cats and the primates. We were in time for feeding in both places. When we entered the cat house a big female lion was making a terrific noise. Carter was worried that she was in distress. No she just knew it was time for her big beef leg.

The monkeys were our favorite. We spend a good amount of time watching big families in giant habitats, swing from ropes, pick up apple pieces with their feet and play with each other. There was some other monkey business going on too, so thank goodness there were not many kids around.

Tonight we are going to dinner at a restaurant we learned about on a great TV show called The Chef’s table. It was not the best planning to go to our best meal a few hours before our flight home. Hopefully I will sleep all the way home.

What I Like Best About Germany

There is one thing that I think is the greatest about Germany. It is not the beer, I don’t care a thing about beer. It is not their cars, despite the fact that they make some great cars. It is their dogs.

Everywhere we went in Germany there were dogs. In restaurants, the grocery store, on public transport. People take their dogs everywhere they go. And they are the most well behaved dogs you have ever seen.

On the street, dogs often were not on leashes, but they followed their owners right on their heels. They never thought to depart their masters side, even if a squirrel ran out in front of them. I never heard a peep out of any of the hundreds of dogs we saw. It was as if the dogs here were told never make a sound.

When two dogs passed each other on the sidewalk there was no confrontation or even any “hey, how are you?” sniffing going on. There might have been a slight nod, in a “what up” kind of way that you would have to video tape and play back in slow motion to even recognize.

Tonight when Russ and I were riding back to our hotel on a tram a woman with a white Scottie stood in the accordion center of the two car tram. The floor where they were standing turns when the tram make a turn, but the dog was never bothered. He stood right between her feet so as passengers got on and off the tram they did not step on him, since they did not know he was down the. He was never ruffled by the crowd. He did have a leash, but it did not appear to need it.

The other thing I like in Germany is dogs are always well dressed. Rarely did I see a dog without a coat on. It has been cold, but not really freezing, yet everyone makes sure their dog is well outfitted. It makes me think that my dog needs a coat for the few very cold days we have. I did not see any dogs in boots, but then again the ground was not freezing. I do wonder if people wished their dogs feet when they got home.

Dogs get to go everywhere and are well behaved. I wish that this was something we could adopt in America. Dogs can rise to the occasion if we let them. It is the owners I am not so sure about.

Nuremberg Bamberg Potsdam

Today was a day on the move. We woke up in our little flat in Nuremberg, cooked breakfast, rented a car, packed it full and headed North. There was only one bad fight about navigating on our way to Bamberg and then the dust settled and the rest of the day was happy. Since I am the only one who can drive a manual It was my job to do the driving.

We were on our way to Potsdam via Bamberg. We stopped in the medieval town that is now really a city because it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. That does not mean that the modern world does not grow up around it, just that a bunch of buildings are protected, from what I am not quite sure.

Nuremberg Bamberg Potsdam We found parking in an underground lot which is all I worry about when leaving a car with all. Y belongings in a strange city. After wandering through the newer part of the old town, think like 1700’s – 1800’s buildings we crossed over a bridge to the older part, like 1300’s-1500’s. I discovered that Bamberg had been the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, wait, like every place we have been, Prague and Nuremberg were also seats of the Holy Roman Empire. It is kind of like the American equivalent of George Washington slept here. Anyway Bamberg was beautiful, but since it was Monday in December lots of the stuff we wanted to see was closed.

So off to Potsdam we went.

It was a supposed to be a good four hour drive, but thanks to the fine German driving there were plenty of sections of the highway without speed limits and on those I went at least a hundred and I was in the middle lane. The amazing thing about the drive is we left Bamberg where it was dry and over freezing, as we drove north just a bit we came upon miles of snow covered fields and pine forests that looked like Christmas village landscape set up. Well before Potsdam we were back in dry landscape. It was like we had gone through Narnia.

We arrived in Potsdam in the dark, but since Carter had been here in September she described how beautiful it would be in the morning. Carter approved of the hotel we were staying in, which always makes me happy as the travel agent. We walked into the center of town and went to a seafood restaurant that made us happy not to have German food. On our return walk we went a different route that took us up a huge hill at the very end. Russ reported we did 29 flights of stairs today. Still is hardly enough. I can’t wait to see what daylight brings, especially since it only lasts about six hours.

I Like Some History and Culture

Yesterday, while Russ and Carter were visiting the toy museum and I was walking back to our flat from the Christmas Market I got a phone call from my father. “It looks like from you blog you are not having any fun.” Only my father would think to call me on the other side of the world and say that.

“Why do you think that?” I ask him.

“Because you are doing all this depressing cultural stuff.”

I forgot what it is like to travel with my father. Sitting in a pub talking to the locals is the kind of culture he likes. He thinks the fact that I no longer drink means that I can never have any fun. When Russ cut way back on drinking he thought it was my fault and that maybe Russ should leave me so he could drink again. For the record, I had nothing to do with Russ cutting back.

So just for my father here are a couple of pictures of Russ enjoying the best of German Culture. That fact that one of these picture was taken in the cafe of the German National Museum might get points off with my Dad, Russ said it was a very good beer nonetheless.

Being Sunday, much is closed here, which I find very interesting for such a non-church going society. But one place that was an advantage to go see on Sunday was the Nuremberg Trial Memorial. Court room 600 in the palace of Justice, where the Nuremberg trials were held, is still a working court room so it is best to visit on a weekend when you can be sure to get to walk in the actual place where History was made.

There is an excellent exhibit upstairs from the court room where we got to listen to every detail of the 200 plus days of the trial. It was fascinating to learn how ground breaking the trial was in the area of international law.

Although my father is a well educated and interesting man, he never would have listened to the whole audio at the exhibit without at least one beer. And since food and drinks were prohibited that would rule out the whole visit.

For those of you who like a little Disney with your culture, I have noted that my favorite line from any Disney song, from Beauty and the beast, “I use antlers in all of my decorating.” Is purely German. Yes, everywhere we have gone there have been antlers, but my favorite was this antlers and dragon chandelier like object we saw in the national Museum. Apparently antlers have been part of the culture for a very long time, like back when dragons roamed the countryside. How’s that for Culture, Dad?

And We Have A Winner

Not surprisingly all the cities in Germany are very competitive about who has the best Christmas Market. Now I have hardly been on a compressive tour, but so far I have visited three different markets in Berlin and they are at the bottom of the list. The Prague Market was good, but had more food and less Christmas which is a strike against it in my book. Today I visited the Nuremberg Christmas Market and it is the bomb. No wonder people come from near and far to visit it.

Nuremberg is considered Germany’s most German city. The Market lives up to its German heritage. There are more christmas decorations the than all the other markets put together. Of course sometime there are so many that it is hard to see them.

I have tried to steer clear of buying the painted glass ones in fear that they won’t make it home in one piece. I love the whirlly ones that spin around from the heat of candles, but they are incredibly pricey. I have tried to purchase unique things I can’t find at home, which is harder and harder in our ever shrinking world.

Carter and Russ have been very good sports about my Christmas Market obsession. Today they let me wander on my own. They found the best place to wait was the Lions Club Of Nuremberg coffee house. Earlier in the day we ran into a Santa who told us about the coffee house set up in a church meeting room. The members of the lions club baked homemade cakes that they sold with the coffee or tea. It was a lovely place to get to sit and rest and hide from the Christmas Market craziness.

Carter made good friends with a retired college professor who was working the coffee house. He told us what not to miss during our visit to Nuremberg. By the time I had caught up with them Russ had enjoyed his stolen and coffee, but I was able to enjoy the rest too with some apple cake.

We are yet to have some things that apparently were invented in Nuremberg, pretzels and gingerbread, but we still have another day, although that one is designated as our day of history. More to come on that tomorrow.

We also ate our first and probably our last traditional German Lunch. Carter and I are not fans of potato dumplings, which is a potato, flour and egg concoction that is more like a ball of paste than anything resembling a potato. Mine was with Pork knuckle that I had in honor of my father who made me promise to eat one and Carter had duck. Russ had Nuremberg bratwurst which are smaller than regular brats. All fine, but heavy.

Our waiter thought something was wrong with us when we told him we were done with out half eaten plates. Just too much German food for us. Thank goodness we walked almost ten miles today because we need something to counteract the food.

Back to Germany

We awoke this morning in Prague and had a lovely breakfast at the very fancy Hotel pAris around the corner from our apartment. When we got home our driver George was waiting to take us to Nuremberg with one stop at the Karlstejn Castle on the way. The castle had been built by Czech’s best king, Charles the fourth who was the head of the Holy Roman Empire when it was centered in Bohemia. The castle was not used as a residence, but as a storage facility for all the Royal jewels that had mostly been stolen while plundering other lands.

George was a great driver and we got to Karlstejn without a problem. We had to park in the car park for tourists at the bottom of the hill and walk 2 kilometers straight up hill to get to the castle. We were practically the only people in town. Yes, it is December, but the fact that not one tourist shop, beer hall or restaurant was open should have tipped us off that something was wrong. It was a little like the town without children in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Walking up the hill was a fabulous butt workout. Russ phone told us it was equivalent to 17 flights of stairs. As we reached the top and turned the corner to get to the entrance George made a little gasp at the giant closed door. He knew that meant the place was closed.

At least the down hill was not as hard.

We arrived at our Airbnb to meet our host a darling Girl named Lui who showed us around our flat inside the wall of the old town. It was after two and we wanted lunch so she escorted us to a lovely Italian restaurant. From there we walked around and returned to the flat to unpack. While Carter napped Russ and I went out to do a little grocery shopping.

