ANOTHER CANDLE ON THE CAKE

Some say that time marches. If it marched I'm sure I could keep pace. I believe it dashes, darts, and races with me just barely hanging on. Some say that time flies. Now that I can agree with.

I celebrated another birthday yesterday. How did I get to be this old already? I demand a recount. Time is definitely my enemy. Not just because it gives me sagging jowls and grays my hair, but because it robs me of the many things I want to do and don't seem to have time for.

Maybe I want to do too much, maybe I have no direction or maybe I'm just slow, or is it all of the above? I find it very unsettling. Does anyone else share these feelings or am I alone in my mid-life frustrations?

Birthday Candle Photo by juliaklarman

A.S.S.

I would call it the Aunt Sally Syndrome, but saying all those words is so twentieth century. Think how much time can be saved by using the acronym, A.S.S. Probably before the calendars are flipped to the next century, we’ll forgo words completely and communicate by spouting off only clipped letters.

Well, back to Aunt Sally and her syndrome, actually she doesn’t have the syndrome, it’s my husband who does. Aunt Sally won’t be familiar to you unless you’ve visited or lived in New Orleans. There she is famous (if you’re skinny) or infamous (if you’re fat) for her pecan pralines, a delightful confection made of a buttery, sugary syrup. Before I go any further, let’s get one thing straight - the pronunciation. Unless you want to sound like a complete Yankee or a Brit, you must say PRAH-leens, not PRAY-leens.

It all started when my born, bred, and schooled in New Orleans husband, who just happens to be the second smartest man on Earth, was planning to concoct a NAWlin’s specialty for a dinner party. My idea for dessert was pecan pie or Breyers praline ice cream. Remembering that my best friend has a microwavable praline recipe, he said, “Why not go for the real thing?”

After the nightmare experience of making candy canes with my boys and the neighbor kids many Christmases ago, I'm convinced that candy is something to be bought, not made, so my response was, “I have a house to clean. If you want pralines, you’ll need to make them.” Right there and then, without a doubt, is the moment my husband caught ASS. The first batch came out so perfect that he made more, many more. Only running out of ingredients made him stop. Our guests loved them. Everyone wanted the recipe when he went on about how easy they were to make.

The next day, he sent me out for more supplies and containers. He wanted to make enough for one of our son's teachers . He also thought they'd make great Christmas gifts for his business associates. This shopping trip rubbed the cheap side of me the wrong way. Paying full price for something when I’d normally get it on sale and with coupons was not my MO.

Apparently the praline gods had somewhere else to be whenever he entered Round Two. It was disaster from the get-go. They were too runny, some stuck to the wax paper like Super Glue. Each batch seemed to have unique ailments. How can something that was so easy one day, be so impossible the next? Calling upon his science and physics background, he was Googling to find out where he was going wrong, why and how to fix it.

Only because he was too tired to scrap the whole bunch, and went to bed with bunches of sticky wet globs still stretched out on the wax paper (and everyplace else that he touched) did he have any to show for the additional batches he attempted. The next morning he found that some had dried and he was able to lift them off the wax paper and into the containers.

The teachers got pralines, but less than he’d planned. WWASD in a situation like this? Well, if Aunt Sally is anything like my husband, she'd remember how easy they were to make the first time and she'd wake up two days later and ask me to buy more ingredients. This time I opted out of doing the shopping. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle this painful experience a second time. When I returned from a church activity Sunday night, ASS had commandeered my kitchen again only this time he was smiling. Apparently the praline gods had returned.

Prauline Photo by Stormy Sleep

DREAM VACATION

When most people think of a dream vacation, they have mental visions of palm trees swaying in ocean breezes or musky cobblestone streets separating shadowy European buildings, but for me, I can't think of a better vacation than the one I returned from last fall. My trip to visit with family members and friends that have been so close to my heart but so far away in time and distance, brought me more pleasure and joy than I can express.

It had been from eight to thirty-eight years since I last spent time with some of these wonderful people. Where do the years go? I definitely don't get “back home” often enough. Thanks to each and everyone of them for the love and the time they shared with me.

My solo 2000-mile road trip was quite easy thanks to accessible directions on the Internet, an ample supply of books-on-tape and good weather, except for the five-minute deluge when I couldn't see beyond the windshield en route to my cousin Mary's house.

Map Quest directions were accurate all but once. I can't tell you how many trips I made up and down St. Charles Rock Road in St. Louis searching for my sister's street. Map Quest hadn't let me down before so it didn't occur to me that it could actually be wrong. Just for the record, Rex Avenue in St. Louis does not intersect with St. Charles Rock Road.

Gateway Arch Photo by geodesic

ONE & ONLY FRUIT SALAD

So fast! So easy! So delicious! You can chuck those other fruit salad recipes. This is the only one you’ll ever want.

Mix together canned crushed pineapple and sweetened condensed milk, add some or all of the following ingredients (canned, fresh or frozen) cut to bite-size pieces. Drain most of the juice from canned fruit except the pineapple.

1 can crushed pineapple (don’t drain)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
fruit cocktail, tropical or regular
pears
peaches
mandarin oranges
strawberries
bananas
apples
any other fruit that you like
marshmallows
nuts, unsalted (pecans, walnuts, almonds)

Devouring the sweetened condensed milk with a spoon, right from the can, makes me a happy-camper, however, I keep my dignity by adding the fruit.

Thanks to Burgundy Olivier, cookbook author and my sister-in-law, for my adaptation of her fruit salad recipe. This gal knows food. She could knock Paula Deen right outta the ring. Check out her I LOVE SPINACH COOKBOOK. It’s a fun read, even if you dislike spinach: www.ilovespinach.com/.

Fruit photo by ultimcodex

AILING AND WAILING

A satellite ER is closer to us, but several weeks ago when I suddenly became ill, my husband, the second smartest man on Earth, and I, headed to the emergency room at the big hospital downtown. We wanted to avoid the expense of being transported from one facility to another by ambulance as happened a few years ago.

For what that cold miserable ambulance ride cost us we could have hired a fleet of limos with a police escort and I could have ridden in comfort with some style thrown in. The ER personnel insisted upon ambulance transport then because I was under observation due to possible heart attack symptoms. Under observation, my buns!!!! I remained alone in the back of that dark, frigid, noisy ambulance while the attendant rode shotgun with the driver. I was frickin’ freezing back there trying to make do with the thin sheet they tossed over me. My weak voice, pleading for warmth couldn't be heard above the roar and no one came to my rescue during my 20-minute ride for life.

My traitor of a mind started playing tricks like trying to convince me that I had already died. "Of course it's cold in here. Corpses are always kept cold so they don't start stinking. Why would the attendant waste her time giving you any attention since you’re already dead." I became obsessed with trying to remember if that sheet they'd thrown over me had initially covered my face. If only I could remember that key fact, then I would know for sure if I were dead or alive.

I figure that being dead is akin to childbirth or something momentous that you've never personally experienced. But unlike childbirth and most other stuff, with death you don't get the chance to build on your experience. As my ambulance skidded into the entryway of the big hospital's admittance center, I realized I hadn't given up the ghost just yet, because I knew that medical personnel would never hustle like that if I was already a goner.

There was one observation from that experience a few years ago that should have made us wiser, but obviously didn't register right away during this recent trek for medical care. Second Smartest Man On Earth and I waited five hours in the standing-room-only ER to be told at midnight that the wait would be at least three more hours.

Thankfully, early on a security guard brought me a wheel chair and a throw-up pan when he sensed that I was probably going to slide off the counter I had draped myself across. But with the pain in my chest, the skull splitting headache and pressure, the nausea and the violent coughing, I wanted nothing more than to be horizontal. The cold hard floor looked so inviting except then I’d surely have more ailments from people stepping on me.

It finally occurred to us that the only way to be seen in a timely lifesaving manner at this place was to arrive by helicopter - the heliport was so busy it reminded me of O'Hare Airport on a Friday afternoon - or by ambulance. If you got there by your own transportation, there had to be blood and lots of it. We struck out on all accounts and since so many hours had passed, we made our own medical decision that since I was still alive, I probably wasn't having a heart attack or a stroke like my husband feared, so we returned home.

I’ve seen three different doctors over the past weeks. The first one said it was the flu, patted me on the back and sent me on my way. The second hit me up with antibiotics for bronchitis and the third gave me a stronger and longer round of antibiotics for a sinus and ear infection. I returned to the last doctor again last week. He took another stab at it and prescribed allergy meds and steroids and sent me for sinus and chest x-rays. He said he may need to refer me to the ENT specialist. He wants to see me again tomorrow.

Well, this is far too much whining about my ailments. I hope you and yours are managing to keep healthy during this time of high susceptibility to the winter crud.

Ambulance Photo by Uberzombie

FROM RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE

A huge battered trunk and a picture of her in her casket at age 49 were the only tangible remains of a grandmother I never knew. Her first name was either Tenki, Tonya, Tatiana or Tatyana. Her last was Charney, but I don’t know if that was her maiden or first married name. She arrived at Ellis Island in 1911 from Russia to begin a better life, leaving behind an older man, her husband through an arranged marriage, who mistreated her.

In 1913, without a divorce, she met and married Michael, also a Russian immigrant who came to America in 1912. They settled in Madison, Illinois. Having six children over a span of fourteen years, my mother was their fourth-born. Their home was a small two-bedroom house. My grandfather worked as a carpenter for the railroad while my grandmother labored at a typically male job in a slaughter house and meatpacking company all the while they raised their children, burying their two oldest daughters when they were barely out of their teens.

As a child and now as an adult, I long to know more about her. My mother was tight-lipped and often changed the subject when I sought answers, although she did tell me that my grandmother saw a mermaid from the ship when she crossed the Atlantic en route to America. Through the years I learned that my grandmother raised goats and geese in their small backyard, played the accordion, made root beer, and sent her children to the movie theater every Saturday when she did housework. I was told that she was very artistic, but no one in the family kept any of her work. Both my mother and her younger brother were talented artists. My uncle was a cartoonist for major magazines before he became an aeronautical engineer. High intelligence and its oft-downside, mental illness, also passed down through the genes.

I like to identify with my grandmother because she was a risk-taker. My mother who never went far from her home in a tiny town, who chose to never drive a car again after her first fender-bender and who wouldn't hear of my father leaving his $90 a week factory labor job to start his own business, was about as far from being a risk-taker as one can get.

Russian was my grandmother’s first and only language, unless you count “whatchamacallit” her often used word in English. She died of a heart attack when my mother was 19 years old and three months after I was born, leaving a 16-yr old daughter and 14-year and 22-year old sons. Three years later a heart attack claimed my grandfather's life. Being their first grandchild, it was expected that I would be a boy. It seems she never got over her disappointment. Instead of calling me Peggy, she referred to me with Russian words meaning “worthless, no-count.” Apparently I didn’t matter to her, but she has always mattered to me.

I only knew her through my mother’s view. My mother insisted that the only picture she had of her mother was the one taken in her casket. After my mother’s death, among her possessions we found snapshots and studio photos taken through the years when my mother was a child. My aunt recognized a photo of my grandmother (shown above) as the one taken when she was age 19, shortly before leaving for America.

I longed to know my grandmother’s mind. I wished for a letter or something she had written, but nothing was found. That’s why Tom Barker’s poem, Tempus Fugit, is so meaningful to me when he speaks of bringing back memories, writing it all down to let someone enjoy. It’s too late when they’ve gone to the grave. Thank you, Mr. Barker, for saying it so beautifully. You have motivated me to write this blog so that my grandchildren, whom I may never know, will have a chance to know me.

TEMPUS FUGIT (Time Flies)

Tempus Fugit - Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Tom Barker, Joondalup, Australia, 1970

Write what you feel, and let your mind steal, o'er green fields and memories of childhood.
Or sit and day dream by a gurgling stream, while birds' sing in yonder wild wood.
The corn in the breeze bends with such ease, while white clouds across the heavens go racing,
And wild roses grow in hedgerows so low while the old oak the sky is embracing.

The child on the swing and the church bells ring, all bring back memories divine,
Of seaside trips and the crab that nips at your toes as you walk alone in the brine.
The misty gray dawns and the loud morning yawns as people prepare for work,
But the morning mist clears and the warm sun appears and makes all the flowers smirk.

So don't sit and frown but write it all down, and someday let someone enjoy,
and be not distraught for it cost you naught, and don't get all uptight and coy.
There are lots of memories never put down, and people don't bother to save,
So the young that follow miss out and holler, it's too late, they have gone to the grave.


Clock photo by macinate