Whew! They finally came up!!

My own personal "First sign of Spring" JUST came up yesterday! Whew! Of course, all that other expected stuff has been happening for weeks now. I have dafodils that are almost ready to bloom....yah!

BUT, I had bulbs that I bought from a neighbor kid that I didn't plant when I got them in October. No, they sat in their brown paper bag under the counter with the microwave making me feel guilty for months. I saw that bag everyday and knew I should plant them. So

WHY-OH-WHY didn't I plant them in Oct., Nov, or Dec.? I have NO idea....this is the killer. 20 minutes of planting and I didn't do it......hmmmmph! I do this kind of thing all the time.....spring plants drying out in their little containers, secretly flung on the compost heap when they just can't go on without water any longer.....they were so beautiful when I bought them. What a waste! Oh the guilt!

BUT finally, after watching the ground where I finally planted those bulbs on a warm day (thank God for that!) in January, those tardy dafodils (really, I shouldn't blame the plants) have broken through the surface! When I spotted them a giant wave of relief washed over me. I didn't kill them! And this morning there are more of them, oh halleluiah!...these tough babies have finally hatched. My other dafodils are about twelve inches tall and showing yellow.....the tardies are about one inch. I don't know, will they bloom at four inches, will they be stunted forever? It'll be interesting to see. But now they are my favorites and I'm so happy to see them that I wish I could do something special for them.....maybe.... bake them a cake.

And I promise, from now on, from this moment forward, I will always plant things when I get them....right away. And I'll water everything when it needs it too. And I promise to always pick all the fruit before it goes bad...and the tomatoes too. And I promise that from now on I'll always be organized and on time and thrifty and neat and on schedule and thoughtful and courageous and brave and.....well, all of it, all the things you're supposed to be to be a good scout!

Creative Solution to the Belly/Dementia Issue

I recently e-mailed this UPLIFTING news headline about Apple Shapes causing yet another way to slide down the Slippery Slope. Here's the headline:

Big belly boosts risk of later dementia

Oh Good Grief!

But, difficult times can also encourage creative thinking. My idea: If only we could invent Home Lipo-suction kits, we'd be on Easy Street! Even better, if we could figure out a way to use the lipo-sucted stuff as fuel for our cars, we'd also be famous and heros to boot. Many things solved in one swoop: cure for heart desease, cure for dementia, a morale booster AND no more energy dependence....and...... we'd even save the planet with our new fuel product. What do ya think? Should we go for it.

By the way, Terry and I (in the photo) are using the Old-Fashioned way to cope with neck wrinkles. It gets a little unweildy, though, having to use one hand to tighten the flab. I know Chris and I have talked about a product we'd like to produce.....something like flesh-colored duct tape to pull the neck skin tight. You'd probably use this in the back under your hair so it wouldn't show up so much. I imagine even flesh-colored duct tape could be visible if it isn't applied quite right.

OK ladies, so that's it. Three new products to work on. As you can see, whew!, I've got my Silly back. Oh yeah.

The Whooshing of Men-words to the Northwest Quadrant

I know this guy....I can't say his name though I don't think what he does is actually a crime
or anything....certainly not one I've ever heard of being prosecuted. Probably he can't even help himself. Anyway, this guy, who lives to the north of our town, is a large burly fellow, jovial and civic-minded. I like him a lot. But man-o-man, he is QUITE the talker. He's really got the Gift of Gab; he's the Sultan of Speech, the Titan of Talk. He could sell you a pair of shoe strings for your velcro shoes.