The first giant store we went in was the worst grocery store I have ever been in. The freezer and refrigerator sections were completely empty with green screens covering them and a sign in German which I was too lazy to translate. So Russ and I walked across the street to a smaller Turkish market where we could hardly find anything we wanted, unless we changed our minds and decided we wanted giant cans of goats milk. We didn’t.

So we continued back to the walled old town where there were lots of stalls set up for Christmas Markets. If we wanted sweet things, or sweet hot wine, or giant bratwurst we wold have been fine, but we didn’t. Eventually we walked far enough that we found a cheese stall. At last, cheese not in a can. We bought some. Then I discovered I had lost my debit card in all this food hunting. Thank you Morgan Stanley for putting a hold on my account so quickly.

Back at the flat I am too exhausted to go out again. My watch reports almost nine miles walked today. Feels like double that. Discovering Nuremberg will have to wait for the morning.

Parallels in History

While most everyone I care about in America was celebrating the defeat of Judge Roy Moore, the worst example of a human being this week, we are here in the Czeck Republic, learning about historical bad acting humans. Today we spent the day visiting Terezin, the Concentration Camp that is outside of Prague.

In the scope of camps, Terezin was not close to places like Auschwitz, which were extermination camps, but was a ghetto and waiting station for extermination none the less. Originally Terezin was a walled military base town, which made it easy to convert into an interment camp for Jews. The reason it was not as bad, is it was the camp the the Nazi’s used to show the International Red Cross that they were treating Jews humanly. In the world of fake news that we live in now, this was the ultimate in fake.

Terezin was a large camp where the Jews were forced to live, men in one building, women in another, boy’s in a third, girl’s in a forth and babies in a fifth. A smaller older fortress that was built in 1770 by the Czeck leader Joseph where prisoners were kept and killed was just down the road. Both places had some setups that were pure propaganda to show the Red Cross. Apparently the Red Cross officials came from Geneva during the war for a four hour visit, but were kept so busy at the big camp that they never had time to see the smaller one where the killings took place.

Regardless of what the Red Cross saw in the way of fake “humane treatment,” why did they not say, “Why do you need to intern these women, children and babies in the first place?” Let alone the old people, or handicapped people who were all Jews. The Red Cross gave the Nazis six months warning they were coming to inspect Terezin, as the example camp, they had to know what was going on. Why was it alright to gather all the Jews in the first place? They were hardly the worst enemy of the state.

Most everyone I know can find nothing redeeming in Nazis, on that we can agree, but what about the Red Cross? Being a Nazi is bad, but standing by and more or less allowing the Nazis to carry out these atrocities is the next thing in line of badness. Jews were sent to Terezin as a first stop before going on to places like Auschwitz. Anyone in the Red Cross with half a brain could ask, “With new Jews coming in all the time, where are the people going out going?”

It is imperative that as humans we keep vigilant in asking questions and not believe the propaganda that still goes on today. A strong and free press is our only defense against politicians who have less than good intentions and kind hearts.

I am thankful that Roy Moore was defeated because his ideology was closer to the Nazi’s than we should have in America. What I fear is that if it weren’t for his sexual accusations he would have easily won and then we would be going more steps backwards to something closer to the Nazis in terms of censorship, lack of personal freedoms and equality.

It is not just up to Jews to “never forget,” at any time it could be any of us who are chosen to be the ones who are persecuted.

Love Stumbling Upon

I had made a reservation for breakfast at Fred and Ginger, a restaurant in the Frank Gehry designed Dancing House building. Russ is a big Gehry fan and this was his first opportunity to eat in one. When we woke up Carter opted for sleeping in so Russ and I made the thirty minute walk to breakfast.

Outside of breakfast we had no plans. Amazingly Carter texted us before we were even done eating that she was ready to meet us. I gave her two options and she picked the Charles bridge and a big walk up hill to the Prague Castle.

The day was sunnier than we have had on the whole trip. It was glorious to see the gorgeous bohemian architecture. According to Russ’ phone we climbed the equivalent of 13 flights of stairs up to the castle complex. We arrived just as there was a changing of the guard. Carter and I had flashbacks Of Princess Diaries and Moldovia. Russ did not understand our reference.

After touring the Cathedral we stumbled upon the Lobkowicz Palace. The only private museum and cafe in the castle complex. We had lunch outside on the balcony of the cafe overlooking all of Prague. Two outdoor meals in so many days is more than I have ever eaten outdoors in winter ever, but it was perfect, especially since I had ginger tea and potato soup.

After lunch we went through the Lobkowicz collections. The story of the family who had been Czech nobility for hundreds of years, lost everything, including four castles/palaces and huge amount of art work to the Nazi’s and got it back after the war only to lose it to the communists was heart breaking. They Lobkowicz Family had left Czech and all their possessions when the communists came in, then when the Velvet Revolution took place in 1990 the family came back and found out they had one year to reclaim all that was taken from them as long as they had proof. They had to learn to speak Czech and amazingly most of all their processions were returned. Not always in good condition, but they have done a great job restoring things.

My favorite room in the palace was the smallest one decorated in a Chinese theme I thought would make a perfect Mah Jongg room. It was a fabulous museum and story.

A good day of discovery and so far eight miles of walking.

Prague Beating Berlin So Far

After not enough sleep last night Carter Russ and I had to pack. Well, most of Carter’s bags were still packed from moving out of school. In planning this trip I had to work everything around being able to leave four big suitcases in Berlin while we traveled around. There was no way we could bring Carter’s whole semesters worth of stuff with us.

After storing her belonging we jumped on a train to Prague. The countryside of east Germany south through Dresden was quite beautiful. Carter felt a bit of familiarity as long as we were in Germany. As we crossed the boarder into the Czech Republic everything changed. No more German over the loud speaker. She said it was a feeling of uneasiness to be out of Germany.

We got a taxi to our apartment in the old town section of the city. It was a nice surprise for us all since we have a big living room with 14 foot ceilings and two giant bedrooms. We wasted no time getting out to explore the old town. We walked down out street and rounded a corner and there at the end of the block was a beautiful cathedral all lit up. We went under two arches and through two cobblestoned court yards and then we were in the middle of a magical Christmas Market.

The tree was twice as big as any in Berlin. The buildings that surrounded the square looked as if Santa had designed them just for Christmas. The stalls were not as close together as they were in Berlin. There were plenty of people but not the shoulder to shoulder crowds like in Berlin.

We purchased some hot cider and perused the offerings. We had no set plans for dinner. When we walked by a big fire with ham turning on a spit, Russ knew he had come to his happy place. We decided just to get food at the market and eat it outside like all the other revelers. Carter cold not find exactly what she wanted so after Russ and I enjoyed the local meat we walked around the square to a Mexican take out place that satisfied Carter to a tee.

Back to the apartment to watch some Christmas movie on Netflix and we were happy. So far Prague is winning in the Christmas celebration feeling. We have hardly scratched the surface, but then again it is just our first few hours here. I can hardly wait to see what daylight will bring here.

The Long March

Carter had made us quite of lists of sights to see in Berlin. When she sent it to me a few weeks ago I never imagined we would get to them all, but today we knocked out the whole thing. Starting with the Berlin Wall Memorial.

The grey overcast sky’s of Berlin winter made a perfect setting to walk the deadman zone along the wall. The craziness of tearing down perfectly good buildings to put up a wall keeping people apart is nothing compared to the insanity of the SS and the Nazi’s we learned about at the Topography of Terror Museum. I have studied plenty about the Nazi’s through the years, but as an American I never thought it could happen again.

Reading the ways that Hitler and Himmler used populist ways to gain power—Cutting out a free press, oppressing the weak and making people fear “the other” along with justifying eliminating anyone who could not contribute, is sounding a little too familiar to me. Germany does an excellent job at looking at bad things that happened here with the most honesty to say, “these things must be remembered so they can not be repeated.” It can happen anywhere and that is what must be learned.

After the heaviness of so much learning in the morning Russ, Carter and I did a very long walk through some of the nicer parts of Berlin despite the cold. After we got to the point where I could no longer feel my face we stopped to have lunch and then change our tact and visit a Christmas Market. It is always a good idea to go through a Christmas Market full from a real meal so you are not tempted to eat any of the food or drinks they are selling in the stalls. We did decide that the people making Bratwursts have it best because they have a big fire to keep them warm. I was able to find a couple of Christmas ornaments so I left the market happy.

By the end of the day I had done a solid nine miles of walking, which was needed to counteract the sushi dinner. Russ pointed out that we have avoided eating one German meal since we got here. I think that will change when we go out in the country.

Magical Reunion

Four months away and the less than perfect journey to get to Carter in Berlin made our reunion that much sweeter. It was Carter’s last day of her school program so we went straight from the airport to her school to see her dorm, meet her roommates and friends and get a first hand look at how she had been living. She took us on a walking tour of her regular haunts, but then we had to leave her because she had her farewell dinner.

Russ and I checked into our hotel and walked up the street to get dinner. Carter texted us through dinner and came and joined us at our hotel for a little more time before she went back to school to finish packing and one last nights sleep.

Bright and early this morning she and her best friend Olivia moved Carter and all four of her suit cases into the hotel. Thank goodness we came to take her belongings home. Olivia and Carter took us to their favorite breakfast spot when parents are paying, Benedict. Getting to know Olivia in person was such a treat, since she became such a wonderful friend to Carter. Our time together was short because she was off to catch a train to visit her German grandmother.

Carter took over as Berlin tour guide. Four months taking a class on Berlin the 21 century city, one on the Holocaust and one on the politics of the EU made Carter not just a good guide, but an excellent lecturer at all the sites she took us to today. We started at the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Tiergarten and then had an extensive visit at the Memorial to The Murdered Jews of Europe, otherwise known as the Holocaust Memorial.

The outside of the Memorial was a sobering city block of 2000 cements blocks varying in size from two feet tall to over twelve feet tall, which you can walk between in single file. It is overwhelming to be swallowed up inside the Memorial. After walking through the maze of blocks we toured the underground museum where Carter gave us an in-depth summary of the Holocaust. I think she got her tuition’s worth in that class.

To lighten the mood after that sad tour we walked over to one of the many Christmas Markets. It was beautiful, with lights and vendors and smells of special German Christmas foods and drink. Carter and Russ sat at a bar and kept warm, while I toured the stalls. Since it is the first of the many Christmas Markets I plan to visit I did not go wild.

We U-Banned to a Turkish restaurant and had a wonderful dinner and then Carter hit the wall. Four hours of sleep her last night at school had finally caught up with her. We walked out of the restaurant to snow. The perfect magical ending to a wonderful first full day back together.

If You See This Man, Stay Far Away

If I weren’t so excited about getting to Carter I might not be in such a good mood after all that has happened trying to get to her. Our trip started yesterday with snow in Durham which certainly causes panic on the roads. We were taking a Lyft to the airport and it took three times as long it should have.

After waiting in crazy long lines, due to 1,000 Delta flight being canceled due to snow in Atlanta, we finally checked our bags. Once in the club I Facetimed with Carter, so excited that the day to get to see her was almost here. The man sitting next to me told me that the Paris flight was delayed half an hour. He had a tight connection to Lisbon and we agreed that it might be OK due to excellent tail winds. Optimism is always my default.

Then we went to the gate. Half an hour late was not even close. We loaded an hour late. Still in the window to make our connection. We pulled away from the gate, I was ever hopeful. The flight attendants made a very pointed announcement about no smoking, vaping or anything else in the bathrooms. Who doesn’t know this?

Then we sat. We sat some more. Not sure if it was de-icing or what. After a good while the pilot said there was something “little” that needed a mechanic so we pulled back to the gate. After a guy in a neon yellow vest came on an airport official appeared at the door and summoned a shady looking man outside the plane. Russ and I were sitting by the door so we had full view of this exchange.

If we were pulling back to the gate to throw this “vaper” off the plane I was going to be really mad. Well it was both the “vaper” and a mechanical issue. Three hours later we finally took off. We were certainly not making our connection.

Thankfully when we landed in Paris we found that we had been rebooked on a noon flight. Just three and a half hours late to get to see Carter. Russ and I walked the mile and a half from our arrival gate to our new departure gate and stopped at a Paul Bakery to get coffee, something we needed badly after our three hours of bumpy sleep. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention the good news. Since we were in the front of the plane we were in one of the three rows that got dinner before the service was discontinued due to turbulence. The rest of the plane never got dinner.

Anyway I am about to get to the cream of the shit crop. While we were sitting at the very crowded Paul enjoying our coffee, right after we got another announcement that our noon flight was now 12:55 a man who was trying to beat someone else to a seat on the other side of a pony wall from us leaned over me with his tray full of coffee and spilled it all over my coat, bags and me. I said every American swear word fast and loudly. The little man had no remorse, except for his lost coffee.

A very nice Paul employee came over with paper towels to help. I was wishing she had brought a stun gun with her. The little shit man just went around the wall and sat down in the seat he so badly wanted and ate his food. The whole place was silent, watching this big disaster. As I was wiping the cafe au lait from my suit case I started to laugh, not just any laugh, but my big belly laugh. Everyone looked. I looked at the little man and laughed right at him. He got a little indigent and asked what we wanted him to do. Nothing. Nothing. Just be a little more embarrassed.

Now we sit at the crazy crowded gate waiting for our next late plane. How much longer until I get to Carter?

Fastest Blog Ever Written on My Phone

Recovered half way, enough to fly without dying. The excitement of going to be with Carter is the best medicine ever.

Of course the snow today made travel on I 40 insane. Half an hour late to airport. We are having to check bags because we are bringing empty bags to Carter. So we had to wait at bag check-in. The weather has screwed up most people’s travel do the check-in agents were spending 15 minutes per passenger to reroute them. Finally checked our empty bags and got to the club where every seat was taken. Our flight has been delayed, hopefully we will still make our tight connection.

Normally this would make me all insane, but either my medicine has dulled me or my euphoria is keeping me positive. Pray we have tail winds and get to Carter safe and sound.

The Blessing Of Being Organized

Last Thursday Russ came home from a business trip sick. With our trip a week away I did everything possible to nurse him back to health from afar. He slept in the guest room, showered in the guest bath, ate alone. It was pure solitary confinement. I practically slid his tray of food through a slot in the door.

He recovered after four or five days and I thought we were out of the woods. Then two days ago my throat got sore, but not too bad. Yesterday I had a little nose issues, not too bad. This morning I woke up at three in the morning, full on sick. Really??!!??!!?!

I canceled the fun Christmas lunch I was supposed to go to. I found out late that I had a church meeting, I canceled. I took a three hour nap and have done everything possible to get better.

Thankfully outside of fun things and meetings I am ready for the trip. I am packed, have all my home support set up, the house is clean so when we return it will be welcoming, I have what few Christmas presents I have wrapped. Thank goodness I think in terms of contingency’s so that I don’t have a lot of last minute things to do, just in case. And here it is, just in case. I need to get well.

Thankfully my ears are not blocked so I shouldn’t burst an ear drum. This is not the way I wanted to spend Carter’s birthday, but I did get some quality three in the morning texting with her. Thanks for all the birthday wishes that got sent to her through my Facebook. It helps to have a little pick me up when you are away on your birthday. Now I am looking for a little pick me up.

December 7 is Carter’s Birthday

Nineteen years ago tomorrow the best thing happened to me and Russ, Carter was born. We had no idea what a fun ride it would be to be her parents but based on her arrival we should not have been surprised.

We waiting a long time for her. After seven years of marriage we finally got pregnant. She was two weeks late to be born and only free being induced did she make an appearance. Although she put up quite a fight about coming out and made sure it was a good story.

Russ and I went to the hospital at six in the morning on the day we were told they would finally induce me. We hung around the waiting room for few hours and they finally showed us to a room where they would give me the drugs that would make Carter want to come out. She wasn’t exactly ready. After a few traumatic heart rate incidents when Russ was not in the room, Dr. Fried announced that I was having an emergency c-section and they quickly rolled me down the hall of Durham Regional completely naked on my hands and knees to the operating room. I am certain that if Russ had been in the room at that moment that he would have made sure they threw a sheet over me. Thank goodness he appeared in the operating room just as they were about to cut me open to deliver sweet Carter.

She was fine and we were ecstatic. It was a crazy beginning of a great childhood. If you had asked me then if I could imagine where she would be nineteen years later I never would have said Berlin.

This is her first birthday I have ever been away from her, but it is only three days until I see her for the first time in four months. It will be like a big present to me to celebrate her birthday a few days late.

I am writing this celebration of her birthday today so that when she wakes up in Berlin in a few hours she will have it as her first birthday present. Sadly she also has an exam on her birthday and one the day after so she will have to spend the day studying as will all her Berlin friends, so no party will go on. So if you know Carter send her a birthday message so the day does not go unrecognized.

I just want her to know that she is the best daughter and I love her more than anything on earth. Being apart for four months was much harder than going down the hall of the hospital naked on my hands and knees on the gurney. It has all been worth it!

Part Time Book Keeper Needed In Durham

I am looking for a person with good book keeping/accounting skills for a 15 hour a week temporary job in Durham. The person is needed now to train with the current staff member. It is a lovely work environment. The job should be for about the next 4-5 months. Are you or do you know this person?

The person should have experience doing books, payroll, deposits all the regular money stuff. I think the hours and days are fairly flexible. Please message me if you know anyone who might be interested in picking up a little work right now.

The person would not work for or with me, but with a group of people who are kind, happy and a joy to be around. I am just helping to try and find the person.

Needlepoint Christmas

Years ago when I started needlepointing I was honored to be invited into a needlepoint Christmas exchange with a group who had been doing it for years. As the eclectic group would sit around the table stitching I would learn so much, not just about stitching, but good books they were reading or wonderful shows they were binge watching or recipes they were cooking.

When I was welcomed into their fold I offered to host the lunch where we exchange the ornaments we loving stitch for each another in secret. They were quick to accept this invitation and happily have not felt the need to move the lunch anywhere else. I love hosting this group and making something special for lunch, especially the dessert.

I know that it is not my event, that I am just a junior member, so sorry I can’t invite anyone else to be a stitching advisor. Please don’t have your feelings hurt that you aren’t invited, it is not my place to do that. That being said, sorry you don’t get to come to this lunch.

This year I had a yummy shrimp, crab and corn chowder, caramelized pear, onion, arugula and blue cheese quesadillas, deviled eggs, a delicious salad my friend Cindy brought and then dessert. I am not really a baker. Being precise in my cooking is not my style. With the very southern menu I was having I needed something equally southern. I decided on a caramel cake.

If you have never had a southern caramel cake you have not really lived, but if you have had them too often you will not live long. It is a decadent thing. I studied a lot of recipes, deciding that I liked one from a blog called Southern Boy Cooks. He made a two layer 9 inch cake. I liked many more thinner layers with a caramel cake, because it is all about the icing.

My cake pans are 8 inch so I thought I might get four layers out of his recipe. I got seven! That made for a very tall cake. With all these layers I doubled the icing. That was too much.

Carmel icing is a difficult thing to make because it can get grainy if you overcook it, but if you undercook it it won’t get thick enough to stay on the cake. Many hours of labor and I got it close.

The only thing that mattered is the stitching advisors enjoyed their lunch and their cake. I am so thankful for this multi-generational group of friends. I am also looking forward to learning how to make a birthday plaid and do beading this year. So here is to more reasons to get together. I’ll make the lunch.

Yes, I’m Nuts About Christmas Decorating

Let me qualify my title, I love decorating the inside of my house for Christmas. There may be many TV shows dedicated to those people who bedeck their houses with more lights than are needed to power Paducah, Kentucky, but that is not my affliction. I am a purely inside Christmas decorator. It is very generous of the light-my-house people to do that so we can drive by and Oohhh and ahhh, but I want to sit inside my house and look at all the Christmas.

One of the things I find most pleasurable is making something new every year to add to my indoor ornaments. I am not talking one new ornament on my tree or even a dozen new Needlepoint ornaments on my garland, more like a new Christmas village, or homemade wreath made out of silver cookie cutters or my favorite, my “happy birthday baby Jesus tree.”

I like totally original things so it involves me making something. I don’t get to count stitching new ornaments, those are just icing.

One might think I am running out of places to put Christmas stuff, but I have not yet had to resort to decorating closets or the garage. I am not so systematic that I look around the year before and say, “the sunroom could really use something.” Instead I just wait to be inspired during the year with whatever new craft I am teaching myself.

This year was a no brainer since I took up quilting. I did make four quilts since August, but I thought that I could make different Christmas placemats as a way to teach myself different skills and techniques. They are in no way perfect, but they did give me lots of chances to push my quilting skills. It was also fun to make up different patterns. I quickly learned it was hard to make them all the same size when I was just winging making up the pattern. The real reason to do this was so I could learn to actually do the quilting part rather than just making the pieced tops.

As I look around my house I see so many potential new Christmas projects, like I could learn to make slip covers and recover my furniture into a red and green theme in December, or I could take up wood working and carve a life size Santa with a chain saw. In all seriousness, I think next year I would like to make a real homemade big gingerbread house. The only problem with that is the temporary nature of baked goods. I like to make things that last year after year. Maybe I should just quilt a gingerbread house.

Some Kind of Nesting

It is going on four moths since Carter has been home. That is a long time for me not to have hugged my baby. I am going to get to see her in less than a week and I think I have gone into a nesting phase kind of like pregnant women do right before they give birth.

I have been readying the house for Carter’s return home in ways I have never done before. Earlier in the week I was in her bathroom. I looked at the grout on her floor and wondered how it had gone from once pristine white to dingy brown. I am sure it has been years since it was sparkling now it was really bugging me.

With Clorox in hand, I remedied the situation. Probably no one else is ever going to notice, but for some reason I felt like I wanted her bathroom spic and span.

With my robot vacuum I am hardly letting a bit of dust settle on the floor for more than an hour. My paintings have never been so well dusted. I am looking at rooms in my house with a magnifying glass like eye to see if something needs shining.

I cleaned the inside of the refrigerator today with engineering precision. Removing parts to be washed in the sink that I am sure were supposed to be factory sealed. I can only strike this new found cleaning bug up to trying to make home so nice for Carter, like bringing a baby home from the hospital.

Not that she requires this. Anything in our normal home mode is going to be welcome after having had to share a communal kitchen with a large group of teenagers who don’t know what dish soap is. I think the thing she is going to like best is the security of a home fridge where if she puts something in it she knows it will still be there the next day. Sharing food storage with people who have no qualms eating your food has been frustrating.

So things are getting ready for her arrival. Of course she might not notice the clean kitchen because all she wants is good Mexican Food, and by good I mean Chipotle, since Berlin is void of any Mexican. Seems like a business opportunity to me, but I don’t want her staying there any longer than needed. So come on home for the Mexican food and I will be happy.

For some reason this post was stuck in cyber space yesterday along with all my emails. It was written yesterday but posted today along with another one to keep up my everyday blogging!

More Art For Christmas

First, let me say I come from a very talented family of artists. My cousin Sarah, who lives in Raleigh, is a fabulous artist and she and a number of other artists are having a show tomorrow at one of her neighbor’s houses.

If you are looking for a unique Christmas gift for that person who has everything consider art. Sarah does not usually have shows because she works on commission so much she hardly ever has anything available for sale. So this is a rare opportunity.

The show is called the Longview Gardens Art Market at

115 N Lord Ashley Rd, Raleigh, NC 27610

Here is the rest of the info.

The Importance Of Place Cards

As someone who loves to have people come eat at my table I am a big proponent of place cards. I don’t like that, sit-anywhere-you-want, attitude. I like to curate my table. Now, I have no problem inviting a random group to come for dinner, but once they are at my house I want to mix it up around the table. I never want there to be any feeling that there is a “cool” group at one end of the table and an outcast group at the other end.

It helps to put the loud with the quiet, the extroverted with the shy, the good listeners with the story tellers. By writing someone’s name at a place I am saying specifically, “I am glad you are here and I think you will enjoy the people around you.”

Place cards can just be simple bits of paper with a name hand written on them or something more elaborate. My very favorite place cards I ever did were when I had a string of “bass” Christmas lights and I wrote each guests name on a fish and strung it around the table.

I wish I had a photo of that because it was brilliant.

I was having more people than my dining room table could fit in my little house in Washington. So I got a piece of plywood and put it on top of my table and covered it with. Big sheet of green felt. I ran the string under the felt and cut holes in it and stuck the light up plastic fish out of the hole at each place. The rest of the decorations we small succulents in little pots and a scattering of votives. It was very fun.

A few years ago Nancy at Chapel Hill Needlepoint was clearing out stuff she hadn’t sold in a while and a roll of hunter tree canvas caught my eye. It was a steal of a price and I thought it would be good to make Christmas things out of. One plan was to make place cards.

Well, the roll sat in my office for a couple of years and today I decided it was time to make some place cards for my annual Needlepoint exchange with the stitching table advisors. Since time was running short I forgave myself doing boarders or cute holly leaves and berries. I thought it was ambitious enough for me just to stitch the names.

Then I had to come up with a way to make the canvas stand up and act like a place card. I went to the dollar store and bought some fat stubby peppermint sticks which I hot glued to a card leaving a skinny space between two sticks as a slot to hold the canvas. Ta-da! I had a place card that was a little more than a slip of paper with a name scribbled on it. And it makes a nice trinket for the guest to take home.

It looks good, but I have to say, it in no way beats the light up bass name cards. I wonder where that string of lights went?

Back To Basketball

For years, six to be exact, I sat in the bleachers of Carter’s basketball games. It was a great place of camaraderie, joy and a little pain. I got to know and love the other parent supporters, a group that morphed through the years with some who had older girls who showed me the way and explained calls to Moms and Dads of younger girls who explained the calls and I showed the way.

It was a giant family I loved spending time with. Over the years parents of graduates would show up to support the current team and it was like old home week to have them back. I have missed basketball games. My calendar is still subscribed to the RSS feed that says when the games are. Although I no longer have a parent account on the school system I have no way to unsubscribe to the girls basketball, I have made no attempt to change this because I still like to know when they are playing.

I looked at my calendar yesterday and realized that this was the only game I could go to before January. I made myself go out in the dark and drive over the gym where I spent so many hours sitting in my crazy creek needle pointing, cheering. I got to the gym ten minutes before the game started and got a big hug from Carter’s coach Krista. Her sweet baby, Hayes was in the stands with the volunteer Mom, Stephanie taking care of him. Having a team baby is the biggest change this year.

I joined the other parents in our regular section of the bleachers and got caught up on all the news. I cheered for the girls and lamented missed opportunities. I was happy the girls won a big victory, but I missed seeing Carter out there, or more specifically her calling plays in from the side.

After the game was over I went out in the hall with Krista and Hayes and she said, “Imani says she misses Carter because she was the best at doing the introduction flourishes with each player as they are introduced.” I miss Carter doing that too!

Talking About Art

Harkening back to my college days as an art major, today I spent the better part of today at the Nasher Art Museum. Ruth Caccavale, who is a docent at the Nasher, had invited friends to come for lunch and a tour of the museums show of Carlo Dolci’s works. It was a most glorious way to spend an afternoon.

When Ruth invited people you just picked the time that fit best in you schedule. It was luck that some people I like, but don’t get to see often we in today’s group so we had such a nice lunch at the Nasher Cafe.

I had mistakenly paid for the maximum amount of time in the parking lot, but it turned out to be a good thing because I ended up being at the museum for almost four hours. We had a little time between lunch and the tour so I went through the exhibit of the 60’s to 80’s works. I was pleasantly surprised to see a work of my cousin Maude Gatewood on display. It was a good warm up before going into the Dolci exhibit.

What? You have never heard of Dolci? That is how Ruth started her tour. Carlo Dolci was a 17th century Florentine painter who was supported by the Medici’s. He was a devout religious painter and thus many of his works have biblical subjects. But he was also considerable conservative so not even baby Jesus is ever really naked.

Ruth brought the whole exhibit to life and I highly recommend you go see this show which is closing in January when all the works of art from the major collections from the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Getty and other collections will be returned to their home museums. On December 9, at 11:00 Ruth will be doing what is called a slow art talk about one painting, Poetry, which I wish I was going to be in town to go to for it is a beautiful work and she is an excellent docent.

To me there is nothing more enlightening than spending an afternoon talking about art. It is so much more pleasurable to hear about the issues of the 17th century than deal with those of today. Thanks Ruth!

Your Chance at Being a Duchess Just Ended, But What a Happy Ending It Is

Hooray for Meghan Markle and her engagement to Prince Harry. What great news, that a divorced biracial American could land the most eligible Prince around. This is exactly the kind of mind candy we need to take our attention off the mess of political and sexual wrongdoings that have dominated the news for the last year.

Since Harry is about to be the sixth in line to the throne when Princess Kate gives birth to her third child, he is probably never going to have to be King. And honestly, who really wants to be king? Being a well loved Prince with a beautiful and smart (she went to Northwestern) finance is the best spot. Harry has really come into his own with the Invictus games and his new best friend Barack. I bet that he and Michelle get an invite to the wedding and 45 does not. Talk about something that will make the current POTUS mad.

So now your chances of becoming a Duchess or even a princess have gone way down. Unless you re about two or three years old. Then you can set your sights on Prince George. The future King on England. Hopefully with Harry marrying a divorced American it can open up George’s possibilities to anyone, so why not another American.

This is way bigger than Grace Kelly Marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco. Yes, she got to become a princess, but it was of a place that is less than a square mile big. Meghan is going to be a Duchess of the United Kingdom. That’s big.

Let the hoopla begin! There is nothing more fun that a royal wedding!

For The Love Of My Robot

When I got the call that long term house keeper couldn’t keep cleaning my house because lifting my vacuum up and down all my steps was too hard I was despondent. I decided I could clean my house myself. Once day of working with my very heavy Dyson animal I understood why my house keeper quit.

My mother had sang the praises of her robot vacuum a few months back so I decided that might be the answer for me. I researched online and chose an Ecovac Deebot N79 based on reviews and a good price.

When it arrived it did not take long to set it up and learn to use it. I could let it go on it’s own or I could use one of the programmed methods. I tried them all. The evidence that it was working well was the full dirt tray I emptied after every use.

Yesterday I did all my Christmas decorating which is a fairly dirty job, between the dust on the Christmas boxes coming down from the attic to the pine needles from the many garlands I put up. After all the decorating was done I let the vacuum go on automatic mode while I took a shower. By the time I was clean so was my whole house.

The machine can run for two hours on a charge which is more than enough time to clean the rooms on my main floor. It is slim enough to fit under most of my furniture and the cabinets in the kitchen. The most amazing thing is it’s ability to clean around the legs and under the table of the dining room.

It may not be a sexy gift, but if it is given with a pair of diamond earrings I bet that if you asked the receiver to give one gift back after six months more would give back the diamonds! As sorry as I was to see my housekeeper go, I have to say my house has never been so clean. As long as I keep dusting first and sweeping the steps the Ecovac does the rest.

Christmas Still Threw Up at Our House

When we built our addition we designed a place for my fourteen ft Christmas tree to go that could be seen from either the front or back of the outside of our house. Ever since that time, twenty one years ago I have put up a giant tree. In the early days it was a real tree stand it took three days to decorate it and two days to undecorate it. Then one year the real tree fell over, breaking hundreds of cherished ornaments.

That was when I made the change to a fake tree. Since the lights stay on each section all the time I was able to cut down the tree time to two days total. The tree was not my only christmas decorating. Outfitting the rest of the house still took a good while.

Due to our visit with Carter I had made the decision not to put our big tree up this year. Carter vetoed the idea of no tree, so she and I will put up a small real tree very close to Christmas. In the meantime I had to put up some decorations today so I can hold my annual needlepoint Christmas.

I hung my garland around the entry to the living room to display my Needlepoint, just like I did last year. I built the Christmas village on the dining room side board, just like every year before.

But what to do with the big space where the tree used to go? I just couldn’t leave the space empty awaiting a small real tree two days before Christmas. So I decided to install my Christmas village under glass that usually goes on the glass coffee table in the living room in the big room in front of the window.

I started with one table but quickly realized I needed another one at a different level to make the village more interesting. I added a third, then had to scour the house to add more green and white decorations to compliment the glass village. After it was done I realized it needed light. Off to Target to get a compliment of fairy lights. I came home and wrapped the lights around the village and ta-da! A new Christmas decoration. I am not sure I am ever going to want to put my big tree up again.

Not Exactly Glamping at the Farm

After a lovely fancy post Thanksgiving breakfast with my parents and our very proper cousins Harry and Margaret, who dressed up for breakfast, Russ, Shay and I set down the road to see my other family. My father’s brother Wilson, who sadly is no longer with us in body, lived next door to my parents on the farm in the original family home. His children, my first cousins and all six of their children come home to be with their mother for Thanksgiving. The three first cousins, their spouses and their kids are a very tight knit group, so there is always some kind of fun going on around their house.

As Russ and I were leaving my parents I saw down the road that my Uncle Wilson’s 1970’s era pop-up Cox Camper was out of the stable and opened in the field. What I could not see from my original vantage point was that the whole family was sitting on the the other side of it in vintage camp chairs. If I didn’t know them to be doctors and therapists I would have thought some red neck family of gypsies had just set up camp on the farm.

My Uncle Wilson was a great camper. He also incredibly fastidious when it came to camping. We stopped to visit. We got quite a laugh about the many camping items my cousins had discovered still in their original boxes in the camper. It was as if my Uncle Wilson was right there with us. The many blue tarps, still in their factory folds were there, just in case there was a sudden storm. A never used camp griddle, still in it’s box was at the ready in case we wanted to cook up a batch of flap jacks.

My cousins were busy inspecting the whole contraption making plans for future camping trips so their children could experience camping like they did. The kids were intrigued for a while, but not enough to join in in the cleaning of the candy apple congoleum floor.

I told my cousins how much Airbnb places were charging for glamping experiences. We decided we could really make my father crazy by setting up a half dozen pop-up campers just in sight of his house and renting them out.

It may not have been the traditional Black Friday activity, but it was the perfect farm entertainment for a bunch of kids. My cousin Leigh is bound and determined to take this thing camping. We looked at the official registration sticker on the dirt covered license plate and since the last year this thing was registered was 1994 we decided it might need to be checked out to see how road worthy it is now. I’m sure that Cox Campers are not yet in the airstream category of vintage campers, but you never know when hipsters are going to decide they are the thing. When that happens my cousins will be set.

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Giving Thanks

This was going to be a very different thanksgiving. Not like spending turkey day on a beach in the Seychelles Islands, kind of different. We still were going to the farm to be with my parents and eat basically the same meal we do every year, turkey, stuffing, creamed onions and pumpkin and pecan pies. The different part was there were not the same people around the table.

Carter is still in Berlin, the first time she was not at thanksgiving, but also our friends the Ushpol’s, who have come for thanksgiving for the last three years were at their new home in Atlanta. To make up for the missing friends and family our cousins Harry and Margaret came from Blue Ridge Summit, Pa. Thank goodness for them to help add to the table where so many were missing.

We had a very civilized dinner where I got to learn so many new and intersecting facts about distant family members. Harry’s mother was my Grandmother’s youngest sister and the lore on that family is deep. Harry informed me that we were related to Robert E. Lee and I am not sure how happy I am about that. Adding him to the other crazy people, Merriweather Lewis and Patrick Henry, we are related to, makes perfect sense.

Before our Thanksgiving meal Carter texted us from her “Berlin Thanksgiving,” they were providing her at school. She was crying because they handed out cards to the kids that all the parents who went to orientation wrote to our kids. I had forgotten that we wrote them. When they asked us to write a note to our child they never told us it would be handed out at Thanksgiving. Carter seeing my hand writing was overcome. Not having her here was hard on me, but she said they provided a nice real turkey meal to the so she felt like she had a thanksgiving.

Of course this day is not about the turkey or the pumpkin pie, but about being thankful. It is not about who is or is not at the table but about being grateful for those people who you love, even if they are not there. It is a pause to take time and appreciate. So to all my friends and family near and far I give thanks for all of you. I hope that you had a chance to spend a few minutes to think about all the good in your world. I am thankful for you.

Post Anesthesia Shay

With no real child at home, not even for Thanksgiving, Russ and I turned our full parenting attention on to Shay Shay. Things we might have ignored when she was just the dog in the family have been elevated now that she is our only baby in the house.

Last week she had a little spot on her back that we could not identify. It wasn’t big or particularly bad, but off to the vet we went to check it out. It was small, but $275 later we were making sure it was healed. While we were there the vet took a look at her teeth. Perhaps it is time for a cleaning. Sure, I said, it’s only money.

I was half hoping that they did not have a dental opening until the new year, so imagine my surprise when they said, “How about the day before Thanksgiving?” Well, she is our only child at home and taking care of your teeth is the most important thing you can do to have a long and healthy life.

I did not consult Shay if this plan was OK with her. If I had, she would have said, “Save your money Mom, I promise I’ll chew on a raw hide and wear all this tarter off. “

No food after midnight was not hard, since sleeping is her first choice activity, but leaving the house without breakfast was a tip off to Shay that this was not going to be her day. Despite pulling to get into the vet, Shay sat shivering next to me on the little bench in the examination room. “I feel fine, why are we here?”

I left with guilt that she was going to spend her day under anesthesia. After five hours I got the “It all went well and she is awake,” call, but I still needed to leave her at the vet for another three hours so she could more fully recover. As soon as I was able I went to rescue her, sure she must be hungry.

Poor pitiful thing with the gleaming white teeth, was still a little groggy. I brought her home just as Russ was pulling in the driveway. She looked like a stunned mullet. Skipping the kitchen all together she went up to our bed where she lay down and has remained for the last four hours. One band of fur was shaved off one leg where the anesthesia went in. It looks like a prison tattoo.

I know it was the right thing to get her teeth cleaned, but I have a lot of guilt for making her spend her thanksgiving vacation this way. I just hope she bounces back for tomorrow she goes to her favorite place, the farm, where she gets to be free and run through the fields and be the only spoiled child around. One thing for sure, is she will probably be starving, having not eaten a thing in 36 hours. Hey, it’s Thanksgiving, the perfect day to pig out.

Orange Ginger Molasses Cookies For Grown Ups

This summer while I was in Maine I shared a cookie called an Orange Julius Ginger cookie. It was spectacular. The three of us who shared it all agreed it was the best cookie of the summer. I came home and tried to recreate it. I finally came up with something close. It is a perfect thanksgiving treat for grownups who love things spicy and sweet.

1 1/2 cups soft butter

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup molasses

2 eggs

Zest of one orange

2 t. Orange extract

1 package pumpkin spice pudding mix

4 cups of flour

4 t. Baking soda

3 t. Cinnamon

3 t. Ground ginger

1 t. Ground cloves

1/2 t. Allspice

1/2 t. Nutmeg

1 t. Salt

1/4 cup of minced crystallized ginger

In a mixer cream the soft butter and sugar for three minutes. Don’t skip doing this well. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs and continue beating for a minute. Add the molasses, zest and orange extract and mix well. In a separate bowl mix everything else together and add to the wet ingredients in two batches, mixing between additions.

Chill this dough at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Take a spoonful of dough and roll into a ball and roll in white sugar and place on a Silpat on a cookie sheet. Place in hot oven and cook for 11mins. Let the cookie cool on the cookie sheet at least 15 mins before moving them. They will stay soft and chewy for a week in an airtight container.

Cook Now For Post Thanksgiving Meals

Over the river and through the woods, the big thanksgiving meal is coming. For many of you there will be more family in your house than any other day of the year. Of course thoughts are on turkey, stuffing and pies, but that is just one meal. I have watched many cooking show showing recipients about what to do with leftovers, but for most people there are not enough leftover to make more than one more meal out of them.

My suggestion is that you cook something tomorrow so you have food for the post thanksgiving meals. The easiest thing you can make is soup, even if you have never made soup before. If soup is not your thing, think of something Italian, like lasagna or Bolognese sauce for pasta. It is amazing how quickly people tire of American food soon after the most American meal of the year.

If you have a ready made meal you only have to pull out of the fridge it will free you up from spending time the kitchen when you might rather be doing something else with your loved ones that are home with you.

Make sure you buy extra bread, eggs and milk for the house if you have family home. The last thing yo want to do is have to go to the grocery store first thing in the morning the day after thanksgiving, that is unless your mother-in-law is visiting and you want an excuse to get out of the house.

Just don’t depend on leftovers if you want to make turkey soup for a crowd. Yo just never know if you will have all you need to make enough to feed a crowd. Just go ahead and make something else now. You can always make the turkey soup later, freeze it and serve it the day after Christmas. Thanksgiving is so much more than the one meal. Plan ahead!

My Italian Cousin

My sister did one of those twenty-three and me tests to find out what nationalities she has in her DNA. I was very interested since whatever she has I have too. It was quite disappointing to learn that we were all English, Scottish and a touch of Irish. Nothing interesting like some Dutch, Japanese, Mongolian. Despite my blood relatives being all WASPy I have some interesting relatives by marriage.

My cousin Kennan married an Italian and they have a grown son, Francesco. When Russ, Carter and I went to Italy a couple of years ago we met up with our “Italian Cousins,” which Carter found very worldly. Too bad Carter is in Berlin because Francesco is here in North Carolina for two months to work on starting a website.

I found out from my cousin Sarah that he was coming and looking for a place to stay in Raleigh. Thanks to my needlepoint friend Kate, who had extra space and took him in, I knew he was in a safe place.

I went to see him in Raleigh a few weeks ago and talk about his business. Since I know very little about what he is trying to do I thought Russ would be more help than me. Tonight we had him for dinner in Durham.

My job was to make dinner. Russ and I picked up some beautiful short ribs from the farmers market yesterday. I cooked them in the pressure cooker with onions, carrots, tomatoes, red wine vinegar, chicken stock and herbs. After the meat was all cooked I took the lid off the pot and cooked the sauce down, to a dark yummy concentrate. I also make sweet potato hash and balsamic glazed Brussels sprouts. As the meat was cooking I noticed a bag of black eyed peas I had gotten at the farmers market and thought they should be cooked so I threw them in a pot.

When Francesco arrived I commented to him, “I hope you like meat.” Turns out he is a vegetarian and never mentioned it to me. Thank goodness I had made the black eyed peas. I offered to add a fried egg to the hash, but he said he had a big lunch. I was trying to make a very American meal, but I should have asked when I invited him what his dietary restrictions are. Thank goodness I did not put any bacon in any of the vegetables I made.

Francesco was very polite about the dinner, but I tried to make up for it by serving warm from the oven molasses ginger cookies, also terribly American. He liked those so I gave him the extras to take home. At least he also was not gluten free.

“Lazy” Saturday’

Thank goodness I am married to a Russ Lange who is perfectly happy to have a do nothing day. Not that we did nothing, but it was nothing important.

Turns out grandmother Happy had not left a North Carolina and she volunteered to run by our house to pick up the baby quilt on her journey home to Texas. Since she was coming by around 9:30 Russ and I got up early and went out to breakfast at Fosters at 7:30. Apparently the only people out that early are parents or grandparents of very, very young children who might have been up for hours waiting for the place to open and the very old, who just don’t sleep. Russ and I decided we must be in the very old category.

The grandfather who sat next to us with his little granddaughter waiting for their breakfast could not understand why the three year old could not add two twenty dollar bills together. When he asked her what 2 + 2 was and she just guessed four he told her to add a zero on the end to come up with forty. It had either been such a long time ago that his own children were her age that he forgot how hard math is for a three year old, or more likely he never taught any children, including his own, math and instead his wife dealt with that while he was busy earning money. No matter what the reason the poor child had no interest in the bills regardless of their denomination.

After our early breakfast we did our farmers market run and were home in plenty of time to meet grandmother Happy. When she left our house she said, “Now you can go to the farmer’s market.” She was quite impressed when I told that job was done.

I spent the better part of the day finishing cleaning my house as my new job of housekeeper. It was incredibly satisfying when I was dusting plates on the wall in the living room to discover an unfound Easter candy. This means that I was dusting something that had never been dusted since Easter. I might be better at this than my previous professional.

Russ was also cleaning, washing my very dirty car for me. Then he said we needed to drive the Morris Minor so we took Shay for a ride to the New Coco Cinnamon location in Lakewood where we sat outside with our coffee.

We followed that up with a trip to the movies to see the new Murder on the Orient Express. It felt like we had a very full day by seven PM and we really didn’t do that much. I think we are going to be very successful old people.

Oh yeah, after I had finished vacuuming the whole house my new gift to myself arrived, a robot vacuum. It’s charging now so I have no report on it, but if I find it satisfactory I will be sure to report on it. I guess that next Saturday can be even lazier if I don’t have to ever vacuum again.

I’m Definitely in Quilting Production Mode Now

When your baby’s babysitter is having a baby you better get to work on a good baby gift. My friend Jan’s daughter is about to have a little girl. When I had Carter my cousin Leigh gave me my most cherished baby gift, a hand made quilt. Now Leigh hand quilted the baby quilt, which made it an even more spectacular gift. Now that I am learning to quilt, I decided that I would like to make a quilt, be it machine quilted, for Kim and Blake’s little girl to come.

The bay is due in two weeks and I know that she won’t stay little forever so if Kim is to get any use out of a baby quilt she needs it right when the baby comes home. I bought some material for the quilt last week, but was too busy with my Mom’s art show to get it started. So Wednesday afternoon I decided I better get started if I was going to make this quilt before the baby came.

I was unsure of the pattern I was going to do, but knew I wanted to work with half square triangles and knew I had to quilt it myself. Once I had made the squares I laid them out and decided on a pattern I liked. To my surprise I got the whole thing finished, including hand stitching the binding by tonight. A three day quilt! I was very happy with my first attempt to do my own quilting.

The only thing I wish is that I had finished it yesterday so I could send it back to Texas with grandmother Happy who was just here. Oh well, at least I think the post office delivery can beat the baby’s delivery.

Cleaning My House

Before Russ and I were married we lived three hours apart from each other, me in DC at my three story house and he in NJ in his two story house. We both worked busy full time jobs and took turns driving back and forth on weekends to each other’s house. Then we got married and kept the same arrangement for almost a year, while I still worked around DC. I had the nicest house keeper who helped keep my house clean, since I was hardly ever there and I had a dog and two cats who made it plenty messy. Russ had no help cleaning his house but his one cat made as much mess as my three animals.

One Saturday a few months after we married I was at Russ’ house, which we were also renovating ourselves and I was sobbing as I was cleaning his kitchen, for the upteenth time. He came in and in a panicked voice, asked me what was wrong. I told him that he had to find a house cleaner because he was the worst house keeper. Fearing I might keep crying, he promised me he would find someone, and he did.

Ever since then he has never wanted us to be without help to do the cleaning in case I start crying again. Of course, back then, I had a full time travel sales job and a catering business so paying someone else to do the cleaning was the best use of resources.

For the last thirteen years I have had a lovely woman help me clean in Durham. She has had three different assistants during those years, but she has been a constant. A few months ago her last assistant left her. With the crack down on immigration she has been unable to find anyone to help her. Tuesday she called me and said because she can’t find help she is going to have to stop cleaning my house because I have too many levels in my house and she can’t carry the vacuum up and down the stairs.

This came as quite a surprise to me, but I wished her well. I texted Russ the news and told him I was going to clean our house myself. “Can’t we get a vacuum for every level?” He pleaded. “No, this is ridiculous, I don’t work. I can clean the house.” Russ volunteered to help, which is also crazy since he works triple time and I don’t, but what a good egg for volunteering.

I cleaned the bathrooms tonight and found that I was quite energized by doing mindless work where I saw results immediately. I also found it to be a good work out, bending and scrubbing. I was going to dust and vacuum one of the levels but discovered that the duster that my lady used was her personal duster and I do not own one. So tomorrow I must go hunt out the perfect duster on a handle like she used to reach the things up high.

Let’s hope I can do as good a job because I have become very accustomed to my house always being clean. I really don’t have any excuse not to do this work myself and not whine about it.

Marriage Success

Russ called me and related to me a conversation he had with some of his junior team members about how hard it is to meet a good potential spouse. He told them our story of the ten day courtship and it gave a few of them a little hope. I asked him if he suggested they look for an engineer to marry? He admired that he had not thought of that. “I wonder what the divorce rate of engineers is?” He wondered to me.

While we were still on the phone I pulled up a site that ranked the divorce rates by profession, per year. It had the most comprehensive list of 511 professions, many I found to be strange groupings, such as “Food and tobacco roasting, baking and drying machine operators and tenders.” For the record they don’t make reliable spouses because they divorce at a rate of 29.78 per year.

I was right about engineers as good spouses because as a group, all engineers put together make the least likely to divorce, in the single digits. The worst profession to be married to is a dancer and choreographer at 43.05%. That is way above the next closest one of bartenders at 38.43%. Then Massage therapists, 38.22, and gaming cage workers 34.66, not to be confused with gaming service workers at 31.34%. But coming right between the two groups who work at casinos is extruding and forming machine settlers, operators and tenders, synthetic and glass fibers at 32.74%. I am not sure I have ever heard of those jobs, let alone know anyone who has ever been that, but they don’t stay married long.

As I was reading the list to Russ he asked me, “what about sales people?” since that was what I was when he married me. I started to troll down the list. I went past fence erectors at 19.57%, mathematicians at 19.17%, upholsterers at 18.92% and finally found parts salespersons at 18.77%. Russ said, “No, you sold whole machines.” I kept scrolling down.

Insurance Underwriters at 18.5%, crossing guards 18.17%, then I found Sales and related workers, all other 18%. Seemed not quite right. I kept going still looking for Russ’ original profession of electrical engineer.

Producers and directors 17.68%, private detectives and investigators 17.41%, Glaziers 17.28%. Interestingly Gaming managers came in at 17.06 % so if you can rise to though the ranks in a casino your relationship might just make it too. Paper hanger 16.48%, then I came to the average US divorce percentage at 16.35%, so everything I have listed so far is worse than the average.

Parking lot attendants were better at 16.02% as were writers and authors at 15.92%, but still looking for electrical engineers. Railroad brake, signal and switch operators 15.29%, I guess they don’t meet many people on the rails. Funeral service workers 14.76 %, not tempted by anyone at work, septic tank services and sewer pipe cleaners 14.07%, well if they actually got someone to marry them and do their laundry they better hold on to them.

Preschool and kindergarten teachers 13.02%, there is a reason you always likes your kindergarten teacher, loyalty. Then the scientists started to appear, chemical and materials scientists 12.01%. Finally electrical and electronic engineers at 10.5%. Russ was very close to the bottom. Chief executives 9.81 %, they probably can’t afford to get divorced.

But I kept going and to my surprise I found my first real job, the one Russ was asking about, sales engineer at 6.61%. My title was sales engineer not because I had any engineering background whatsoever, but because that was what IBM called their sales people. I beat Russ!

At the bottom of the list was optometrists at 4.01% and agriculture engineers 1.78%.

My take away from this list is what I knew in my heart all along, engineers make terrific spouses and whatever you do don’t work in a casino as a dancer, bartender or gaming worker or marry one, unless you are the boss.

Thanks to Good Friends

I am now in the very good graces of my mother thanks to my friends. So many of you came by my house and looked at her art and talked with her about it. An excellent number of you bought paintings. Some bought two or three. Many picked up some of her darling cards. Then there was the most wonderful one who not only bought paintings, but helped take down the show, carry all the painting to the car and pack them up in blankets and towels.

I want to thank each and everyone of you, but give an extra round of applause to Jan McCallum! I know you did not drive all the way to North Carolina from Texas to do this, but I am eternally grateful for your generosity to do all this work. My mother had said she was dreading the take down of the show, but Jan made it totally painless. Jan said she was getting her steps, but it was above and beyond the call of friendship.

For those of you who couldn’t make it to the show, or want more Jane Carter Art, please visit her website at www.janecarterart.com. If you send me a message with what you are interested in I will get it at thanksgiving and bring it back to Durham for you to see it in person. If you don’t like it no worries, there is no obligation to buy.

There were a number of people who put in requests. More “little barns” will be coming and I will let you know when they are available. I too love those little barns and was thinking that a grouping of nine would be cool! Of course two or three is also nice.

For me I just love to go to my friends houses and see one of my mother’s paintings. I hope those who got some, love them and smile every time you look at it, that is what art is supposed to do.

Christmas is Like 40 Days Away

Maybe it’s not exactly 40 days away, but it is close. As I was running my mother’s art show today I had time between customers to think about all the stuff I haven’t done to get ready for Christmas and I started to worry. With Carter away we don’t have any sort of Christmas card. We haven’t had one in a while since when you write a daily blog everyone already knows way to much minutiae about your life and a card seems extra.

I have a couple of presents hand made, but since I was spending so much time making those presents for those people I have just let everyone off the list. I was thinking that I could find presents at the many German Christmas markets I plan to visit, but that is going to mean late presents for everyone.

As far as holiday entertaining goes, it is going to be sparse. I have my stitching group exchange and when I realized how close it was I rushed out an invite. Now I just have to plan a menu and, oh yeah, decorate the house.

No tree at our house this year, but that does not mean other decorations will not have to be put up. Every year I add one big new decoration, like the glass Christmas village or the Happy Birthday Baby Jesus Tree. This year I have been making Christmas placemats in various quilted patterns. I was shooting for a dozen, but I might have to settle for 8 and call those my new Christmas decorations of the year.

In this year of trying to have less all I really want for Christmas is to have Carter and Russ home and have us all spend time together. Since my Parents and sisters are going to Florida for Christmas this might be the best I will get. Maybe I can pull off a small low key Christmas. It might just be the start of something new.

Good Start

Setting up for an art show is exhausting. First you have to get the art from the farm to my house. That involved me bringing a load a few weeks ago, my mother bringing a big carful last week and both my parents bringing a car and truck full today.

Then there is the issue of trying to display it all. Yesterday Russ helped me place as many painting all around the entry hall, living room, sunroom, dining room, breakfast room and great room as we could before my parents got here. Then it doubled.

I had to make food because no one hungry buys art. That part was not so hard for me. For the record I made up a new really good molasses, ginger, pumpkin spice, orange cookie that I will be serving through the whole show.

Just as we were getting ready we had our first customers a bit early, but they were good at looking at everything themselves and each bought a painting. Then we had a few moments to finish getting everything ready. And no one showed up. My mother and I were sitting in the only chairs in the living room without paintings on them and I was worried. All this work, what if no one else comes?

About half an hour after the advertised start time two friends came, then five minutes later two more, before I knew it we had about 20 people all looking and buying and talking to my Mom about art. We sold a good number of paintings in the first day and my mother was happy. I was relieved, all this work and she was happy. I was mostly happy that some of my favorite paintings went to homes where I can see them in years to come. I love it when I go in a friend’s house and see one of my mother’s paintings. I feel calm to know they go to good homes.

Now we do it all over again tomorrow. I’ll be making some mini frittatas and cranberry banana bread for breakfast. Come on over and have some coffee and something to eat and stat your day with me and my Mom.

Art Show Starts Tomorrow 

My mother came down to my house last week to bring a load of paintings. We went to lunch and talked about which one was her favorite. “Fromage,” she told me. It is one in a series of shop scenes she has done. “I think it is my best one yet.” After looking at the photos I agreed.
“My eyes are getting worse, I am not sure how much longer I can paint.” This new came as horrible news to me. The thought of my mother not painting is like a day without sunshine, ever.  
I am hoping this prediction is a little like her, “This is my last Needlepoint” statement which was at least two pillows ago.
The art show I am having at my house, which starts tomorrow at 4 and runs through Tuesday afternoon may be the last show I have for my mother. Please come by and meet her and enjoy a treat to eat and drink while you look at the over 100 paintings we have here.
As for “Fromage” we will be taking bids in sealed envelopes and on Tuesday we will open them and the highest bidder will get it at their price. Everything else is priced so first come gets the best selection.

Finally Enter Old Age and I Like It

Last week Russ asked me if I was free to have drinks and dinner with his young friend Steven and his wife Mary tonight. Of course I was free for dinner since Russ was free. I had met Steven before and was looking forward to meeting his wife who had just graduated from divinity school.
As the week progressed I had not heard from a Russ about what time we were going to be going. The original plan of going for a drink at Ponysaurus and then to Piedmont fell through since Piedmont was having a private party. I threw out the idea that we go to Littler which we had been trying to get to for a while. Russ tried for a reservation and our choices were 5:30 and 8:30. I said I was fine with 5:30, especially given daylight savings.
We arrived at the restaurant to find Steven and Mary sitting on the big bench, the only people in the restaurant. They said they were thrilled that Russ had chosen the 5:30 option. The good news is that it meant we were the only people in the place for a long while so it was quiet and we had excellent, but not overly attentive service.
We had so much fun with this young couple, who it turns out are young enough to be our children if we had gotten busy having children right when we got out of college.  
After a yummy dinner of very interesting items, like a latke with a poached egg yolk and smoked trout, and a tomato tart with Stilton. We finished up with a big French press of decaf for us and one of regular for our young friends.
Just as our coffee was arriving the restaurant really started to get crowded and a very noisy group of old people, two of whom I knew, came in and sat behind us and screamed their conversation at each other. I was thrilled that we were the early birds and were making our departure at 7:45 having had just a lovely experience before all the commotion started.
Steven and Mary had a new puppy to get home to and we had our old puppy who needed us. I am fully embracing the old person life of going out early and getting home and enjoying the night snuggled with my loved ones. It was just the right amount of social. Now I am actively looking for early bird specials. Why fight it?

Earline Middleton is Pure Grace

Many of you might not know Earline Middleton, unless you work in the hunger relief world, or are a hungry child in North Carolina or run a feeding agency, or work at any Food Bank in the country, or are a legislator in North Carolina, or Washington DC, or frequent places where angels reside. Earline is a national treasure and has spent the last 27 years working for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC making sure people are not hungry, and she never makes anyone feel ashamed for it.
Tonight Earline was honored at the Food Banks’s Night Of Appreciation with our highest honor the Hunt-Morgridge Award. As an elder past board member I was on the committee that recommends to the board who the honoree should be. It is a big job to decide who, among the many deserving people, we should single out to honor. We have never honored an employee, but it was a no brainer that we unanimously chose Earline this year.
Earline has done many jobs at the Food Bank, but for as long as I have known her she has been the VP of Agency Services and Programs, which is the network of over 800 community agencies that come to the Food Bank to get food to feed people or provide pantries for people to get food free of charge. Without those agencies the Food Bank could never reach into the small places in communities where hungry people are. Without Earline we might never have built the network of people helping people.
Earline has a quiet strength about her, but when she speaks it is thoughtful and inspiring. She has a way of helping people in power understand what powerless people need and why we should all want to help them.
I feel honored to have gotten to work with Earline and am thrilled that she was honored this way tonight. In her typical humble way, when I called her to inform her that she had been chosen to be the Hunt- Morgridge honoree she said, “Are you sure?” I have never been more sure of something. Congratulations Earline.

Let’s Stop Day Light Savings

I know that fall back is way more popular than spring forward, but as far as I am concerned any clock movement just makes me tired and hungry. The same can be said for my dog.
I can understand waking up earlier and wanting to go to bed earlier as long as I am getting the same amount of sleep as before we changed the clocks. What makes no sense is feeling like I need a nap even though I got plenty of sleep.  
Then the is the eating thing. Why would I be hungrier? Shay has the same question. She normally eats in the morning and at night, but once we changed the clocks she wants lunch too. Why don’t we just live by the light of the sun whatever it is and stopping messing ourselves up trying to have light at certain times of the day. We don’t get more light no matter what the clock says.

I’m Not a Good Night Time Student

I’m three and a half months in on mastering my new hobby of quilting. I know that is not long enough to become good at something, but since I have made two king sized quilts, a twin and a dozen placemats my run rate is higher than average. Since I am using my 25 year old sewing machine I have not tried to tackle the actual quilting of anything larger than a placemat. For those of you who have never “quilted” understand that I am making the pieced tops of quilts and someone I pay is making the sandwich of top, batting and backing and doing the all over sewing that gives it the “quilted ” look.
I wanted to step up my quilting skills so I decided to take a class at the Cary Quilting Company. I chose the “free motion quilting class” as opposed to the one where you learn to do straight lines. Well, that is what I thought.
It was a small class of six and one very knowledgeable instructor, Christine. Once we went through the technical machine set up intro we got to practicing quilting. It started with straight lines. Wait, I’m not good at straight lines, the whole reason I was taking the class was to learn curvy stuff.  
Eventually we got to loops, hearts, flowers, stipples and back to straight lines. Like all skills it has to be practiced to master and I could not even keep at it for the whole three hour class. Obviously I needed the early morning class.
I think I am thankful that my old machine is not large enough to handle quilting a big piece. I am going to practice all I learned on placemats, but not worry about the big stuff. See, if I took to it I would want a new very expensive sewing machine and that just seems a little excessive. It’s just like if you gave a mouse a cookie. If I were good at quilting then I’d want a new machine and if I got a new machine then I’d have to get more, and better fabric and to get better fabric I would have to go on a road trip to many different fabric stores. And if I was on the road I couldn’t be quilting because my new fancy machine would be at home.
It was probably good I took the night class where I was at my worst as a student. I just saved Russ the equivalent of a new car.

My Mom’s Art Show

Prolific is not a strong enough word for how much art my mother produces. She paints everyday in her art barn up at the farm. She does water colors, oils, acrylics, mixed media. For years she entered art shows and has won everything thing she ever entered. After being admitted into so many state water color society’s for winning their shows, she had nothing left to conquer.  
The art market up at the farm is not big. Very few patrons travel down Shady Grove Road. What a shame because there is a treasure trove. Art covers every inch of the old tobacco barn she paints in, matted works lean up against the walls. Bins in the bag are full of canvases.  
Since I am worried she is going to be buried in her own creations I am having a sale of some of her works, starting this coming Sunday at 4:00 and running through Tuesday afternoon. Nothing makes a house more beautiful than original art.  
If you are young, prints on your walls are the way you fill in the blank spaces, but after a while you might want to consider a real painting. So come and take a look at my house. Of course I will have yummy refreshments and you can get a chance to meet my mother, which is a scream in of itself.
Bring a friend I don’t know and get ten percent off. The prices are already a steal for such great art. There are painting of many sizes and subjects and you might just find something you will treasure, or think one of your loved ones needs for Christmas. What better thing to get your husband than a painting for you living room.

You Can Eat The Skin Acorn Squash

A few weeks ago we had dinner at Vin Rouge and I had a special appetizer of a backed acorn squash. Before that night I had only ever eaten the flesh of an acorn squash scooped out of the green and orange skin. That night, since I was eating outside in the dark, and the pieces of squash were covered in a sauce I just cut into it and took a bite of the whole thing. To my amazement it was delicious and totally edible. Had I been eating a acorn squash all wrong ‘lo these many years?  
A few weeks later I was at the Lakewood and saw a similar acorn squash on the menu. I tried theirs and although it was a different preparation, I ate the skin again and confirmed that yes, I had been wrong to skip the skin for the last fifty six years. I felt like some novice who scooped the soft part out of Brie, leaving the perfectly delicious and edible rind.
I wanted to make my own at home acorn squash to confirm my newly discovers knowledge. I didn’t want to make a calorie laden sauce like Vin Rouge and I couldn’t remember exactly what was on the Lakewood version so I improvised this one.
Acorn squash- washed with seeds and strings cleaned out of the center, cut into wedges

Ricotta salata cheese

Pomegranate seeds

Pumpkin seeds

Crunchy Fried onions- store bought, or homemade 

Butter

Lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 375°. Put the squash wedges in an oblong pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put in the oven for at least an hour. You want the squash to start to get brown and the green skin to be tender. Take the pan out of the oven and put a small bit of butter on each wedge and a tablespoon of ricotta salata crumbles on each slice and put back in the hot oven for ten more minutes.
To serve put a wedge on a plate and top with pomegranate, pumpkin seeds and fried onions.

Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the whole thing. Eat every last bit. 

Love Should Have Died

We had DPAC Broadway tickets tonight. Our friends who go with us gave us their tickets in favor of spending their oldest son’s fifteenth birthday with him. It would have been a good call to give away their tickets if it was their trash collectors birthday.
We invited our friends Lane and Jon to go with us, but only Lane could make it. I made us dinner at home which quite frankly was the highlight of the evening because we got to talk to Lane. After our farmers market meal of red drum, acorn squash and red cabbage slaw it was off to the theatre to see Andrew Lloyd Weber’s follow up to Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies. Love might have been alive, but plot, music and book were in short supply.
The production from the set and costumes point of view was fantastic, but the idea that the world’s most talented singer would be in a love triangle with a demented disfigured man and a drunk hanger on was a little hard to swallow. It was like an anti-feminist riot.  
Christine, the object of everyone affection held all the cards and should have shunned all the losers and gone on with life with her son, but instead she is destroyed.    At one point in the second act, Lane says to me, “she looks like Joan Crawford,” and I replied that she looked like Carol Burnet playing Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.  The music was whiny and the Phantom was not a strong enough singer to hear well. Perhaps being disfigured prevented him from projecting. My projection is this a show that has no legs and should be shelved now before it does any harm to Andrew Lloyd Weber’s legacy. Please let this one die.