Edna-isms, Part Eight

Just an aside--I came across this picture of my mother after her death as I was cleaning out her house.  I had never seen it before in my life and it has become one of my new favorite pictures of her.

Skip these if you're tiring of them but I'm on a roll.

1. "Colder than a mother-in-law's welcome!"  This was usually in reference to the weather.

2.  "Colder than Logan in July!"  This was also in reference to the weather and implying that Logan was cold all year long.

3.  "Do you like that better than this year's styles?"   Mom had on a new dress and that was my grandmother's joke about the new dress--totally delivered as a joke and taken as a joke.

4.  "Whozamaflinkit." When Mom couldn't remember someone's name offhand, she might call them this.

5.  "There's just one fly in the ointment."  This would be used when there was a catch in an otherwise good plan.

The State of the Blog Address

Art by PGB

Since I “hatched” my new blog post schedule a couple of months ago (Edna-isms Fridays; Design Wednesdays and Wassup Sundays), I have been pretty consistent with this newly invented schedule until this last Sunday.  I missed writing my “’wassup’-with-my-family-and/or-me” Sunday post.

Edna-isms Friday.  This school year my mother has been on my mind.  As I go through the senior year with L, I think back on my mother going through my senior year with me.  I wonder what my mother was thinking and feeling back then, and whether it would mirror what I am thinking and feeling now.  Because she is so much on my mind these days, the Edna-isms are a fun way to remember my mother. One thing that made my mother unique was her conversation. That was something I missed as she descended into dementia—before losing those little bits and pieces of herself, she had never been one to let silences stretch out. I have been collecting these Edna-isms for a while and I am still doing so. I have been strangely motivated to write the Edna-isms on the blog, maybe because I can do it incrementally. At the end of each year, I print out my blog into a booklet, so if I write the Edna-isms here, they will be preserved in that booklet. This has been a pet project for me, so please bear with me.

Design Wednesdays.  The Design Wednesdays are a nod to that design "bug" I always feel and had always hoped to do something about on my blog.  This is such a cheerful task--being on the lookout every single day for design items to include in the blog--that I hope others enjoy this, too.  

Wassup Sundays.  The Wassup Sundays are for me to record something that has been going on in my life or to record something that has been going on with other people in my life.  I assume this type of post is why most of my tiny handful of readers check in occasionally, so I will keep going with these kinds of posts.  However, these are the hardest posts to write--so much to write about, really, with all the "wassup" in my life, but so much that probably should NOT be written and left to float about in cyberspace. Ah well.

  

There are always other ideas floating around in my mind that would be good blog fodder but nothing that seems to merit a day of the week of its own.  So maybe I need to add a "what-not" day at some point and include a random idea every now and again.  Hmm.  Maybe I will.  Stay tuned.

Design Day: It's all about the table

Does this make you want to throw a party?  It certainly has that effect on me.  But I would have to have the tablecloth AND the harlequin ribbon (tablecloth available at grandinroad.com) and not just one or the other. Did I mention that red is my favorite color? Hmm, maybe I do "need" this tablecloth . . . .

Edna-isms, Part Seven

More sayings . . . .

1.  "Just us chickens."  My mother was an English teacher so I am sure this is some quote she picked up from somewhere and used it as a joke.  This was said in reply to, "Who's there?"

2.  "And that's a whole nother batch of cats."  My mother often explained that "nother" was not a word so this is some saying picked up from somewhere and used with a smile on her face.  This was like saying, "And that's another story!"

3. "Out/Off on a lark."  The Free Dictionary says this means doing something for fun.

4.  "The hired help."  When Mom came upon kids or people working, she would often say, "How's the hired help?"

5.  To describe someone who was acting crazy or to refer to herself after doing something crazy, Mom might say that person was, "crazy as a loon" or "batty."

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you had a happy day!  We're thankful for a lot here.  I've been reluctant to publicly itemize my thankfulness this year lest I seem to gloat over something that I have that someone else does not.  However, today, I want to go on record as saying that I am thankful for successfully making dinner rolls using my mother-in-law's recipe.  Last time I made them, my efforts seemed jinxed. This time, armed with a new bottle of yeast, I was successful.  It really boosts my cooking self esteem to finally have a scapegoat for the last time--that darned yeast!

Design Day

From about a dozen place settings at pier1.com, L and I voted this our favorite!  I think the carved wooden charger and the cute pumpkin covered bowl are the accents that really make this our fav.

Memories of Thanksgivings Past

Thanksgiving dinner has always meant extra people at the table and lots and lots of good food.  That table was my grandmother G's table that we had inherited along with its multitudinous leaves.  It could really be a big table when we needed it to be. The chairs were some matching chairs from my grandmother G (6 chairs?) and some not-matching chairs from my grandmother N (8 chairs).  Sometimes we even had to bring out the folding chairs. For Thanksgiving dinner, my job was to get out all the table's leaves, extend the table as far as we needed to accommodate everyone, arrange all the chairs around the table evenly (sometimes including the piano bench at one end of the table if we needed it to squeeze in a couple of kids), put on the table liner (which my mother insisted we use), then a nice table cloth.

Next, my job was to set the dining room table with our "best" (Lennox) dishes or "second best" dishes (a pinkish/purple floral patterned set), along with Mom's silverware (Reed and Barton) or the silver-plate service, along with some glass goblets. I also had to remember to set out things like salt and pepper shakers, napkins (usually Mom bought some Thanksgiving paper napkins), butter (well, probably margarine), salad dressing, jam Mom had made in the summer, and condiments like Mom's picked beets, "store-bought" olives and cranberry sauce, and different kids of pickles Mom had made--bread-and-butter pickles, sweet pickles, dill pickles, and one other kind of pickle I can recall but cannot name. I also had to set out whatever we were going to drink (milk always but also water and/or punch).

I had to be a kitchen helper and "fetch-it" for my mother.  For example, I would have to retrieve the serving plates from their different cupboards.  I peeled the carrots and, if they were on the menu, potatoes.

One of my jobs was to arrange the fruit center piece--one pineapple, bunches of grapes, bananas, oranges, and apples--that sat in the middle of the table on a circular tray.

I may not have done all this when I was a wee lassie but I did grow into this role of assistant.  I know it sounds a bit like an unintentional Cinderella story here.  Maybe my brother was chopping wood for the fire place that was kept burning day and night?  Maybe he was bringing in the newspaper?  Maybe my sister had to tidy up the rest of the house or was sent to borrow something from the neighbors that Mom might have forgotten?  Honestly, I do not remember a thing about what they were doing when I was doing all that other stuff and Mom was in the kitchen cooking.

Mom had all the cooking to do.  She would make the pies ahead of time: apple, pumpkin, cherry, and mincemeat. My dad liked the mincemeat pies and she would make and can the mincemeat filling in the summer.  The mincemeat always smelled great but you could not have paid me to eat any.  Some years she would make cream pies of some sort but not always. The apple and cherry filling were, in the earlier years, fillings she had made and canned.  Later, once the apple and cherry trees had died, she used commercially-canned apple, cherry and pumpkin filling.  She would serve ice cream with the pies (not homemade ice cream, in case you wondered!).  When it was time for the dessert, this was when Mom would claim that a person always had room for ice cream since it would just melt over everything else in your stomach.

She would make a couple of jello salads ahead of time.  The one most often requested by my brother was the Christmas ribbon jello salad.  My sister liked the green jello with pecans, cottage cheese and pineapple.  I liked orange jello with Mandarin oranges and crushed pineapple.  I cannot say that she made all three but her making two was not unheard of--perhaps it depended on how many people she was feeding.

She would cook a huge turkey.  She made her own bread dressing and included carrots, onions and celery in it.  She would save crusts of bread from her homemade bread, cut it up and bake it in little squares to use for the dressing.  She might have sometimes mixed it with some commercial package like Mrs. Cubbins (sp?)--half and half.  She ground up all the bread and the vegetables together.  Usually she would put some stuffing in the bird and some stuffing in a separate pan to cook.  She also made turkey gravy--with flour.

I loved the homemade rolls. Sigh. Once in a while, she might serve warmed up rolls she'd made earlier in the week when she made her bread.  Most of the time, she would try to have fresh rolls she had made that day.  My favorite rolls were the ones using Aunt Lucile's recipe and those were the ones she made in my teen and young adult years.  They were bread twists, shaped kind of like big bread sticks.  My mom excelled at making bread and rolls. Yum!

She would make a fruit salad (probably fruit cocktail and bananas and some kind of pudding mixture), and I would likely make a "lettuce" salad, including carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers out of our garden. She would cook string beans (from our garden that she'd canned in the fall--"always make sure they boil for ten minutes" she'd say when she would be heating them up to serve), corn that we'd cut off the cob and frozen in little baggies in the fall or corn that had been frozen on the cob, and she would cook some kind of dish with sweet potatoes. I must admit, she usually cut corners and used instant potato flakes for the mashed potatoes.  Sometimes we just had cubed potatoes that were boiled, and we mashed them ourselves before pouring the gravy on them.

And after all the food was eaten or put away in the refrigerator and the table was cleaned off, Mom insisted on hand washing her own china.  She said she did not want to feel bad if someone else broke a piece.  What a lot of work she went to for all of us to have a great Thanksgiving!

Probably most years we did not have guests (and the menu and particularly the quantity did not vary much with or without company!) and some years we did have guests, mostly extended family.  I think in my very young years, the G family (my father and his siblings) would still get together for Thanksgiving and I do remember one such year with many tables set up outside on the lawn at my grandmother's house (before we lived there).  However, my memories of Thanksgiving are of my parents and my siblings sitting down to eat at my grandmother G's table in our own house surrounded by all the bounty I have described.  I have very happy and fond memories of my "Thanksgivings Past" of my youth.

Edna-isms, Part Six

More of my mother's sayings . . . .

1. "Bathe and shave."  Instead of saying, "Go take a bath" or "I need to bathe," my mother would always say both of them--something like, "Make sure you bathe and shave" or "I'm going to bathe and shave and then we can go."

2.  "Spit bath" and "spit curls."  A spit bath, according to the dictionary, is a quick bath where you don't wash your hair and it takes about five minutes.  Mom sometimes used the expression like this but sometimes it implied that you should (as in an earlier post) "wash up and far as possible and down as far as possible" and it really wasn't a bath at all.  The spit curls were little curls around your face that you would curl the night before with a little water and hold the curl in place with a bobby pin until it dried.

3. "How 'bout them apples?"  The Urban Dictionary says this means, "What do you think about that?"

4.  "Hotter than Halifax!"  Mom had a lot of descriptive expressions and this was regarding the weather.  This one saw a lot of use because we live in a hot climate.

5.  "Scrubbed with gasoline."  The best example of the use of this expression is this.  A friend of mine had a passel of little children and they were all extremely clean, with hair slicked down firmly with hair goo, and wearing nice clothing and shoes.  To this my mother would have said, "They look like they've all been scrubbed with gasoline!"

Design Wednesday

We made these blocks at a Relief Society activity this month.

"Regrets? I've had a few . . . ."

"Regrets? I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention."  The lyrics of that Frank Sinatra song were running through my mind while L and I again visited a local campus--the same campus that I wrote about here.

L was invited to attend a "Distinguished Scholar" day at that campus and she really wanted to attend (maybe because two of her best buddies were attending?).

Yesterday, the college administration "wined and dined" high school scholars from around the state with the hopes of convincing those scholars to choose that particular university. I felt perhaps it would be a bit redundant since we had only just been there, but I am always L's 100% supporter. So we did attend.

Lo and behold, we had an even better day yesterday than the already good-enough day we had had a couple of weeks ago (despite rain, wind, and a dying umbrella that drew blood) and it did not feel redundant. Our day was capped off by a dinner and entertainment in what looked like a Hogwarts dining hall and then each scholar was presented with a certificate awarding scholastic achievement.

I have to say there are so many things to like about that university. I do not know if that is where L should go to college--whether it would be the right or best choice for her--but I am completely won over. Therein hangs the tale.

As with our earlier campus visit, I kept reflecting back on my own senior year of high school.

I received a full-tuition scholarship to this same school. I did not apply for the scholarship. It was handed to me at an end-of-the-year scholarship banquet and I was thoroughly surprised. I was not an excellent scholar like L--but I was a pretty good student and I was extremely involved in extra-curricular things. Maybe my mother had a hand in my receiving that scholarship, convincing the school counselor to go to bat for me, since my mother was so universally liked. Be that as it may have been, I had the scholarship and all of my plans set in place for going to that school. Then, somewhere around the end of August before I was to attend, I changed my mind and I went somewhere else for college. And never looked back . . . until now.

Around the time that I became an adult (some would argue as to the exact moment that occurred or whether it has occurred at all! :o), I have forced myself to absolutely spend no time on regrets, on "what-might-have-beens," on "if-onlys," as I have gone through my life. I have felt that if I went back in time to those same pivotal moments where I could have changed something, either doing or not doing something, AND NOT KNOWING THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW, I would have made exactly the same choices, because I have always been "carefull"--as in "full of care," serious, weighed down with thought--about trying to do the best I could do under any circumstances regardless of whether I actually did well or not, or whether things turned out well or not. For better or for worse, this philosophy of not entertaining regrets has continued with me for the past several decades and I have spent almost no time taking out my regrets and looking at them. Yes. "Regrets? I've had a few."

However, as I walked around that campus--twice--and heard all the glowing things about that campus--twice--and felt myself thoroughly converted to the idea of that school--twice, I have wondered: What would have happened if I had followed through on my long-ago plans to go there? How would my life have been different now but for that one decision?

I recall my decision very well--I felt I absolutely could not go there--period--that I absolutely had to go closer to home to the other school. No if, ands or buts. And, as it turned out, I did not even LIKE that other school I attended my freshman year and I quickly went to another school for my sophomore year. As it turned out, I did not like that school either, but decided I was the problem, not the schools, so I just stayed put and eventually received my bachelor's degree from that school.  Chances are that I would not have liked any school I attended.  Chances are that I would have changed schools after my freshman year no matter which school I attended first. Who knows?!

As I visited this school of my original choice, through my mind paraded so many experiences that were unique to the other schools I attended (three different schools, to be exact--one of them after college graduation, and one of those schools I attended two different times--and liked the second time, btw).

Hands down, I believe I chose for my freshman year the more easy-going and accepting set of roommates (whom I love to this day) in my choice to change schools--and both of those roommate sets were choices that I fell into and didn't orchestrate on my own.

Some experiences have been so pivotal to who and what I am now that I cannot imagine NOT having had those experiences--people, places, things. Would I have experienced the exact same kind of growth and in the same ways if I had gone to the school of my original choice? Would I even be the same person today? Close on the heels of those thoughts comes the thought of all the experiences I would have been happy to avoid. . . . Don't we all have those?!

As with all self-discussions and mental perusals of regrets, the answers to all those questions are unknowable, which is one of the main reasons I do not like to entertain my regrets. The real crux of the recent thoughts is this: Would things have been BETTER if I had gone to the school of my original choice? Would my life have been DIFFERENT in significant ways if I had not changed schools before attending this school to which I am now obviously converted?  Or did everything turn out exactly the way God wanted, despite my seemingly willy-nilly school choices?

Like it says in Alma 29:3--"But behold  I am a [person--as opposed to a God, perhaps], and do sin in my wish [to know the unknowable, ala "It's a Wonderful Life"]; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me."  So, once again, I go back to my life philosophy of putting regrets away.  Likely things turned out just the way I needed them to be for my personal growth, likely just the way God intended and "allotted" them to be, I would imagine.

Regrets, you say? I actually have had a few. But then again, they are just too, too few to mention . . . .

Law School Graduation.

Edna-isms, Part Five

 These are sayings of my mother's. . . . Edna-isms.

1.  Once, while I was in high school, my mother and I saw about five blond girls walking along the sidewalk.  My mother's comment was, "They're all dyed out of the same bottle."

2.   When we were leaving singly to go somewhere and meet up later, my mother would say, "See you on the ice!"  I always thought this was something an ice skating performer would say, but I do not know its origin.

3.  "Criminently!" The dictionary says this word is used as an expletive to express disbelief, disgust or dismay. Once again, a general purpose cuss word.  :o)

4.  "Glory be to Gideon!"  Mom would use this expression when something good happened--much like someone would use "Hallejuah!"

5.  "Gadzooks!"  The dictionary says this word is used to signify alarm.  Yep, another useful cuss word.

Design Day

I could use some bar stools like these!  They are for sale at grandinroad.com.

Just about like dementia . . . .

Sleep deprivation--one of about ten things that can make a person SEEM like he/she has dementia when he/she really doesn't--is my current nemesis.  Actually, studies have shown that prolonged sleep deprivation is actually linked to dementia, but I do not plan to be permanently sleep deprived, just temporarily and for a good cause.

Now that high school swim team practices have started, I wake up every weekday morning at 3:55 a.m. to help L get off to swim. On the days I work, I go back to bed and try to sleep until 5:55 a.m. but the quality of that sleep is very poor. Then, I WANT to go to sleep about 8 in the evenings but invariably I am kept from it until 10 or 11 p.m., primarily because the household (and the world at large) is not on the same schedule as I am. I can feel my brain go into hibernation mode about 8 pm but "the show must go on."  On days I do not work, I drive the carpool and wait while the kids practice. In the past, I've slept for about an hour and a half during the practice time, but this year, for some reason, I cannot seem to sleep. Plus, because during the past two weeks I have almost not been at home at all, chances for naps have been rare. (I had planned to draw a calendar and black out all the time I was gone from home the past two weeks to illustrate this point, but. . . . I was too busy to do that.)

The end of this week was particularly bad in the sleep deprivation department. On Thursday, I woke up at 3:55 a.m., was awake until about 1:30 a.m. (sorting the swim wear items into jumbo bags for each person's order), woke up at 3:55 a.m., was awake until about 10 or 10:30 p.m., woke at 5:00 a.m. (and immediately demanded of my almost sleeping husband, "What am I awake for now?!" because I couldn't remember).  I was able to take a two-hour nap in the afternoon and then went to bed about 10 p.m. last night. I am still tired today.

An article in the Deseret News, on Monday, October 29, 2012 (A5), about sleep deprivation and students stated: "We know that sleep deprivation can affect memory, creativity, verbal creativity and even things like judgment and motivation and being (engaged) in the classroom. . . . [W]hen you're sleepy, (being engaged) isn't going to happen."  This is all true.

The "engagement" issue happens regularly--I'll think of something I should do or would ordinarily want to do, and then think, "Oh well."

I find that when I'm tired, I talk a lot more (I've spent twenty-two years trying to be a quiet person like my husband's family--which hasn't really worked entirely anyway but this blows it all to heck).  I find that when I am overly tired, I don't really have a "governor" that tells me when to shut up or tells me what to avoid saying.  I already have what I call the ADHD "blurts" where I am pretty forthright and call it like I see it, and severe sleep deprivation just ramps that personality trait up.

I also find I cannot reason things through, so I make a lot of dumb errors--such as making errors at work. Luckily, errors in the library are not of the same caliber of errors as those errors in the law office or court room. I tried to drive to our practice pool instead of the swim meet pool on Saturday.  One morning, I tried to drive away with one girl just standing by the car--trying to open the van door when I thought she was closing it.  No harm, no foul--I caught myself in time to stop (I'm already known for driving away before they're fully IN the van, so this was a new low). I have called some people by the wrong names--repeatedly.  For example, I called Zach "Josh" two times inside of about a five-minute time period. I even called my children the wrong names--not sibling names as is common for mothers to do but random names.  I could not order my food and talk with my friend at the same time.  I have forgotten some things I had put on my calendar.

I can't come up with things when I'm put on the spot. I could not solve a problem with a particularly ornery person until I had had a few hours to sort things through (I did keep from blowing my stack, though). Over all, I find that I am not very productive, creative, or "engaged." I have trouble being motivated.  My judgment is strained.

For now, my main goal is just to keep going.  I expect to continue on this way--not expecting a whole lot of myself--until swim ends about mid-February.  

If I had not been a mother before I was a swim team carpool mother, I would not be able to do this.  Because I was a mother first, I know I can keep going, regardless of sleep or illness or dark of night or temporary derangement of mind.  In other words, I "keep going," but I am not very high functioning while I "keep going." So bear with me (and I'll try to bear with me, too).

Edna-isms, Part Four

 Another installment of Edna-isms!

1. "Between the devil and the deep blue sea."  This means to be caught between two equally unpleasant situations.  This is probably a well-known phrase but also something my mother would use.

2.  "The ice cream just melts over everything else in your stomach."  This was usually said after Sunday dinner or Thanksgiving dinner when you didn't feel you could fit another thing in your stomach and she'd point out ice cream's quality to fit into the cracks.

3.  "It's OK.  We're just renters."  When my mother was teaching junior high school, she returned to her room one day to find a young man jumping from desk to desk around the room.  She admonished him, "Is this something you would do at home?!"  He replied, "Yes."  When she didn't believe him, he explained, "It's OK.  We're just renters!"

4. "Coom coom."  I don't know how to spell this but Mom would say this sometimes in place of "come, come."  I also assumed it had Danish origins since my grandfather N had Danish-speaking parents but I don't really know.

5.  "Little Boy Blue,"  "Little Tom Tinker," or "good old What's-His-Name."  When Mom couldn't remember someone's name, she would refer to him with some silly name like this. (To refer to two people whose names should couldn't immediately remember, she might have referred to them as, "Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee."