Thanksgiving 2024 with My Granddaughter

 

My grandson-in-law Clark and his mom Myra

A little addendum as promised on the day after…..

Thanksgiving, November 23, 2023

Since I don’t drive after dark anymore, my kind grandson-in-law picked me up around 11 on Thanksgiving morning with the little boys asleep in their carseats, but as soon as we started driving and Jingle Bells jangled through the car speakers, Russell began to sing along…in tune and everything. What a delight! 

My granddaughter Connie

We sped up I75 to High Springs to pick up their mama and then wiggled 

and waggled our way over to Keystone Heights, my Thanksgiving dinner destination.

Around thirty minutes later, we arrived at Rusty’s and Myra’s house on Crater Lake Circle. I asked if this was the name of the beautiful lake seen from their back porch, and Myra said it’s real name was Margie Lake. I’d love to know the story behind that. Lily pads hugged the western shoreline and Rusty told me he’d caught bass and bream as well as seeing a few small gators pop up now and then. The lake was considerably lower for the past few years than it had been with the community thinking it was due to a new phosphate mining company nearby who was draining the aquifer. A current replenishing attempt is in the works with water to be pumped from Black Creek to an aquifer recharge area. (Water agency inks contract to start building pipeline from Black Creek to Keystone Heights). Rusty was very up-to-date on all the information affecting his property.

The aroma as I entered their home was heaven scent (yes, that is spelled correctly). Myra, turns out, is an awesome cook. She had prepared every Thanksgiving side imaginable including corn pudding and slippery dumplings. I gorged! And gained a pound according to the response on this morning’s weigh-in! Oh well, it was worth every ounce. If only I hadn’t brought home that serving of Paula Dean’s Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake. I ate the whole thing before bed last night, and I know that is what did the damage but it was oh so good and my granddaughter made it.

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with loving kind-hearted people. As the afternoon chilled and dinner settled, we gathered outside around a crackling fire pit and watched the children test their athletic acumen on the trampoline and then hone their driving skills in a battery powered kid’s car. Oh, to have their energy again!

With darkness creeping in, the children were herded inside for bath time, so that Mommy (my granddaughter) would only need to put them to bed once they got back home. We drove through the dark with sleeping little ones back to my home in Gainesville…and suddenly….Thanksgiving 2023 was over, but I am trying to make it immortal by writing this down to read again and again and relive the day in the future.

Thanksgiving through the years

 

Thanksgiving has always been an important holiday to me and my family, celebrating every year with traditional foods and loved ones. There are many that I remember and many that I do not with a particular food taking the spotlight sometimes and etiquette blunders coming to mind at others. Most of my memories are of those Thanksgivings after Jim and I were married. One thing to count on with remembered holidays is that without fail emotions are involved.

My Aunt Sadie and my grandmom had a tradition of serving duck for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure where that came from, but duck was never high on my favorite food list. I can remember looking at the dark brown, glistening fowl with disdain and sorrow barely managing to take one bite. Those were the years I faked an upset stomach and satisfied my hunger with pumpkin and sweet potato pie. I felt guilty when Grandmom offered to make me some duck broth soup, her version of Thanksgiving chicken noodle, to which I had to reply, “No, thank you.”

And then there was the year Jim and my stepfather, Ken, went in together to buy rabbit dogs for hunting. We kept the cute little beagle type dogs at our home, and who could not fall in love with them, so active and loving and begging all the time. But no one was allowed to play with them, sadder and sadder, because that would supposedly ruin their hunting abilities. Autumn was always hunting season in Delaware. And those dogs were so productive, sniffing out rabbits and squirrels like nobody’s business. Have you ever seen a rabbit or squirrel skinned…not pretty. Of course, you can guess what we had for Thanksgiving dinner that year…at my mom’s house, not mine…fried squirrel and rabbit. Another year of the tummy ache. But I have to say that the dressing (not stuffing when you don’t have a bird) was pretty darn delicious. My mom was a great cook!

In the mid 80s after we had moved to Florida, Jim’s sister, Jean, and brother-in-law, Peter, flew down from Minnesota to visit us for Thanksgiving so we invited all the near-by relatives to our home for the yearly feast. That included Jim’s aunt and uncle, Jean and Russell, his brothers, Howard and Jack, and their families, about 20 of us altogether. Good thing we had a porch for the kids! I baked the normal turkey with stuffing in my mom’s old turkey roaster and all the usual sides of green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and homemade yeast rolls. I was not a connoisseur of gravy so Jean, the sister, took over that job and she turned out to be an expert at it. The episode that prompts this particular Thanksgiving memory is a little embarrassing and not one that I’m all that comfortable sharing. Peter is still alive but Jean passed away a few years ago. We had all just sat down to eat, and Peter dug in right away. The rest of us bowed our heads as the other Jean, Jim’s aunt, said a beautiful grace over our bountiful spread amid the sudden cessation of the noise of eating utensils. No one said anything and no one ever mentioned it later, but it remains as a fixture in my brain that I would like to forget. Peter and Jean had a wonderful time visiting us, I hope. We went to Disney and Peter attended a golf tournament in Tampa while the rest of us went to Busch Gardens. Jean was a feisty little sister and I remember her getting into a squabble with someone about cutting in line. Isn’t it funny the things our minds choose to remember?

After Jim passed away in 2012, his sister-in-law, Juanita (Jack, her husband passed away in 1987), always invites me to the family Thanksgiving dinner at her home in Bronson. She makes the turkey, stuffing, and ham and all the kids (six of them) bring the sides…except for the green beans. Nobody makes green beans like Juanita. Her secret is bacon and home-grown beans. Back when I ate meat, I filled up on green beans! Now that I don’t eat meat I hesitate about going, but we did have some wonderful meals at Juanita’s. She is a great cook and her children have learned well from her. I could always expect new desserts like hummingbird cake and no mundane pumpkin pie, always something special and different. And she had the largest and most beautiful Thanksgiving cactus ever…or maybe it was Christmas cactus. I never could tell the difference. She could grow anything she put her mind to.

Family is such a treasure at Thanksgiving. This year my daughter is in Scotland so she will miss the big feast here. She insists she will enjoy haggis and black pudding while I will travel with my granddaughter and family to her in-laws in Keystone Heights. It will be my first time at Rusty and Myra’s home and I am looking forward to it. An addendum to this Thanksgiving remembrance may be added later. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Do Strawberries Call You?

 

A Florida Strawberry Field

I would say strawberries and tomatoes are two of my very favorite foods, and in Florida we are very fortunate to be able to enjoy them year round, at least from the supermarket. Strawberries at Publix are now “fresh” from down south, and I have been exercising my right to take advantage of this, buying a container every week. I have them on cereal (overnight oats), cut up as desert with a healthy spray of whipped cream, and straight from the container as a snack. Nothing beats a ripe strawberry.

I spent the first five years of my life on a farm where fields of tomatoes grew, but if you are a farmer, you know tomatoes and strawberries cannot be planted together, some disease or other. That did not stop my grandma from having a strawberry patch at the back of the cow barn, and my mom and I visited it frequently when the berries were ripe, usually June in Maryland. I do not remember much about the care of berries back then. I was more in the eater category. I do remember seeing a black snake once as I moved back some leaves, and I high-tailed it out of there. But the memory of the juicy sweet berries overcame the fear of snakes and I was soon back at it. Grandma made biscuits everyday and all that was needed for shortcake was to add a little sugar to the mix, nothing better than sun-warmed berries over hot out-of-the cookstove biscuits with a little fresh cow’s milk poured over.

Two of my uncles, Johnny and Clarence, continued the strawberry-growing tradition after they moved away. Uncle Johnny always had a huge vegetable garden with marigolds planted around the perimeter. He said that kept away the bad bugs.