I've been noticing this odd phenomenon for quite awhile now, but in the last two weeks I've had FOUR conversations about it with several of my friends and one of my daughters. I've done some studying up on it too. What I'm talking about is the RATIO.....the difference in the amount of words used by women versus men. I did a scientific study of this one night at a restaurant by observing 3 separate couples talking to each other at their respective tables. I would have to say, from my observations, that the ratio of words, women to men, is about 50 to 2! Though a huge difference, I'm not all that surprised. I've noticed this same thing in my own husband. When he and I walk down to Doughsie Dough for bagels and coffee early in the morning, I'll start up maybe 5 or 6 conversations......and get not much in the way of response. Of course, he's not a morning person, so he's probably thinking, "will she ever shut up!" And I'm thinking, "come on Buster, it's your turn now!" Ha!, by comparison, when Ellen and I go for a 5-mile walk.....an hour and a half of non-stop talking, at the end of the walk we women STILL have to stand on the sidewalk for yet ANOTHER 15 or 20 minutes to finish....or at least come to an acceptable break in our conversation. So yeah, women can and do, WAY out-talk most men.

I have a very logical theory for this amazing discrepancy: Our buddy and friend, Mr. Titan of Talk himself, well, he sucks up all the Men-Words from all over the Lititz area. He's like a Word Vacuum Cleaner. Not all men are affected by this of course....some have strong immunities genetically built into their systems that prevent Word-Loss. But for so many men, most men in fact, our Champion of Chatter takes a big inhale and whooshes in all the "free-radical" words that area men possess. You know that giant wind storm we had last weekend? Yeah, the one that knocked down all those trees? Well, that was our very own Sultan of Spiel sucking up a boatload of sililoquy. And so, yep, I think this pretty much explains the whole thing.

Waiting for the kiln to cool.....

This is worse than being a kid waiting for Christmas morning! Waiting for the kiln to cool down when you've got a bunch of new tests in there is excruciatingly hard. In the past, I would of opened it anyway, even though the temp is 470 degrees. I CAN go ahead and get stuff out if I use thick leather work gloves and potholders. It's been done. I've burned my hands.....through the gloves. I've burned my dining room tabletop too....the new table that my Mother-in-law gave us.....circles of burn where bowls were brought out and set down too soon.....oh, yiyiyi! So I wait. It's really hard though. Lately I've been having a terrible time making myself go down to the basement and work.....never mind that my shops keep calling asking for more stuff. I'm grateful for that but it's just that I need something new and exciting to be happening pottery-wise to be motivated to get myself in gear. So let's hope there's something good in the kiln this morning when I FINALLY open it. Oh good grief, it's now at 431 d. Auggghhhh! At this rate it'll be another hour and a half before I can open it wide enough to actually see inside. But once I do, most of those tests are down there in the middle somewhere.....hot shelves, hot pots....I feel a burn coming on. I CAN'T WAIT ANY MORE!!!!

High Five Story

A Fabulous Moment in History


My girls are always super amazed and amused at how many things WEREN’T invented when Steve and I were growing up. They can’t believe, for example, that we had no personal computers. We also had to hand crank the windows down in our cars, and for quite a while, we had cars with NO air-conditioning, so we had to stick our heads out the hand-cranked window to cool down. Those were primitive times! But I think the thing that amazes them the most, the thing that leaves them truly flabbergasted, is that we can remember a time BEFORE there was the HIGH-FIVE!! The truth of the matter, though, is that I was there for the historic moment when the High-Five was invented. I was actually part of that history. It was a truly stupendous and momentous event.

When I was in my early 20’s, I lived with a group of friends on the 4th floor of a decrepit apartment building not far from the college “happening” street in Raleigh, NC. We called ourselves the FOMAs….Future Old Maids of America. We said it proudly and it was much like the Wags today….well, Wags minus husbands and kids. We were always looking for something to do and would fairly frequently go to the bowling alley/restaurant/bar which was always a hubbub of activity. We were friends of sorts with the bartender, Mike, who liked us and joked around with us whenever we came in. One night…it was probably in February, that most notably boring and dreary month of the year, when Mike was pushing this new bowling league that was being formed. It was a coed league, any male-female configuration you wanted, and it played once a week. We were looking for something to do, so, OK, yeah, let’s sign up. There was only one of our group who was what you might call a real bowler. Susan actually focused while bowling and could usually roll about 150. Not bad. Ann and I weren’t awful, but we weren’t good either. I was happy to go over 120 and sad…though only minimally….if I fell under 100. And Brenda, well, Brenda was pathetic. She was my Asian-American friend who’s family owned the Chinese restaurant in town. I only mention her ethnicity because she was so funny and cute bowling so horribly each and every week.

The first week we started playing in this league, we realized we were in over our heads, bowling-wise. We were the only women who had signed up and everyone else knew what they were supposed to be doing…..and could actually do it. But, oh well, what the heck, it was just for fun anyway. Every week though, we did notice an interesting trend in our play. The matches consisted of 3 games. The first game we were all, except for Susan, quite awful. You could drink beer at this bowling alley which certainly livened and loosened things up, so that by the 2nd game, we could actually do unexpected things with our balls….like knock over multiple pins for strikes and spares. That second game was the Golden Slice of the match for us. However by the third game, we were no longer golden in the bowling department, but were certainly having fun anyway, what the heck. And every week, of course, we lost.

The other teams were mostly very nice young men. When they played us I’m sure they were quite happy to have an easy win and they were amused by our bowling in a joking sort of way. They were all friendly, but they were all into bowling, which pretty much sums it up about those guys. But it was a very pleasant couple of hours spent having fun and goofing around. There was one team, though, that was REALLY into this league. They were the top team in the league…undefeated…but super nerdy and very arrogant. They were NOT friendly. They took their bowling oh, so seriously! Eventually, it was our turn to play these bowling whizzes. I’d like to say it was the last match of the season….that would make the story even better, but in all honesty, I don’t believe it was. But no matter, I have no memory of the rest of the season anyway. We did nothing special to prepare for this match….the bottom team in the league against the top team in the league. We were loose, maybe we were a little more focused for this one; we knew it would take a miracle. So I guess a miracle is what took place. Somehow, we played the very best first game we’d ever played. It was stunning! We won that first game. And then it was as if a spell had been cast on that first place team. Those arrogant, nerdy, undefeated, unfriendly, seriously way-into-bowling guys completely fell apart! They could do nothing right and were going further down the dark hole with every missed pin. We were so loving it! For our part, we decided not to have that second beer this time. And so we won the whole shebang….the whole match!!! It was a David and Goliath kind of thing. We were in total shock and for a bunch of women who weren’t really taking this bowling thing seriously, we were way more excited than can be imagined. And that’s when IT happened. It was a spontaneous thing. We were all sort of jumping around when Brenda pushed her hands up into the air to slap mine and then Ann and Susan joined in and we were all slapping each others hands up there over our heads in jubilation. It was a phenomenal, historic and fabulous moment. Because that moment, right there in that bowling alley on Hillsboro St., in Raleigh, NC, was the exact moment when the High Five, the very one used by all sports teams to this day, that moment was when the much revered and always present symbol of victory…the HIGH FIVE….. was invented.

Rosetta in her "Mug O' Beer" Hat

I don't know about you, but I think Rosetta is so cute there in her new Mug O' Beer Hat! She looks like a little mischeivious like she has some little secret, something up her sleeve. Maybe it's Baileys!

Those hats and prizes were the best, Chris....such fun, and very chuckly.

A Soccer Spectating Record

Well, it's been try-out week for girls soccer at the high school. No, I have no more girls trying out, but, deep in my core I can feel it....like that feeling you get before school starts in the fall..a sort of yearning, anticipation kind of feeling. There's also something of a churning feeling going on during tryout week knowing your daughter is out there trying her hardest, pushing herself physically to the limit, trying out in sometimes harsh weather conditions. I automatically know this week because tryouts always coincide with 2 of my daughters' birthdays. Birthday Alley, as I call it, soccer tryouts. Always the same week. So this week, I noticed the weather each day (Monday....the first day, was gorgeous, very lucky for them) and wondered how the girls were doing....even though I had no one there. I imagined girls coming home and talking over the prospects for the team and season at dinner like we always used to do.

Truly, I'm going to miss soccer season. Nevermind, the bitter cold!, cold!, cold! and the harsh wind!, wind!, wind! of spring sports. It can be brutal. I guess I won't miss that part.....or I might even miss that a little....braving all that harshness. For 13 years my girls played Warwick Girls Soccer. And then they played club soccer before that. It's the first spring in a long time that we won't have our weeks revolve around soccer. Some parents might be grateful that they won't have to go to games any longer. But, I don't know, there's nothing better than standing outside on a beautiful day, feeling the early spring sun and maybe a gentle breeze (even though this may only comprise 10% of the games, none-the-less, it's worth waiting for), chatting with parents and watching those girls run up and down the field giving it their best shot. AND, for all this luxury, you're doing EXACTLY what you're supposed to be doing. No guilt about lollygagging there in the sun.

I'm sure I have a record for the number of soccer games attended in one week. I'm not talking about a tournament. I'm talking about full-length regulation games. At one point I had a daughter playing for the High School, one playing at the Middle School and one playing in the Lititz Youth League. The week before this record-breaking week had been a wash-out, so the games that were canceled because of rain were re-sceduled for this week. High school games are frequently played at night and so, just by the alignment of the stars, games that were played in the afternoon by the younger girls were followed by night games for the high school. So I think it went like this: 4 High School games, 3 Middle School games, and 2 Youth Soccer games. NINE games!! But wait! Just wait!! In order to be assured of having the record for watching-the-most-full-length-soccer-games-by-any-one-person-in-the-world-in-a-week, I went to Steve's game on Sunday....the men's Over 30 Ibuprophen League game. TEN!, 10!, TEN! full length soccer games in one week!! It was almost a full-time job! Yeah, I'm going to miss soccer a lot......really, I am.

2 BURNING Questions!

I have 2 burning questions.....and yes, this is a trick to get folks to come to the blog, but really, truly, I do want answers....or....or....or, tomorrow this comes out in e-mail!

QUESTION # 1: MOJO, exactly what is it.....but even more and especially important, is it only a male thing or can women also possess MOJO? (No fair going to the dictionary...this is an impression question)

QUESTION # 2: How sad are you that Brett Favre is retiring?

I think much of my perception of MOJO comes from Austin Powers and I'm not sure Austin Powers counts as an accurate cultural portrayal.

I'm super sad that Brett is retiring. I loved Green Bay as a kid and so still have a soft spot in my heart for that team....I mean, really, playing football up there in the frozen tundra! And all those fans with cheeses on their heads. Plus, my nephew looks just like a 10-year-old Brett Favre. Really! I'm gonna be super sad to watch that football team and NOT be able to say, "Wow, can you believe how much Tristan looks just like Brett Favre!!" We always say it, every time. I'm gonna miss that a lot!

One More Costco Purchase and a Falafel Ball Song

OK, everything is so so and really QUIET and grumpily DREARY here this morning that I'm trying to rev up some interest .....and..... avoid going down to the basement.....possibly the second reason being the dominant one....BUT, I felt that this was a very enlightening photo. You can get an idea of the size of this huge CAN of Tuna by it's comparison with a regular size can.

I bought this giant CAN of tuna....along with the 98! falafel balls....when I went to Costco the other day. This gi-normous CAN of tuna is 4 lbs. 2 1/2 oz. Whoa! What was I thinking you might ask! And rightly so. Well, first off, I thought a jumbo CAN of tuna was super hilarious. Then, my daughter, Ariel, has that name which brings mermaids to mind. She hates the whole "Under da Sea" connnection, so of course, the rest of us love it...hahaha. I got this gigundo CAN for her birthday......maybe put some thought clouds on it, a few speech bubbles. But, she won't be here for her birthday. Really, now, what kind of idiot would send this 4 lb. massive CAN of tuna through the mail? So this mountainous CAN of tuna sits on my kitchen counter....I get a laugh out of it everytime I see it. And I wonder, just how enormous that TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE made from this bulky CAN of tuna would be. Oh my! (yes, I did have to go to the thesaurus for the last couple of synonyms....but only to save time, mind you)

I ate 2, a mere drop in the bucket, of those Costco falafel balls the other day. That leaves 96! falafel balls still in the freezer! These 98!, well now 96!, falafel balls have become quite the joke at our house. What in the heck WAS I thinking when I put them in that cart? (well, actually, EASY LUNCH...but only if you REALLY like falafel balls!) We have decided that we can start singing that "98 bottles of beer on the wall" song about those falafel balls. It's a little awkward but here goes:

98! Falafel Balls in the fridge, 98! falafel balls,
Take 2 out,
Eat 'em up,
96! Falafel Balls in the fridge!

Everybody, sing along now!

7 jars of dill pickles and 6 packages of Boca Burgers

Holy Mackeral!! Last week I cleaned out the fridge....really cleaned it out. Finally, after years of not figuring this out, I actually do a clean-out every pre-trash night, so nothing ever gets left in there to turn fuzzy and black. This weekly clean-out has been a fairly recent and major step in home management....definitely NOT my strong suit. BUT, even so, for quite a while there, I was still having trouble finding space to put stuff in the fridge. Sure, there's always beer in there, of course, and certainly eggs, but why oh why, with only two people in the house, was I having so much trouble fitting stuff in? So last week I went to the back row....the WAY back row. Oh good grief, there were SEVEN jars of dill pickle spears, not fuzzy or bad, just partially empty jars. Who knows how long they'd been in there. Not Pickles-Gone-Bad, but pickles just there waiting, like, forever. A couple of jars had only one lonely pickle spear, a few had three or four pickles, one jar was half full. These were fairly large jars of Vlassics, the King of Pickles. So yeah, when I finally got rid of all those jars, there was SO much more space.....amazing thing! For several days after that, I had to keep opening the fridge just to look at all that space. It felt so holy. I sure wish I'd taken a picture of all those jars....it was quite an impressive line-up!



So today, yeah, it's like way past time I did the same for the freezer. I had taken a field trip to Costco last week with Marcy.....my very first visit to this Mecca of Shopping....Costco, the super-store of super-large items and super-large amounts. At first I was so overwhelmed by the LARGENESS of everything I could only gape. Super-astonishing!! But after a few samples and a few aisles I started getting into the whole quantity thing. But I sorta forgot we only have two people at home! When I got home....well, there was no room at the inn....uh.....in the freezer. Some rearranging, some pitching and I got it all in....sort of. Three times I went back to the kitchen to find the freezer door hanging open. Just pushing the stuff in harder wasn't working. A few more things were pitched. But truly, it was a serious situation, there was no room for one thing more. So this morning I went through it all. There were things wrapped in foil of no known identity. There was some lasagne left from when I broke my shoulder and Alyssa came and made food. It became apparent that there had to be rules about what got pitched. No meat-change colors allowed to stay; nothing could stay if there was so much perma-frost that you couldn't see the surface. While I know for a fact that humans CAN survive after eating out-of-date pork that's been in the freezer for FOUR years or THIRTY-YEAR-OLD frozen pecans, I
was pretty sure we didn't want to go there. So OK! a whole trash-can of stuff got pitched and I threw out all SIX packages of Boca Burgers. I don't even like them anyway. So now all the things I got at Costco can fit into the freezer.....the twenty-meals-worth of ravioli, the 36 Mexican Grill enchilada things, the 48 pieces of spanikopeta and 98! filafel balls are holding down the fort there in the freezer. BUT, one of the best parts of this clean-out fever is that there's now plenty of room left in the freezer for some Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey if we want to get some!

Do NOT rent this movie!

I debated about whether to use this photo....cause now, Deb, it's on the WORLD WIDE WEB..oh my! Yikes! But I figure it's not twirlin tassels or anything, so it's clean. I know people have to be careful on Facebook and all that, but really, you were just trying to be a non-wasteful person and thatsa good thing. Anyway, the photos.....there is more than one, haha! sort of goes with the post about this movie somehow. There are many saloon scenes anyway....

Last night we rented the movie, "The Assassination of Jesse James"....wasn't MY idea!...and oh good grief, what a TERRIBLE movie....bleah! B-O-R-I-N-G-!-!-!, Bleah, Two and a half hours, TWO and a half hours!! long, bleah, sleazy characters, bleah, many boring scenes in saloons, bleah, (that's why this photo fits, Deb, NOT the sleazy character part), I fell asleep multiple times and when I woke up they were still doing the same despicable stuff, AND, just when you thought the movie was over, along came yet another scene and then another and another. We could really call this, "Aguirre the wrath of Jessee James" after another of my all-time worst favorite movies. PLUS, it was a super-downer. Save your money! Go for something else.....

Hohoho!! I hope, Deb, that you won't hate me for this. But the combination of these two photos is just two good.

Soooooo, you guys better be good to me, hahaha.....or maybe I better be careful or I have no friends left.....

Filling out the Profile and the Whole Age Business

Woo hoo, ladies! I'm so glad some of you have found the site and have made comments. We are in a NEW AGE, Baby! I thought it would be fun and good to fill out the "Profile" for the Contributors....I'm delighted that others have joined in the fray. But filling out that Profile was HARD! It's so hard to remember what I read or what movie I saw last week, much less remember favorites. So most of this stuff is only those things in most recent memory. I'm sure there are other things out there....it's just I don't know where they are.

I must comment on this whole AGE business though. It gives me such a pain to even think about! So I've devised a system to feel better about the whole thing. It mostly works. But it's mostly true too. My theory is that we all actually have 4 ages....

1. Chronological.....this we can do nothin' about, dammit! It's there, it's set in stone. 57!

Yikes! BIG number! Drat, how did this happen?

2. Body Age.....OK, this is getting a little better, whew! I figure I excercise, eat pretty well

.....at least most of the time (well, except for now, man I gotta get a grip!)...so Ok, hmm

45!

3. Attitude Age.....this is my best age! Actually, I feel younger now than I've felt in the last

27 years! Because the responsibility of the daily kid maintenance thing is no longer

there to suck the life right outta ya! So, OK, this is great, I feel about 27! I can live with

this, you bet! Young, but savvy....sorta.

Oh great, I can't remember the 4th age......hmmmm......hmmmm.....oh, uh-oh, I know what it is!

Oh good grief! It's

4. Memory Age....Ok, 75! But in Memory Years, we can all live to be 150. So there!

See, you can justify anything and make the picture fit the image of your dream. Go for it!

Let's see if I can do.....ahem, IMPORT,.... another photo:

The Title of this photo is: TERRY was so proud of her Soup that she was about to BUST!
Trying to think of all those "B" words stretched her Brain and shrunk her Shirt! Awww....she is just too cute.

To become a "Contributor"....please do! you need to get a Google account. Just google "Get Google Account" and it'll lead you though it. You Can Do It!

Laying down the Foundation

OH MY, this is truly exciting!....my heart is actually thumping hard! After sending e-mail.....at least one.....everyday for the past year or so, I've decided to start a BLOG. I'm not even sure I know exactly what this is, except for you, YOU can chose to read this or not and I won't be clogging your e-mail in-boxes on such a regular basis. This seems like a GOOD thing! I would rather make this a group......Wagholter....effort, but I'm not sure how to do that just yet. A blog can be updated and changed....I'll see what I can find out about that. Also, this can be a permanent thing so all the photos we've been sending can be saved without filling up your e-mail boxes. I hope this works to scratch my itch...and you can come and go (or not) as you please. Weehaa!

Here we go. Let's try to add a photo....the Soup Contest Winners.....

Well, after much ado and panic! (and some help from Lucy), the photo is in place....ha....and where I want it. Unfortunately, you can't read the bubbles, but oh well. It goes something like, Terry is using her Costco recipe next time, Nancy has to keep making soup til she wins, dammit, Marcy is singing opera....lalalala, I won, I won, I won!...lala....Deb, hmmmm, I can't remember, and Margie is contemplating using her ladle as a weapon.

Oh just one more thing.....the name, Chatty Patty, is an affectionate name my kids call me. I used to despise the name Patty when I was growing up and would get really grumpy if anyone used it, but I love how they joke me with it, so that's that. Bye, bye!!