Black Friday

How many of you went shopping on Black Friday? After last year I swore I would never go again. Last year I got up at 4:15, brushed my teeth, threw on some clothes and went to Office Max where they were selling MP3 players cheap. Yes, I got the 2 MP3 players I wanted and for the price I wanted. I was only about the 6th or 7th person in line. As I was happily leaving with my purchases, congratulating myself for not only getting up early, but picking a place that wasn't quite as popular as the Best Buy across the street, I heard a customer comment that they had been across the street and a fight had broken out. As I left the parking lot I saw a couple of police cars making their way, sirens blaring, to Best Buy. So I resolved to never do that again, and felt lucky that I hadn't been at the Best Buy. So this year I didn't get up to join in the craziness, but Friday night about 8pm, after my husband had put up the Christmas tree, I realized I still had enough time to run to Dillards to get that bead garland I wanted, so off I went. There weren't many people there, but I did get the bead garland at 33% off - what a deal!

FOOD

It's Thanksgiving this week, and of course our thoughts turn to food. My family has their favorites that they like every year - in fact every year I ask around if they want something different, but they always want the same things - Turkey (of course), cornbread stuffing, gravy, broccoli-rice casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, pink stuff (do you know what pink stuff is?), black olives, rolls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie.

This made me think about myself as a child and I wondered what the things I remembered as my favorites back then. I think my all-time favorite thing to eat when I was young was a hamburger from Broncos Drive-in Restaurant. We didn't get them often, but I thought they were the best thing I had ever put in my mouth. I also thought the hamburgers at the elementary school cafeteria were great. Some other things that Mom actually made that were favorites of mine: Eggnog, Rice pudding, Steamed Carrot Pudding at Christmas with lemon sauce, hamburgers and hot dogs we used to cook down at Fontenelle Park or in our backyard, oatmeal, macaroni and tomatoes, fresh corn on the cob, chicken soup with homemade noodles, chicken enchilada, cherry cheesecake, Dad's homemade fudge, Mom's homemade peach jam.

Things Mom cooked that I didn't like: Spice cake, Thanksgiving stuffing, pizza, tamale pie, melted cheese sandwiches (she didn't grill them, just put a hunk of cheese on bread and put it in the oven), sour kraut with hot dogs, or beans and hot dogs. I always hated it whenever I would get up in the morning and Mom would tell us we were out of milk. She would cook pancakes but then we had to eat them with no milk to wash them down. Hated that. I hated even worse when dad would go out of town and sometimes we would go 2 or 3 days without milk. Hated that too. I also didn't like the Christmas candy dad would get. He loved hard candy and would buy ribbon candy and different "minty" hard candy, some hard candy with kind of gel filling. I never liked peppermint candy canes we got for Christmas. Mom's mince pie wasn't my favorite either.

Some favorite things at my Grandmothers were: dutch oven mutton, bread and milk with fresh onions and icicle radishes from the garden, Grandma's brown cake, hot cracked wheat cereal, a slice of homemade bread with homemade butter and homemade jam - put in a bowl with fresh cream poured over the top, sprinkled with sugar. My great aunt used to make the best pies in the world! My favorites were rubarb and sour cream raisin. I used to save my money so every year I could go to her cafe and order a piece of sour cream raisin pie on Pioneer Day.

I'm sure I had more favorites and more non-favorites, but these were what I could think of at the moment.

Who do you think you're foolin'?

Okay, Amberlilies started it, and now Delirious has joined in, so I guess I will "hold hands and go bowling with them." I'm talking about this reminiscing about childhood confessions. I've tried and tried to think of another incident when I teased one of my siblings. Can't think of one right away, but here are a few things I remember.

Inside Stories and I used to share the Master Bedroom. For some reason Mom didn't want to be upstairs, so was using one of the bedrooms downstairs. This Master bedroom was really like two rooms in one. It was two distinct rooms, but you had to go through her bedroom to get to mine, and there was no door or wall, it was just open. I had a closet, and Inside Stories got to use the walk-in cedar closet just outside the Master bedroom. Anyway, Inside Stories was the typical teenager that hardly ever cleaned her room. When she did, it was a major event - and an event that I looked forward to with anticipation. She only did it about once or twice a year, and she would go through every drawer, clean out her closet and clean out from her bed. The things that would come out from under her bed were actually kind of gross, because they were usually leftover plates of food that had fossilized. The reason I would look forward to it, was because when I was sure she was done, which at this point she might leave the room - and that meant leave the trash can unattended, then I would go in there and go through the trash to see what wonderful and marvelous things she might be throwing away so that I could rescue them and hide them away in my drawers. I never wanted Inside Stories to see them, because she would get mad that I had got it out of the trash. I felt that if she had thrown it away, then she didn't want it, which made it fair game for anyone who just might be casually passing by her trash can on their way to their room.

The other childhood incident that immediately comes to mind is the time when I skipped school. I don't remember exactly why I didn't want to go to school that day, but I do remember that Inside Stories wasn't going to school either that day, and she looked perfectly healthy to me, so I guess I thought if she could get away with it, so could I. So I refused to go to school. I have no memory of arguing much with my mother, but somehow I found myself dressed for school and riding in the car with my dad taking me to school. I was still refusing to go, but for some reason he thought that if he took me to school, that I would just be obedient and get out when we got there and go on in to class. Wrong. When we got to school, it was obvious that school had already started. There was NO ONE in sight. Every one was in class, I could see all the classes through the windows. Well if Dad thought I was going to go to school LATE he had another think coming. He argued with me. I wouldn't get out. He threatened me. I wouldn't get out. He yelled at me. I wouldn't get out. He came around to my side of the car, opened it and PULLED me out of the car. I hung onto the door and wouldn't let go. He yelled. I cried. I said I wasn't going. Finally he either gave up or realized how stupid he looked trying to pull me off of the door and he got back into the car. He tried the calm reasoning talk. I wouldn't get out (when he got back in, so did I). Finally he gave me an "out" but I don't think he meant to. He said something about me thinking he didn't love me. I thought "Hey, that's a good angle" so I used it and agreed with him. He started the car and drove back home. I thought, "Yeah! I won!" Not so. The minute we got back into the kitchen (I guess he needed to wait to get back where Mom could experience this too,) he turned me around and gave me the hardest spanking I had ever had in my life and then sent me to my room. I remember going up to my room and looking in the full-length mirror in my room to see if I had his hand print on my butt. I didn't, but it was glowing red!) That's all I remember. I don't know if I stayed in my room all day or not. But I went to school the next day.

A tribute to Paul Simon:

When I was a little girl

You know the devil would call my name

He'd say now, "Who do, who do you think you're foolin'?"

Another day in the life of.....

I've been in a funk lately. It seems like all I do is the same thing everyday. Get up at 4am. Teach Seminary. Eat Breakfast. Prepare another lesson....keep preparing.....keep preparing....the reading assignments are really long lately....finish preparing. Do some housework. Eat Lunch. Practice piano....keep practicing (Christmas music - pretty hard). Check email. Check Blog. Run an errand. Fix Dinner. Eat it. Do dishes. Get ready for bed. Go to bed. BOORRRIINNGG!! Problem is - I don't even want to go do anything else. I tell myself, "Self, go Christmas shopping!" Instead I go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. Yawn. They only have 4 turkeys left. Go to another store....buy turkey there. Go home. A week or so ago my husband and I were going to go away for the weekend. We were looking forward to going to the mountains where we could ride a train up the mountain. The train wasn't running. Even though they say it runs year round, it was on a 2 week break. It will run again starting Nov. 21 for what they call their "Polar Express". We went up to drive the jeep trails. They were closed due to too much snow on the mountain. We drove to another town and ate lunch and went to some tourists shops. Half of them were closed. We came back to the town we were staying in and went to dinner and walked around to some of the tourists shops there. Half of them were also closed. It was nice to get away and it was relaxing. The scenery was beautiful even though most of the fall leaves were already gone in the higher altitudes. Maybe the holidays will help.

Would you like a warranty with that?

I'm having work done on my roof today. Over the latter part of the summer, we began having leaks in our portico roof (the part of the roof that goes over the driveway where it comes up by the front door - circular drive). We had several places in the portico roof where the ceiling had fallen through because of the leaks. We're glad to get this started before we get any more rain, but at the same time it's hard to part with the amount of money that this is going to cost. We have a flat-roofed house, which I would not reccommend to anyone. I don't know who came up with this design, but these kinds of roofs are susceptible to leaks and you constantly have to be doing something on a regular basis to keep your roof from leaking. We are having a kind of plastic covering put on the roof that will guarantee it will not leak for something like 20-30 years. Too bad we can't fix our bodies that good. My one-year-old new knees are only supposed to last me another 7-14 more years. I know a lady who has had 2 knee replacements. She says that is all you can have. You can't have them replaced more than twice. This lady is at least 20 years older than me, but it's still scary to think about. I talked to this one guy who had his knee replaced and there was something wrong with the mechanism and he had to go back into surgery so they could repair it. Talk about bionic! I asked him if they replaced it with a new artificial knee but he said, no that they just repaired it. I wonder if it came with a warranty?