And then in another spot, he planted strawberries each year, mulching them with straw to keep them warm through the cold weather. Uncle Clarence did the same, but strawberries were his only crop. I guess you can take the farmer out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the farmer. Both uncles seemed happiest when their hands were in the dirt. Of course, they were my two favorite uncles.

I have never attempted to grow strawberries and probably never will, but I must agree with plant experts that the taste of store-bought and home-grown are miles apart. In Delaware where I lived for over thirty years, I always went strawberry picking in June if at all possible. Our home was close to u-picks, one time just across the road, so availability was never a problem. Barrett’s Farm and Fifer’s Groves and Vegetables were too easy to ignore the opportunity. We had apples and peaches straight from the trees and strawberries when the signs went up. I know we feel like in Florida we are so lucky to have fresh everything, but central and southern Delaware is farm country, and looking back, I was lucky there, too. Even though I do not have a green thumb, I never lacked fresh fruit and veggies.

When we moved to Florida in 1978, we searched for u-picks and found Brown’s and Roger’s Farms. Roger’s was our favorite and nearest strawberry place,and they are still growing them today. On Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/rogersfarmfla/), they advertise strawberries to pick with, hopefully, more to come. One thing we noticed when we moved here that was different from Delaware was the use of black plastic on the mounded strawberry rows, apparently a weed-deterrent and a ground warmer. I have to say I prefer straw and I will always swear that Delaware berries and tomatoes taste better…but when you’re in Paree…. Whether they are from Delaware or Florida, there is nothing like the smell of strawberries on your hands when you are capping and cutting them up.

When we moved here, we also looked for u-pick citrus groves and found one somewhere over near Hawthorne, but hard freezes quickly destroyed the trees within a couple of years after our move and we never found another. I cannot really remember exactly where it was located, but it was a novelty to us at the time, not being able to grow oranges in Delaware. I do remember it being around Christmas-time when we did our citrus picking. Tangerines were and are my favorites with navels coming in second.

I always tell myself that I am going to make some strawberry jam with the berries I buy, but I am afraid they never last that long. I have a super easy microwave refrigerator jam recipe that I have made a few times, and it is delicious, but now I am trying to watch the amount of sugar and salt I eat so jam is on the back burner.

I read that strawberries are native to North America so that may be why we love them so much. Formerly abundant in the wild, I have never encountered any in my lifetime. I am planning to keep an eye on Roger’s Farm Facebook page and if the weather permits, I will journey over there soon, probably not to pick but to buy already picked. Then maybe I can make some of the refrigerator jam. The strawberries are calling me. Here is the link to the YouTube strawberry jam video I use whenever I can stop myself from eating all the berries…super easy!

A Hot Saturday in a Cold Theater

 My daughter lives in Jacksonville and drives down to visit once or twice a month. It used to take almost two hours, but after the Starke bypass, she has whittled it down to almost an hour and one-half. Can you imagine a Starke bypass? I guess that’s only a big thing to someone who must drive through slow-moving traffic, red lights and fast food joint-infested Starke. I remember Starke primarily for its Strawberry Festival and the place where Jim and I stopped for a Wendy’s frosty on the way home from somewhere else. And I met some friends one time at a little restaurant as the half-way point between here and there. The friend’s daughter was temporarily living in Jacksonville for school. Those are my main memories of Starke. Erica is happy to avoid it by taking the bypass and forever sings its praise to me.

Saturday before last was one of Erica’s visiting days. Usually, when she comes, we end up going shopping and then, for a meal somewhere. But this Saturday she had a different idea…the movies. Now, I’m not a movie person. In fact, prior to this particular Saturday, my last visit to the silver screen was to see Clint Eastwood in Trouble With the Curve and that was a long time ago, 2013, I think. I went to the Regal Royal Park which is the closest theater to me. The movie had maybe thirty patrons, and I sat alone in the center of the last row before the steps, which put a slight crook in my neck from looking up at the screen. And before that, I had gone with Erica and granddaughter Mandy to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and that played a very good while ago. They always sit on the last row at the top of the steps. Yes, I was younger then.

But I am usually game for anything and when Erica suggested a movie, I thought, yes, something different and quickly agreed. Then, she blurted out the movie she wanted to see.

“Oh, great! Let’s go see Barbie!”

“Uh, are you sure?”

She looked so excited about it, how could I say no? And that’s how we ended up on a hot 98 degree Saturday afternoon, walking into the Royal Park Plaza theater. As I was looking around, I heard someone call my name and looked to see Elaine and her hubby on their way out. I met Elaine when she was Membership Coordinator for Writers Alliance of Gainesville several years before, and we had become friends. She asked what we were coming to see.

“Barbie,” I replied.

Her smiling expression morphed into an “are you nuts” look, but she quickly recovered and told me they had just seen The Patriot and had thought it was very good. Then she nodded toward her sweater and admitted it was frigid inside the theater, and we might want to carry a wrap so Erica hustled back to her car and got a warm throw for us if the need arose. I waved to Elaine as she rode by on her way out of the parking lot and gave her a thumbs up.

Back inside Erica sprung for our tickets and a big bucket of popcorn and off we went to the theater with the sign, “Barbie”. We were the first arrivals. Asking me about the steps, I gave another thumbs up and counted fourteen to the very top, as I had expected. It was a much better view, but I would need to be careful and hold onto the rail…both ways. Mission accomplished with less trouble than anticipated. Those steps are about half the height of normal ones. Seated and munching and looking around, we observed perhaps twenty to twenty-five more people come in to see Barbie, mostly young couples or families with youngish children. Barbie is rated PG13. There was one family that had very young children, and I noticed that they left after some explicit language in the movie referring to sexual parts. Duh, it is a PG13.

After what seemed like hours of previews and ads for the concession stand, the movie finally began. And let me say right here, that was the longest one hour and fifty-eight minutes I ever struggled through. No, I did not care for Barbie! If you enjoy staring into your cereal bowl in the morning, please, go see it. You won’t be disappointed. I have no idea where all the hoopla for it is coming from. I saw no plot, all kinds of mixed messages, lots of neon pink absurdity, and nothing that actually made me laugh. Sorry, Erica. P.S. She did not care for it either. But the popcorn was delicious! If you went to see it, and enjoyed it, just disregard all this drivel. 

Pet Scan

 7/29/23 - Pet Scan

As a foreword, I had a shoulder x-ray because of pain and that x-ray incidentally showed a nodule on my lung. Then, my rheumatologist ordered a CT scan which showed a clearer picture of the nodule indicating further investigation with a pet scan. With time on my hands, I wrote the following as I was waiting for the pet scan tracer material to go through my body.

Got to Invision at 1:30 - checked in by 1:47 and paid my $403 copay. In the Pet Scan Mobile unit (just like the BloodMobile) I had radioactive material inserted by 2 P.M. Time to wait is one hour.

I am to be a “couch potato”, no phone use allowed, but I continue to write all this down. The technician tested my blood sugar, 107. The weather was nice when I came in. Hot. In the office there was one lady ahead of me to get checked in for some other test and then two more families came in and were told to sit and wait.

And as I was waiting an hour for the “hot stuff” to run through my body, another lady came into the mobile unit with the tech for another scan of some kind…she had no tracer, apparently. Her hair was gray/white and in a sort of ponytail, looking about my age. He told her twenty minutes for her scan. They went left whereas I had come right.

The tech is all business, no joking except when I said I was stressed out a little and tended to overthink everything, he agreed and said he did the very same thing and wondered how to stop doing that. I told him I was doing Zentangles but he had no reply to that. He seemed in a big hurry.

There was a funny lift to get into the mobile unit, like an open-air elevator but bumpy. He did joke about that, and I said I did not expect to be going on a carnival ride today.

I am sitting in a recliner, legs up with a blanket over me and a pillow across my lap to rest my arms. My wrist aches a little (from this intense writing I think) and my tummy is growling…two boiled eggs and black coffee just before 8 A.M. There is a funny smell in here. Yesterday, I ate a high protein/low carb diet, and this morning I weighed 109.8, down from 110.4 pounds yesterday.

2:20 P.M. - In front of me there are many signs on the cabinets and a metal box-type thing. All the signs say, caution - radioactive materials, except for one that says disposal of hot waste only. Whoa!

2:26 P.M. - Written on a sink cabinet to my left in cursive with quotes is “Ozark River”. I got the IV in my right arm, inside crook of my elbow, the same place I always get blood work. Two umbrellas are laying on top of the sink cabinet…big ones. A white board sign to the right says Today’s team and May 1th and that’s all, nothing else written on it. Nice and cool in here.

2:32 P.M. - The door to this little “room” I am in  says it should remain closed during all procedures. It’s open. There are radiation symbols everywhere.

2:35 P.M. - The other lady just got finished. The tech asked her, “Do you feel lightheaded?” and then she and he went out the sliding metal door to the “elevator”. Now he is back and left the door open…..

Could not write anymore as things were happening so this is from memory….

The tech insisted I go back into the main office and use the bathroom before the scan. Down the elevator and in a few minutes back up the elevator and into the mobile unit, turning left this time instead of right.

I was taken to the next area and instructed to lie, centered, on the narrow table-type bed under the scanner. Had to remove my glasses and place my purse on a small table at the end. He covered me with a blanket, placed a wedge under my knees and put a pillow above my head on which I was told to place my arms. Lie still…around 20 minutes…started scan. Then, he stopped the scan and said we needed to wait a few more minutes because the turkey was not ready…what? It was 2:49 P.M.

After 5 or so more minutes he restarted the scanner and all went smoothly, finished in what seemed shorter than 20 minutes but he assured me it had been 20 minutes. No problems and we both were soon out the sliding door and on the lift back to civilization.

During the 20 minutes of the scan, it had poured rain and he walked me through the puddles to my truck, not leaving me until I was safely inside. I felt fine, no different than when I arrived. We wished each other a good day, said I could go and eat now and bade me take care. It was 3:27 P.M. Drove home in a misty rain through not-so-bad traffic.

The Noise

 I’m aware that lots of people lie in bed and play their entire life history like a full length movie while trying to sink into oblivion. This is so much better than counting sheep, but not especially conducive to the goal at hand. I was doing this very thing a few nights ago when an unusual noise kept bringing me back to wakeful clarity.  For a while, I was able to incorporate  the noise into my sleep-inducing dream, and then, as I floated to semi-consciousness, my brain contemplated things like rain falling through the gutter outside my bedroom window or the house creaking its woody bones, and finally, I imagined a very loud faucet drip. As my partly conscious mind ran out of creative solutions, I became more alert.

Too comfortable and a little lazy, I lay motionless in my warm spot, but I did make the effort to turn my head so both ears were at the ready. The noise actually sounded more like a thumping of two objects. It had not been very long since I had been up for one of my nightly bathroom visits, in the dark with only a nightlight, so I assured myself as I lay there that the noise had to be coming from the outside. I didn’t want to think that something may have been inside the bedroom or bathroom with me in the dark. That was too much to contemplate. But the thumping-like sound continued. 

I cleared my throat and attempted a loud cough, wondering if that would make the noise stop. If it did stop, I told myself that I would know without a doubt that it was being made by something inside the room. But the sound continued after my noisy croak. Did this really mean it was outside? Somehow my brain would not accept this easy solution. I could not convince my half-asleep self that it was nothing to worry about and that I should continue to try to snooze.

Reluctantly, I turned over, slid my feet to the floor and pushed myself up, now wide awake. I turned on the bedside lamp because a little voice inside my head was indicating a fight or flight situation might be in my near future, and I should be prepared with sufficient brightness to thwart any, or all, intruders. The thumps continued.

Looking around the bedroom, I tried to determine exactly where the noise was coming from, but as I have aged, my noise location perception has misled me many times. Noises will seem to be coming from one place when they are actually coming from the exact opposite direction. I stood and cautiously made my way to the bathroom since I saw nothing happening in the bedroom to contribute to the explanation of the thumping sound. As I neared the doorway, the noise abruptly ceased.

The little bedside lamp was not the brightest of lights, but I confidently moved on, scanning the floor and walls for anything that might explain the mystery sound. Just outside the open bathroom door, I saw it, sitting on the white tile, snugged up against the open door. In a droopy, druglike stance, it appeared to be sleeping. I deduced that the thumping sound must have been created by its feeble lunge against the door, thinking that could be the way out. It was a tree frog, one of those Cuban ones, I think, judging from its oversized toe pads and color. I had encountered a couple on my porch, and I was not happy to see this one inside my living space.

My fight or flight mode segued into “how do I get rid of this thing?” My thought process led me back to my previous lizard captures accomplished with an upside down bucket and a piece of cardboard to slide underneath the opening. But the bucket was in the garage and at this time of night, the garage was not an option. I thought of the large yogurt container holding my paint brushes and the heavy watercolor paper near it. I left the scene of the crime, hoping the little tree frog would remain immoble, and it did. It took seconds to plop the cuplike container over the invader’s body and slip the paper underneath.

As my heart did some thumping of its own, one little leg darted out, but I quickly moved my trap to capture all of the intruder’s  thumping parts. Keeping the watercolor paper secure, I rotated the cup 180 degrees and carefully made my way to my back porch where I opened the screen door and dumped the frog as though I was tossing out a cup of water.

One would think that after all this activity, sleep would evade me for hours, but surprisingly, after rinsing out my frog catcher and getting a drink of water (not in the same cup), I returned to bed and fell asleep immediately. In the morning it all seemed like a dream, but I knew better than that. I thought of what I had read recently about euthanizing the invasive Cuban tree frogs instead of returning them to the wild, but that just did not seem right. And looking for benzocaine in my medicine cabinet was not high on my list in the middle of the night. I will hope that the tree frogs stay outside where they belong, but I’ll keep my homemade frog catcher handy just in case another thumper mistakenly joins me inside and needs a free ride back to the wild.

Not the actual tree frog but very similar. I was not thinking of photos before I trapped it.

Literature at the Art Gallery

One of our local art galleries, Gainesville Fine Arts Association, collaborated with my group, the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, in their current exhibition titled "Communication". The objective was for the writers to write something that artisits would then transfer to a visual image, their interpretation of the writing. The reception was held on April 28th, 2023, and it was an amazing success with a large attendance, hardly room to move around. 

Click here to see my submission and interpretation.

Listen and Watch

 Something beautiful I found today....

Click here and listen and watch.

Waiting for my calendar...

Defend the Flock

I think my daughter and I have started a new tradition. Chinese on Christmas Day at Mr. Han's was great! We had salt and pepper shrimp and crispy orange eggplant and gobs of tea! Lots of people there but the noise was not a problem, no wait since we had a reservation, and the decor and atmosphere was lovely. It was so nice to be waited on for Christmas dinner. My daughter stayed the night and we "tried" to work a puzzle, only got the outside edges finished, a thousand pieces! What were we thinking?

The week between Christmas and New Year's vanished without being memorable as usual. Since it was extraordinarily cold here, the only trip out I made was to the library to return a book and renew my library card. They make you come to the library for that...had to "show" my driver's license.

It warmed up near the end of 2022 and I watched and listened as neighbors shot off fireworks on New Year's Eve. It made me think of Mopsy (my loved kitty who died on January 24, 2020). She always hid somewhere at the first boom never getting used to the loud noise. Fireworks are for kids.

I made a very tasty soup of veggies, black-eyed peas and collards on New Year's Day but never got around to taking down my Christmas tree. I looked at it a few times with intent but have enjoyed the twinkly lights so much this year, it has warranted a reprieve...soon though. I will not be one of those people who keep up their Christmas decorations. