Sugar cookies 

Hunting and gathering

George and I spent most of the day out of the house, hunting for this and that, and gathering groceries, Christmas presents and other assundry items. We visited eight different places. It was our day to stay out of the house because the housecleaners were here. We used our coupons to buy the water I like on sale at three separate stores, and went to New Hampshire for apples for Thanksgiving pies, and stopped at a mall we seldom go to where they had massive sales on clothes and jewelry. I bought some jewelry for presents 70% off. It was hard to get out of there and I wanted to buy a lot more than I allowed myself to buy. We were like children out of school. We even had a rare country style "brunch" of eggs and sausage and grits.

When we arrived home with our packages six hours later, we were apprehensive as we entered the house. Did the cleaners do a good job? The scent of furniture polish and floor cleaner was evident, and the house sparkled. It is clean! I no longer feel guilty about hiring them, I feel elated! And they come back in two weeks! No more worry about whipping the house into shape before company comes. It is all done! All I have to do is arrange the flowers and bake some cookies, which is something I seem to know more about.

We bought our groceries for the Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and the menu is planned. We have a peck of Mutsu apples, and a 16 pound turkey and all the trimmings. I cleaned the refrigerated and stocked the new supplies. We are ready for Thanksgiving!!

Mike arrives tomorrow at 3 p.m. and George will go to Logan airport to pick him up. I will be at work, and leave at 4 to hurry home to meet them. Tomorrow night is dinner at a famous steak house in Boston, The Hilltop. There is nothing like it anywhere. It is based on the old "cattlemans" restaurant and is huge so there are no lines ever. We really dislike waiting an hour in line at a restaurant for our dinner.

The hunting and gathering is done, and the new diningroom table arrives on Tuesday afternoon. I am very aware how lucky I am that this Thanksgiving is coming together so nicely. I can't wait to see Michael again. Today I make sugar cookies for our long nights at the keyboard playing Everquest together.

Hurry Michael. Fun is waiting!

The Mighty Mutsu 

Happy Saturday

It's Saturday morning and I'm up with the birdies. It is true that I often get up earlier on weekends than I do on weekdays. There is so much to do and I wake up with my head full of plans. Today the cleaners are coming at 9 and George and I are going to New Hampshire to buy apples for the Thanksgiving apple pies. We go to Mack's Apple Farm in Londonderry, which is where I used to own a farm of my own. 20 acres next to the orchards. It was a wonderful old house, and a real measure of how much work one could do in one day. I don't own a farm anymore and I'm glad. They are pretty to look at and fun to live in but the expense and hard work of maintaining that much property and a nine room house and outbuildings was not easy. Frankly, I was over my head, but I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad that part of my life is over.

At Mack's we buy a large yellow apple called Mutsu. I don't see them anywhere else. They are twice as large as normal apples and are crisp and delicious and just right for pies. They also have Macintosh and Gala and Delicious, but those Mutsu are worth the trip. They are so big that when we eat one, we often cut it in half and share it. They also have wonderful squash and I probably won't be able to resist a few of those.

For Thanksgiving I am going to make an apple and a pumpkin pie. I found this recipe on the web this morning and it is exactly like mine. I usually cut out a heart or an apple from the extra crust and put that on top and sprinkle with sugar.

This is the only time of year I make pumpkin pie and I like it with real whipped cream on top. I'm also making a blueberry bundt cake for breakfast and I'm looking at other recipes. Mike better come hungry! There are only three of us for dinner, so I don't make a lot of any one thing. I hear about families that have 20 people or more for Thanksgiving dinner, but we are a small happy group. I haven't decided what vegetables I will have, but it will depend on what I see at the market later today and tomorrow. Our turkey will be less than 20 pounds.

On December 11th, we are having a Christmas party for our church council here at our house. On the invitation, I said, "you are invited to a Christmas Fiesta". I made homemade invitations with rubber stamps in a holly pattern. The dinner will be a buffet, there will be up to 12 couples, and the house will be rather crowded. Some people will have to eat on their laps, so I will make something easy to eat with a fork. I am going to make a taco casserole and some southwestern flavored dishes. People will bring desserts and do a "cookie swap" at the end. I got the idea of furnishing take home containers so I will not have so many desserts left over. Much healthier that way for us.

So, I'm off to look at recipes. Planning is half the fun.

Happy Thanksgiving preparation time!

Here's looking at you, kid. 

Housework to Bald Eagles

How do you get from the subject of housework to Bald Eagles? I'm going to try.

Last night the housecleaners came to give us an estimate on cleaning our house for the holidays. My goal is always "better homes and gardens", but since we both work full time, and volunteer for church, and have hobbies like knitting and flying, which take up so much time, our goal of a perfectly clean and organized house is not going to happen. Last night, after the husband and wife housecleaning team left, I felt bad. It wasn't the money. I thought their estimate was very fair, and we plan on having them come Saturday and then every other week after that. I had to sit down for awhile and really think about what was making me feel bad. I realized it was that somehow, having to hire them, made me feel as if I had failed in some way.

I know, I know, that's silly, but...that is what I felt. I have realized over the years that it helps when I don't feel right, or I'm unnecessarily worried or just out of sorts, to sit down and really think about what I am feeling. Shut off the TV, turn off the noise of life, and just sit with myself and see what happens.

Something else I realized when I was in my hour of self reflection, was that I am all wound up in doing a good job at work, doing a good job at church, and doing a good job of being the hostess for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was bogged down in the details. I need to get out more!

So, in the next few weeks, I am going to concentrate on getting out into nature and seeing the sights right here in Massachusetts. I would like to take George and Michael on a walk in the Breakheart forest preserve near our home, or to see the ocean birds at Plum Island, or to enjoy the quiet flats of the salt marsh by George's flying field. I need to get out into the bigger picture.

There was an article in the New York Times today about Bald Eagles. The picture above by the way is taken by Stewart Bowman/The Courier-Journal, via Associated Press. I have seen bald eagles in my life. I saw several eagles in Wisconsin, soaring along the banks of the Mississippi River when we used to travel to Minnesota to see relatives for holidays. George and I saw a bald eagle at the cabin up in New Hampshire one year. It was a source of great excitement for everyone who lives up there. In the wild, they are majestic birds, and seeing them is unforgettable. At Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, they take injured bald eagles and nurse then back to health to release again in the wild. I have been there twice, and I give Dolly Parton a lot of credit for making nature conservation a big part of her entertainment empire. I am a huge fan of Dollywood, but that is another story.

So, this holiday season, I'm going to make a special effort to get out more to see what is around me in nature. I may not see a bald eagle, but there are a lot of interesting birds and animals living right here. I just haven't taken the time lately to go look for them.

I felt better immediately when I realized that what I needed was a long walk on the wild side!

Turkey!!! 

My tried and true Stuffing Recipe

I noticed that the New York Times has an article today about stuffing, and I don't want my blog to be left out, so I am including my stuffing recipe here too. It is actually my mother's stuffing recipe and we have made it for Thanksgiving as long as I can remember. Mom said that she got it years ago from Southern Living magazine. That is one of our favorite magazines for good recipes. We call it Southern Cornbread Stuffing. Here is the recipe.

This is more than enough stuffing for a 20 pound turkey. If there is extra, put it in a baking dish, cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes at the end of the turkey baking cycle.

The night before Thanksgiving, make a 9 x 12 pan of cornbread and leave it sit out on the counter all night. You could make it two days ahead. Dry is good. You can use cornbread made from scratch, or you can use two Jiffy cornbread mixes, either is fine. Also the night before, chop 7 stalks of celery and 3 large white onions and put them in bags in the refrigerator so you have less work in the morning. In the morning I take a large heavy soup pot, crumble the corn bread into it and add an equal amount of bread stuffing that you have made yourself with day old bread toasted with sage in the oven, or you can buy stuffing croutons in bags. The bag bread doesn't have a lot of flavor, even though it says it does on the package.

Take the giblets from the turkey, wash them well, put in a pan and cover with water. Add salt, a bayleaf, and a few peppercorns. Let this simmer for 30-45 minutes or until the giblets are soft and cooked well. What you want for the stuffing is the flavorful broth, not the giblets. Some people use the giblets in the gravy. My mother told me last night on the phone that her mother ground up giblets in the meat grinder and put them, uncooked, into her stuffing. Mom said it was "gooooood".

Saute the celery and onion in two sticks of real salted butter and 2 T. of oil. When the celery and onion are transparent, add them with the melted butter from the pan, into the bread. In the same pan as you sauted the onions and celery, add a package of sliced almonds and saute for a few minutes and add them to the pan with the bread. Add enough of the broth from the giblets to moisten the stuffing, usually a cup or two. Beat 2 eggs and add them to the stuffing to moisten. I forgot the eggs one year, and the stuffing was fine. Add 2-3 tablespoons of ground sage, 1 t. salt, 1 t. pepper, and 2 T. poultry seasoning. Taste and adjust the seasonings. You can add thyme, or parsley, but I just like the taste of sage. It takes more sage than you might imagine to flavor this much bread.

The stuffing is ready to put into the bird at this point. Dry and salt the cavity both front and back of the turkey and spoon the stuffing in. Cover the opening with buttered aluminum foil to hold the stuffing in, truss and put the turkey into a 350 degree oven for however long you need it to cook, 20 minutes per pound. I always baste the turkey with the butter and the pan juices at least once every 30 minutes while it cooks.

One year, in a burst of enthusiasm, I basted the turkey in champagne, but I wouldn't recommend it. I think he was too dead to notice.

Sometimes I think that turkey recipes do not cook the bird long enough. Make sure that the legs move loosely, and that the juices are running clear in the thigh. Meat thermometers help a lot. Do not believe the pop up timers. They are a silly invention and often pop too soon or too late. I make a tent for my turkey and remove it at the end, so he browns at the end of cooking.

I know some people add sausage, chestnuts, cranberries, oysters or other types of additions to make their stuffing more elaborate and complex. But, this cornbread stuffing is simple and really tastes great.

The turkey should sit at least 30 minutes before it is carved to make the juices set. This gives us time to make the gravy.

Cranberries are easy. Take a bag of cranberries, add 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 1/4 c. of water and a few small peels of orange or orange zest. Cook until the berries pop and cool in the refrigerator. It jells nicely, tastes sweet and savory, and goes just great with the cornbread stuffing. George likes the jelled cranberry out of the can, so I often cool that and open one up to put on a relish tray. Don't forget the black and green olives and a few green onions to add spice to the plate.

George makes the gravy at our house the way his mother made it. The trick is that he makes a roux with flour and the drippings in the pan that the turkey cooked in, and gets it nice and dark before he adds the stock and the water and pours it into another pan to heat. His gravy is very good, and I just stand by in awe.

My very first Thanksgiving as a married woman, I wanted very much to have a big beautiful feast. I bought a huge 25 pound turkey--don't ask me why. When I took it out on Thanksgiving morning to put it in the oven,...it wouldn't fit into the apartment sized oven. I hadn't thought of that! We had to take the racks out and sit it on the floor of the oven. NOT a good idea. Ah, youth. The worst mistake I ever made on Thanksgiving was to make a rice stuffing because my husband liked rice. It was horrid. I cried. And then there was the year that a friend put the gravy in the gravy bowl and set it on a rack in a warm oven to keep warm and it overturned and all of the gravy went onto the floor of the oven. No gravy that year. And...then there was the time that I had a housefull of company at the table, and the water main broke and there was no water. And...well, you get the idea.

Thanksgivings have calmed down considerable for me as the years go by, and for that I am very very thankful.

The perfect dining room set

George and I went furniture shopping last night at a huge new store in our area called Jordan's, that has an Imax Theater, a trapeze practice area that the public can use, and a whole array of fun mini stores, like a jellybelly candy company called "Beantown". This store is like a little Las Vegas. We even had dinner there in their own 50's style Deli, Jimmie's. It was fun, and everyone there was having a great time. The place just opened 3 weeks ago, and it is huge! The furniture part of the place is sectioned off into "rooms", like bedroom and diningroom. The displays are beautiful and right away I noticed that even though the furniture was very nice the sticker shock was not near as bad.

We bought a new mahogany dining room table and six chairs and a table pad. It took a while to choose. As we would like one, we would see another, and on and on, and then find out the price differences, the delivery times (I would like to have it before Thanksgiving if possible and time is running out) and discuss chair widths, table heights, color of wood, and on and on. George did the sit test. We wanted a lot of leg room so guests wouldn't bang their knees on the table. We learned right away that George's legs don't fit under your average table.

The first one we saw was the right price, very comfortable, and almost Victorian in feel. At first I liked it a lot, and then later changed my mind. Too grandmotherly. We finally narrowed it down to three and spent a lot of time discussing each with the patient and very nice salesman. I didn't especially like the inlaid top on one, George didn't like the corners on the other, and the middle one seemed, well, just right. It is a Lane table with six chairs. It is oval and has two leaves which will bring it to 7 1/2 feet. Huge by our standards and we probably won't use both leaves very often. It has a carved rope like trim on the edge of the table that I am crazy about and two pedestals with carved balls on them. It is really gorgeous and I am very happy. And, it will be delivered next Tuesday afternoon, two days before Thanksgiving and Michael will be here to see it come in the door. The chairs are upholstered with beige fabric but not puffy. It just exudes quality. George likes it as much as I do. I'm crazy about the carved trim at the edge of the table. The chairs have a very graceful line. And the salesman said the magic word: Old South. This looks like a table that would belong in a mansion in New Orleans. Well, we can dream, can't we?

In the meantime, I will have to take all my hobby stuff out of the diningroom, and get the room ready for such a regal piece of furniture. The old table will be donated to my organization's second hand shop, where it will be sold once again. Recently I bought several sets of old Noritake china on Ebay, and it is going to be beautiful on this table. More about that later.

So, the dining table idea is clicked off the To Do List, and on we go toward Thanksgiving. Lots left to do.

Gobble gobble.

Holiday preparations begin

George and I are going shopping for a new dining room set. The one we have is a hand me down, and the chairs are wobbly and we are tired of it. Finding one we like has proven more difficult that we thought. This is a very nice house, but it has small rooms, and the dining room is the opposite of baronial. The dining room table can be regular sized, but neither of us like the Queen Anne formal designs. We went to Gardner, Massachusetts, home of the fine furniture makers of the past, and now home to furniture outlets. We looked at some beautiful tables with price tags to match. As we lounged around in the chairs trying them out for size, we added up the price tags...$4100, $3800, $4500. Soon it became like Las Vegas, when a very high price seemed paltry. We needed to get out of there. Since then I have seen ads for furniture nearby our home in "regular" stores, and it seems we are going out again tonight to see what we can see. I am not buying this for posterity or to hand down to my grandchildren. I just want to seat guests at a nice table without worrying about their safety.

The next project is that I have hired housecleaners to come in and help us do some of the heavy lifting of the housework so that I can concentrate on putting stuff away. Loving crafts and flowers, and protecting my knitting time at all costs, puts a strain on the housework. I'd much rather create something than clean house. (Mom, don't listen to this.) It has been a problem of mine since I was small. I just see so many opportunities to use my day in better ways than pushing a mob or a dustrag around. The house is not a disaster area, it is just in need of a good thorough housecleaning. Preferably not by me. Certainly not by George. By George. So, the "crew" is coming on Thursday and...as Mike says, I have a lot of house cleaning to do before the housecleaners get here.

Having small rooms is a challenge to packrats like us. George drempt last night that we were moving into a condo. I'm sure that we have at least enough extra stuff to furnish another condo, but I assured him that I am not going anywhere and he can relax. Somehow I have to manage to get all this done without scaring him half to death. He doesn't like change much.

I am going to buy a recliner for George for Christmas. I am looking to Mike to help me move furniture around and make sure the TV and stereo stays hooked up while we do that. Maybe Mike will have to go furniture shopping with me. I'm sure that will be a thrill for him. Not. We will see. Preparations for Thanksgiving and Christmas begin....and making it FUN is the challenge!

This is fun, right?

Happy Birthday mom. These are your flowers. 

Mom's flowers

Well, I inadvertently discovered a scam to get a bouquet of pretty flowers in my home. I ordered a bouquet of flowers for church today, to put up in the front by the alter, in honor of my mother's 95th birthday which is November 30th. I just left a check and the order in the church office a couple of weeks ago. Today, after church, the alter committtee person asked if I wanted to take them home. Well, sure. I didn't intend this to happen, but I got my mom's birthday flowers and she gets...nothing. Hehe. Well, that isn't true either, since I bought her a velvet lined sewing basket for beside her chair and George mailed it yesterday. Mike and I are planning to send some flowers.com to mom when he gets here next Monday. (I am counting the days! I can't wait to see him and am planning lots of nice meals out and nice meals in...and just a lot of fun.)

Today, for the first time, I led the adult forum (like Sunday School for adults) on World Hunger and it went fine dispite the fact that when I got there to lay out my materials, I didn't have the notes that I worked so hard on yesterday. All the notes about bible verses to be read and the prayer I had written are somewhere here at home and I still haven't found them. So I adlibbed and it went fine, and I used the two posters I made last night and they helped organize my presentation. Nine people have signed up to go to the World Hunger Concert on Dec. 4th. We are part of a group that is raising $30,000 in 30 days to be sent to Lutheran World Hunger Relief. If you haven't noticed, I'm rather a glutton for punishment, and raise my hand to volunteer when I should probably put a hold on my enthusiasm. I can now click the World Hunger forum off my To Do list. It was a good thing to do, and I'm glad it's over.

Nothing much new here this afternoon, but some nice flowers to look at. Happy Sunday my friends.

Snowy Saturday

Well, so much for hope. We have about 4" and it is still snowing. George is getting the snow blower out. He has a birthday party at his grandkids house to go to today and I am staying home to play Everquest II with Michael. Sometimes a day alone is a good thing. My cold is still hanging on, almost a month now, and I think I just need to stay home today rather than push myself through the busy days like I have been doing. I really want to feel better in time for Thankgiving. Michael arrives a week from Monday and I can't wait. We are going to have so much fun!

Everquest II is amazing and that is about all I can say about it here, since I've just started. I bought it at Target for $40 but they also have it at Best Buy. It is a brand new game that just came out this week. If you have never played an interactive game, this is the one for you. The tutorials are much better than they used to be and much easier to learn. My new character is Mayze, a little gnome Mage, (who is very cute in her little green eyeglasses like John Lennon's), level 4 so far, running around the Isle of Refuge, which is the newbie zone. From what I've heard from friends who have had it a couple more days than I have, the new world of EQII is massive and amazing. The graphics are so beautiful you can just lose yourself for a couple of hours. The ocean looks totally real, day changes to night, characters are totally individualized and even change their facial expressions. The whole world is so real you would not believe it until you see it for yourself. Talked myself into it. Time to log on and say hello to my "other world" friends.

Enjoy the day and I will too. Let it snow.

Whats a little exaggeration among friends...

First, Mayor Menino of Boston announced that we should expect five million people to come downtown for the Red Sox parade. George and I wondered where they were going to come from, since Boston has less than 2 million in the whole city. Then, they announced that there were 3.5 million people there that afternoon. Everyone who thought about this looked a little askance, but no one said much. George did some calculations and figured out that was impossible.

In Monday's Boston Globe, finally someone is trying to set the record straight in the name of honest journalism. They said that "3.2 million people standing shoulder to shoulder along both sides of a 3 mile land route and along one side of a 4 mile water route would have to stand, on average, 120 deep (i.e. 120 people every 2 feet for 10 miles). If 2.7 million people entered Boston and Cambridge in a four hour period, they would have to enter at an average rate of 188 per second." Then they report, "If the parade route was 10 miles and there were 20 people every two feet, then there were 528,000 people there."

In the TV coverage, we saw people who had been waiting at Fenway Park running in crowds to the water, so they could see the team go by again. The crowds just followed the players, naturally. Did they really expect that those people would just pack up and leave? Downtown Boston is only a few blocks long and you can walk across the city easily. We also saw many young people who had a chance to stand and talk to the players at length as the duck boats waited their turn to go into the Charles River. Some people had their shirts, hats, programs, and arms signed by the players, and some young girls even had time to flirt a little.

The newspaper article also reports that there is a company called the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University who will create a same/day/estimate number of a crowd based on aerial and/or satellite images for the small fee of $3000.

Oh well. Who cares. I am not going to change my blog where I said that "millions" were there. So what. We are Red Sox Nation. We can do anything we want. We won the World Series! Woohoo!!

That dreaded four letter word....

SNOW! The forecast is for 3-5 inches of snow for us tonight and tomorrow. And George and I have the same emergency we had last year. The bulbs are not planted. Again we will have to run out in the dark of night with flashlights and shovels and hurriedly plunk our bulbs into the ground. We talked about doing it last weekend, but we didn't do it and now...oh my, will we ever learn? Last year we waited to plant even longer, and it was frigid. This year, it is still mild, so maybe we are ok. Perhaps it will warm up tomorrow and we can get the bulbs in with the sunshine that always follows the clouds.

The house next door is still a hulk of wood and plastic wrap. (George and I call it "the barn".) My sweaters and winter coats are still packed in lavender in the closet (moth balls are way too smelly, I made that mistake one year,) and I haven't bought my winter boots yet. I'm not ready for snow yet. Maybe it will just rain and we can plant bulbs later this weekend. Lets use that other four letter word -- hope.

Mexican poinsettia 

Get ready - Christmas is coming! 

Rockefeller Center

The huge Christmas tree is up today at Rockefeller Center in New York City. They have nothing on us. Last year we spend Christmas in New Orleans so we didn't have a tree. The year before that, we went to a local Christmas tree vendor, and bought a nice fluffy real tree for about $40. It was pretty and fat, and we put it in the livingroom where the china cabinet is now. I decorated it with white lights, draped it with beads and shiny balls and even used some of my Marti Gras beads as decoration. My Christmas trees are always very festive.

Last weekend we bought our tree for this year (and all future years). We bought an artificial tree, let me explain. We have wood floors. The Christmas that we bought the real tree, I was cleaning up little pine needles from between the wood in July. And, I was worried that even with the floor covered in a plastic sheet and overlayed with a big tree skirt, some water might spill when we weren't looking and ruin the floor. My kitty Thunder also liked to go under the tree and drink that yukky water, which is a very bad idea for cute orange cats.

So this year, we went to Lowe's and bought a beautiful 7 1/2 foot artificial tree with 900 lights. It is the only tree that we have seen in several stores that looks JUST LIKE a real tree. I swear you cannot tell the difference. It cost $200. It was the only one they had left, so we nabbed it and put it away in the storage locker.

Now for the idea. The year we went to New Orleans I studied the southern charm of the way they decorate trees. Southern Christmas trees are really lush and elaborate, like something Scarlet O'Hara would love. Not so many shiny balls and geegaws, and often decorated with large bunches of artificial flowers and ribbons. They don't hold back. The flowers and bows are huge and lush. At our hotel in New Orleans, the tree was decorated with huge white flowers and dark navy velvet ribbon. It looked ghostly and beautiful and dramatic.

I especially was impressed by a Christmas tree in a fancy highway rest stop at the Mississippi/Louisiana state line, which had a huge "living room" with comfy chairs, wood paneling and a fireplace. This tree was gorgeous, with bouqets of flowers and 3" brocade ribbon and bows tucked into the fronds. It was there that I got the idea that I would do this at our house. When I came home, I bought similar flowers on sale at a shop here, and stored them away. After we get the tree up this year, I will buy the wide ribbon and make bows myself, although right now I don't know what color that will be. The flowers that I bought are white and pink poinsettas, and red velvet roses. I will also tuck in small bunches of baby's breath. Well, you'll see. It will look a lot more beautiful than it sounds now. Have faith. I will take pictures for you.

I love the southern way of doing Christmas. I always make southern cornbread stuffing, and Aunt Bill's candy, which I swear is my mother's favorate food, spiced pecans and lots of decorated sugar cookies. I can't wait for Thanksgiving, and then Christmas follows just a few days after. Yoohoo. This is my time of year. Michael and Michelle are coming for Christmas at our house. I told Michael that he has no idea how excited I can get about having company for Christmas!

And, to top this all off, George and I just decided this morning to take a trip to New York City to visit Rockefeller Center this holiday season to see the tree of all trees. I haven't been to New York City in a long time, even though we live only five hours drive away. So, this is going to be a real treat for me. What a fun season this is going to be! You'll be hearing lots more, so hang onto your seats.

Let me be the first...Happy Holidays.

Nice people enjoying their time together makes it all worthwhile.  

This is the 10th Anniversary Event tonight at a function room at MIT in Cambridge. 

Success!!

The shelter 10th anniversary event was a success. I am publishing a picture only for continuity, not because everyone will be very interested. We had 100 people there, lots of pastries, sandwiches, hummus and chicken wings, the speeches were thoughtful, the guests all enjoyed themselves and nothing bad happened. Lots of people helped me make this party happen, and I have a lot of thank you notes to write on Friday. I'm safe at home, tired, and very very grateful that tomorrow is Veterans Day and I can stay home and read or knit or go buy EQII or go shopping, or whatever I want to do. I'm dog tired, but...I did my job, all went well, and it's over. Hip hip...hurray!

One of those days

Today is one of those days that I just have to power through. From 4:00 to 6:00 this afternoon my organization is having a fundraising event at MIT and over one hundred people will be there. I am in charge of the food and the arrangements. We have been working up to this for weeks. All food is donated, and I have a core of volunteers enlisted to help pick it up and deliver it and more volunteers waiting at the place to set it out. It will be a hectic day and both George and I are just hoping that things go well and we get through it. I will be a happy camper when this day is over.

Some days are like that. You just have to pray a lot, put on your game face, and just...power through it. I'll see you tomorrow with pictures of how the day went. Hopefully at the end of it we will have a lot of happy guests, and $15,000 to give to the homeless shelter.

Have a great day and I will too. Yes, I will.

Not a very pretty picture, but we have no where else to go ... but up. 

You can't stop "progress"

This is a long story but I am going to try hard to make it short. We lived next door to a small woods, an acre or so of trees and birds and little critters. We were the last house on a dead end street in a residential area. The land is a rocky ledge like much of Massachusetts. I never actually walked in that small woods, but it was rather nice to have green space in the middle of the city. One day two years ago some tree cutter equipment arrived and I freaked out and called George at work almost in tears. Turns out they were just trimming some neighbors trees to make room for a swimming pool. We breathed a big sigh of relief. Then someone came and put red ribbons on some of the trees and a surveyor showed up. Months passed quietly. Then one day we came home from work and someone had come and cut down all the trees in the woods, leaving only some on the edges, and we found out that neighbors who owned the woods had cleared it to build a house for their son.

Months passed. All we had were dead and dying trees, and piles of wood and rock. Then they cleared all that out and the dynamite trucks came and blasted for seven days. That was horrifying. George thought our foundation might be cracked, since they were blasting within 20 feet of our house. I was worried about the china cabinets and the man from the blasting (not blasted) company came in to talk with us. He was nice and kept us relatively calm. It was still very loud and very scary.

Months and months, then a year, passed. All we had now next door was a pile of rock and rubble. Turns out the city did not give the permits necessary to go further and the neighbors banded into a group and went to the city to protest the horrible conditions of the lot and the affect to their property values. They moved the fire hydrant. Months passed. Then, last week, when I was sick with a virus for 5 days at home, workman came in droves with jackhammers (yes, loud!) and carpenters, and cement trucks and back hoes and poured the foundation. Then two days later, huge trucks arrived with shrinkwrapped pre-fab forms on them. Neighbors congregated to see what the commotion was, and children watched the busy workmen. Then yesterday we came home and there is a huge house there. A house was put up in one day. It looks like a skyscraper to us, although they are calling it a "cape". It is just wood now, no siding, but when I come home from work tonight, who knows what will have happened.

Of course I would rather have the woods and the birds and the small animals. But we are also happy not to have a lot full of rock and rubble. Maybe someday we will have landscaping and trees and a house to look at rather than a lot that looks like the far side of the moon.

We count our blessings as we do when anything bad happens. Our lot now has much more sun, and we plan for a much bigger garden, more flowering trees, borders of tulips and since good fences make good neighbors, a new fence to be a backdrop to the flower border. And we have fewer old trees to look at and far less leaves to rake in the fall. Our house was in almost full shade and now it is in the bright sun, and we will paint it a brighter color and scrape the mildew off the roof. There are upsides and downsides. But having more sun on our heads and on our flowers and beaming in the windows is a nice thing. Having neighbors next door rather than a dark woods may be a good thing too. I have to admit that sometimes at night, being that close to the woods spooked me a little bit. And, the young man who is moving into the new house seems like a nice enough fellow. So, we will count the good things and not mourn the old.

You can't stop progress.

So, is this what all the excitement is about? 

Dunkin' Donuts

On my way to work there is a Dunkin' Donuts coffee place where the line of cars is so long, they make a big traffic jam at the light where I turn. Every morning for a year I wondered why people were willing to sit in a line of 25 cars to order coffee. Then, one morning, when school was out, the line was only 3 cars, so I stopped in. I was amazed to find out that their coffee is better than any other Dunkin' Donuts coffee I had had at any other place. Who knew?

In Massachusetts, Dunkin' Donuts is huge. It is a phenomenon, and I swear there are Dunkin' Donuts every half mile or so and sometimes even across the street from each other. They proliferate on all main commute routes into Boston. When you ask for directions in Boston, they usually say something like "go down to the next Dunkin' Donuts and turn right", or, "Go around the rotary, take the third exit and when you see the Dunkin' Donuts take a left." Without Dunkin' Donuts, no one would ever find their way here. Driving in this city is unbelievably complex. The roads are never straight, never retain the same highway number or street name for long, and they curve around like old donkey cart trails, which is what they were 300 years ago. My advice to visitors is never ever rent a car in Boston. Asking for directions becomes a way of life. Downtown is a maze of one way streets and if you make the wrong turn, forget it, you'll end up on the Cape. Everyone is changing lanes, turning, signaling, honking, changing their minds,...all at once. I digress.

Boston and Dunkin' Donuts go together like horse and carriage. When I go to Oklahoma, there are no Dunkins. I wonder what they do when they want a cup of coffee? Here in Boston, people don't go anywhere without a a cup of coffee. Out of seven people at a meeting in my office last week, four had brought their Dunkins with them. There are thousands of Dunkin' franchises and every one of them is crowded most of the day. They are gold mines.

Yes, the coffee is good. But it's not THAT good. Starbucks coffee is stronger, brewed better and slower and...more expensive. I bought a double espresso on a whim one day, and it was $3.45 for an inch of very dark liquid in the bottom of the smallest to-go cup I had ever seen. It is a treat that I will not repeat often. My brother buys his coffee online from Hawaii, and gets only pure Kona beans, which he roasts himself and brews carefully and lovingly. Good coffee is very very high on his list of priorities. I enjoy Kona too, but it is almost too expensive. His coffee, however, is at the top of the scale, Starbucks is in the middle of the scale, and Dunkin' Donuts coffee is well -- fine, comfortable, and like a favorite comfort food, dependable.

Boston coffee addicts do not care if they have to wait in a long line every morning. They are patient when it comes to their coffee. And if there is a huge traffic tie up to boot, that is nothing new in Boston.

Time for my coffee break. See ya.

Sunday night project

What you can't see in this picture is that the New England Patriots are on TV, winning 40-22, thank goodness, and I'm wearing my new (large) Red Sox sweatshirt. I'm not really that interested in football this year, since I'm still recovering from Red Sox fever, but I'll watch anything if the knitting is good enough.

Everyone enjoyed the 7 cakes and the 80 cups of coffee we made for coffee hour at church this morning. I wore one of my new scarves, a lavender one, and lots of people liked it. No one said they couldn't live without one,....but maybe I can give them away to someone someday. This blue is pretty bright, but fun to work on.

The pattern I am using is a lace pattern that I made up for this long eyelash yarn. The yarn of this scarf is called Cameo, and I bought it at a craft store called AC Moore. The lace pattern is pretty much invisible because of the long eyelash, but it makes the scarf lighter and prettier than a plain stockinette. Here is the pattern: Cast on 24 stitches. Row 1: Slip the first stitch, *yo, k 2 tog* to last stitch, K1. Row 2 and all odd rows, purl. Knit until you run out of yarn, the scarf is long enough, or you fall off the chair. The ends form with a point, which is also nice.

Yes mom, I know I should be cleaning the china cabinet. :-)

Knitting another scarf? Oh no. 

Lemon bundt cake in my kitchen 

Knitting and Cooking

I am finding it hard to take adequate pictures of my fun furry scarf collection. Somehow, the lushness of the texture and the "loft" of the weight of them just isn't coming through. Using three skeins in each instead of one, and combining two yarns together results in something that is really luxurious. Well, you'll just have to take it from me.

I'm baking bundt cakes today for the church coffee hour tomorrow. One lemon and one orange-cranberry. New Englanders love their crumb cake, so we bought three of those and three other coffee cakes from the Swedish bakery too. When Redeemer sees that it is our time for coffee hour, I really do think they come hungry! We usually serve about ten cakes and they are all gone in minutes. We make 80 cups of coffee and they drink all of that and a quart of half and half. Coffee hour is very important in a Swedish church.

George is outside raking the small mountains of leaves that blew into the yard yesterday. We just did a bunch of errands to pick up things I need to entertain 100 people next Wednesday at an event for work. Since it is a fundraiser and we need to raise $15,000, instead of having it catered, we are saving money by getting donations and the arrangements fall to me. It is fine, I'm happy to do it, but it is a little nerve wracking until it is all over. I'm even going to bake a couple of cakes for that rather than buy them. I don't mind doing things the old-fashioned way. In fact, I enjoy baking. Sour cream bundt cake batter is rich and foamy and makes a really beautiful cake. Nothing says lovin' like something from the oven.

Ding. Time to get the cake out.

Three scarves using fun fur in two colors. Very fun. Bad picture. 

Flowers and Fiber: On the front porch with my scarves and my spinning wheel and the flowers. 

Scarves galore

I said that I am addicted to making scarves. These are some of the scarves I've made in the past couple of months. There are more, I've sold a couple and I've given some away. The variety of yarn they sell now is endless and by combining two kinds together, it gets even more interesting. I might sell them and if not, I'll just wear them. I am resigned to the fact that whatever happens, I am enjoying it too much to quit now.

George took this picture this morning on the front steps with the spinning wheel as scarf rack. It is windy today and the leaves are blowing. Time to grab a rake instead of my knitting needles.

Have fun. See you later.

North Bridge, Concord Massachusetts

The Revolutionary War began here, April 19, 1775 

The weather report....

The wind is whistling today. Whistling to the tune of 40 miles per hour. The leaves are blowing horizontally across the roads and a branch hit my car on the way to work. It happens to be garbage day in many communities, and on my way to work, the cars were playing dodgeball with the garbage cans that were rolling in the street. The sun is very bright, no haze at all, and the clouds are skimming by like schooners in a sailboat race.

At our house, we watch the weather channel a lot. I call it MTV for old-timers. Most people I know don't even care what the weather is, even if it is right over their heads. My mother sits and knits through tornado warnings. But, we like to know what the weather is in different parts of the country where we either have lived, or where our friends or kids are located. I imagine someday moving to Louisiana and buying a little house on the Bayou Teche, and I want to know exactly how high the humidity is. Usually it is weather that only an alligator could love, but I imagine there are airconditioners there too, just like everywhere else.

Weather in Oklahoma is usually affected by the edge of the gulf stream over head, and when you look at the map of Oklahoma, you can see the edge of one weather system or another going right across my home town of El Reno. They get everything there...lots of wind, lots of quick moving storms and dramatic temperature changes. When I moved to Boston, I lived through my first Nor'easter, and thought it was amazing that the wind would go one direction first, and then turn around and come back in from another direction. The clouds go around in huge circles. The weather in Chicago goes from West to East with no variation. In Boston, the storms circle out over the ocean and come back in again, and, round and round, can dump some serious rain.

The gusts here today are up to 50 miles per hour and I'm sporting a new "do"...something a lot more punky radical than I imagined when I fixed my hair this morning. In Chicago, when I worked at the Hancock Building, they would put up actual life lines of ropes for people to hang onto as they walked between the tall buildings. No one can imagine that until you have lived it. Chicago has really intense weather. It is seldom good. Boston is much more moderate, and...a few leaves blowing by don't bother me one bit.

So, when you have more time than you know what to do with, tune in to the weather channel and check out the big map. When you think about it MTV has nothing that beats the excitement of the gulf stream.

Fall in New England 

Fall fell

It is 25 degrees this morning. The first hard freeze is here. The flowers on the deck and in the yard have frozen dark and limp and the frost is on the pumpkin. A mysterious migrating bird or an especially hungry skunk has decided to eat the last leaves of the red coleus in the backyard, which no critter cared about all summer. Our "pet" groundhog, Chuckie, who causes so much panic in the spring by eating our tomatoes and anything else he pleases, has moved into his hole under the garage. Next year we will have to do something about him, but...what?

This weekend we will plant the next 300 tulips and daffodils for our enjoyment next spring. Today the sun is bright, the trees are shining golden, copper, yellow and red and the leaves are hanging by a thread, ready to fall to the ground. The grass is already covered with them, and raking is another chore for this weekend. George does a great job of taking care of the lawn and what I would fret and complain about doing, he joyfully does with no problm and in half the time. Daylight savings means that we are up earlier than usual and come home from work in the dark of night. Today is a good day to wear fluffy slippers, put your feet up in front of the fire, knit some red socks and sip herb tea. Unfortunately, I'm off to work.

Michael is coming for Thanksgiving and I fell asleep last night planning the menu. No to squash soup, yes to apple pie. My new Kitchen Aid professional mixer will make short work of any menu item I might plan and I can't wait. Having him here for 6 days is a real treat, and I plan to make the most of it and make some delicious meals. A little Everquest with the now-famous Loral by my side is going to be great!

Last night I led a book group for the first time in my life. The book was one that I read on vacation at the cabin this summer, Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown. Six of us had a good discussion. The travails of traveling through Africa were interesting to read, and I realized quickly that it is not a trip very many people would even attempt. He hitchhiked by rattletrap car, decrepid ferry, chicken bus, and even rode horseback, traveling across borders that he was warned not to cross. We talked about how cultures have disappeared, and if you live to be 40 you are old, and that young people have no memory of anything other than guns and bloodshed. The folk music of the Sudan is about AK-47s. Add to that the HIV/AIDS epidemic, prostitution, poverty and violence and one of our members last night asked, "is there anything happy in this book?" Not really. The land is still beautiful, but the economy is ruined, people are suffering, and industry is non-existant. The main commerce is selling something you have stollen from someone else. We talked about what happens when a people rely solely on aid from other countries to exist. Paul Theroux thinks that it is ruinous. I tend to agree but there are no easy answers. This is not the Africa of the tourist safaris, when you are whisked from airport by land rover to resort. It is not a pretty picture. We didn't even try to discuss what we could do, but we did wonder if the school items in canvas bags that our church sent to Sierra Leone last year ever got to the students, since theft and graft are not only common but a way of life.

I will think about what else can be done to help, while I enjoy the New England fall and count my blessings long before Thanksgiving actually gets here.

Enjoy the day.

Looks like Bush wins

I'm not going to use this blog to talk about politics. It is not a huge part of my life, politics, and I think there are good political blogs out there. But doesn't this statement sound pompous to you? UPDATE: "President Bush is convinced he has won re-election, but will hold off a formal victory declaration to give Democrat John Kerry "time to reflect" on the results." Is he a nose-up-in-the-air Texan or what?

Why would Kerry concede defeat now, when the results are not in? With 50% of the people against you, I wouldn't gloat, Mr. Bush. It was close. Really close. But in the end, the states that are Republican voted that way, and all the new young Democratic voters were not enough to swing it over. I think the country split into two. I am happy that right now I live in a Democratic state, because that is where I belong. I won't say that I am not disappointed at having President Bush for four more years, but I am not surprised.

I just had coffee in a little cafe near my office and sitting at the next table was Senator Charles Shannon, a Democrat. He is a really nice man and I said hello. He looked tired.

Voting and this and that

If you think that voting is not important, try to think how you would feel if the right to vote was taken away from you! My mother has been a member of a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church in Oklahoma for 50 years. As a woman, for many years she was not allowed to have a "vote" in church affairs. Then, finally they changed the rules and allowed women to vote. That lasted 10 years. Last year...they TOOK AWAY again the women's right to vote! They heard her opinions loud and clear when she stood up and talked to them about how wrong that is.

My feeling is that we are all on pins and needles, since this is going to be such a close election. I am very impatient to know the results, and hope that we don't have a long drawn out vote counting process again.

It has been an eventful time in Boston. Kerry is having a lunch of "chowdah" and oysters at the Union Oyster House in Boston today. Johnny Damon was on Letterman last night, and I was actually up to watch it. He pooh-poohed the idea that there was a gatorade cup of Jack Daniels passed around in the club house before the games as reported by Kevin Millar. He said that was not true. He said, "Before the biggest game of our lives, we wouldn't do that." Thank God for that. I choose to believe him.

See you on election night.

My newest high fashion item. 

You heard it here first!

I am sharing with all of you the next BIG fashion craze. For once, it is my turn to be on the cutting edge of fashion. Tie dye! Yep, you heard it here. If you are still wearing your old tie dyes from the 60's that is ok too. I gave most of mine away, but now I have just bought two new ones on Ebay. Who knows, round pink glasses may be next.

Moving on to Election Day

I am not sure that it helps to tell people how you are going to vote. I am going to vote for Kerry, but I would probably have trouble changing anyone's vote with my reasons. It will not be the first time that I have confronted a loved one in my own family with the idea that their vote is going to cancel out mine. It is not important. What is important is that we still love each other, we still get along as a family, and we still VOTE! I work in the non-profit sector, and most of my compatriots are going to vote for Kerry, but a lot of my friends are Republicans and are going to vote for Bush. They think Kerry is wishy washy and says whatever someone tells him to say. The Kerry voters think that Bush lied about Iraq, ruined our deplomacy for a hundred years, and got us into a war that was unnecessary and has killed 1200 American soldiers. Too many people have died because of this "war on terror".

I find it hard to believe that all the post-9/11 bluster about finding and killing our enemies has not resulted in the capture of Osama bin Laden. I cannot believe that he is still out there, televising propaganda. It is a different kind of war that we fight now, and troops are not the only important part. Intelligence can make or break us. Kerry says that he understands that, and Bush just says that we should not doubt him, we should not question him, and we should vote for him. But things are in a real mess. Everyone knows that. So, I will vote for Kerry.

Our soldiers are dying from pipe bombs hidden in abandoned cars. Our enemies are not afraid of American might, because they believe that they will go to heaven because of their sacrifice. American troops in WWII could not fathom the kamikaze pilots, they had never seen such a thing. My father fought in WWII, in the Pacific, late in the war, having been drafted when he was 40 years old, and told me about the Japanese committing suicide against us. He said that scared him most of all. Now we know the feeling.

So, I will vote for Kerry tomorrow, as I remember the Viet Nam war, and the anti-war rallies that I attended at that time, and I will vote for the candidate who seems to want to get out of this war too. When and how any President can do that, remains to be seen.

Happy Halloween night to all you goblins out there

My Halloween trip today was a nice visit this afternoon to the yarn store. 25% off for some rather bright red and blue for scarves (more scarves???) and some Christmas yarn, no details, shhh, it's a secret. It was fun playing bells at church this morning, but my cold meant I didn't really want to hang around, so we left right after church was over and came home. Someday this cold is going to leave me, I just know it.

The front door is open, the jack-o-lantern is lit, the candy is in the bowl, and we're ready for the trick or treaters. It is warm tonight, almost 60 degrees, so it is a great night for the kids to be out. Being at the end of a dead end street means that we don't get a lot of trick or treaters, but we are at the ready!

Mike and Michelle are home safe from New Orleans and it sounds like they had a great time! Woot! Woot!

Happy Halloween!! 

See you in the spring! 

The whole town went crazy 

Three million people came to say thank you. 

Thanks for the memories....

This is the last picture or article about the Red Sox. While riding in the duck parade, Pedro got hit on the head by a baseball today that someone threw from the bank of the river. No one can explain why it was thrown, much less who did it. But Pedro is fine, and the rally is over, and we still won the World Series. Curt Schilling showed up on crutches and will be operated on Wednesday, but we still won the World Series.

I should have named this blog Red Sox Fever, 90% Red Sox, 10% Life. Life is not normal when you have a World Series team in your town, and some really tense and important games to think about while you do your mundane every day chores. It has really been fun.

Today was cool and misty, but it did not rain out our parade. After it was over, it was hard to think about what to do next. It is going to be a long time before spring season and the next baseball game. Thanks to the Red Sox for a couple of weeks of stunningly good fun and exciting times. We swept 'em. No more tense nailbiting game watching. Now it is time for a long nap. Thanks to you all for reading about our own bunch of lovable idiots, and forgive me if I went a little overboard. I couldn't help it.

Back to my knitting.

Red Soxs parade goes to the Charles River. 

Jeter is playing golf today, This is better!

Manny's sign given to him by a fan at the Boston parade this morning. 

Red Sox nation on parade

PARADE UPDATES: Pitchers Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, and Tim Wakefield are waving to the crowd and holding signs saying "Idiots Rule". They are signing hats and other gear that fans are throwing to them. The roaring crowds along Boylston Street are huge, at least 10 to 12 deep. On board one duck boat are World Series MVP Manny Ramirez, DH David Ortiz, shortstop Orlando Cabrera, first baseman/outfielder Kevin Millar, and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. The boat behind them is carrying GM Theo Epstein and manager Terry Francona.

Update: Schilling reports....

The local news is reporting that Schilling says ''While I am a Bush supporter, and I did vote for him with an absentee ballot, speaking as I did the other day was wrong. While I hope to see him re-elected, it's not my place, nor the time for me to offer up my political opinions unsolicited,'' the e-mail read. He cancelled a public appearance with Bush in New Hampshire for today...saying that his doctor needed to look at his ankle. First things first, Curt.

The comment he made "vote Bush" sure took me back the other morning, and he had so many fans of all persuations, I just thought it was very bad form to actively campaign when he was being interviewed as a Red Sock. The parade is tomorrow and George has decided to go, and be a part of the two million people lining the streets of downtown Boston. I have decided I cannot go because of my cold/cough/misery that I am trying to recover from. I think I will sit home and knit a pair of Red Socks for Michael for Christmas instead. Good idea!

The weekend project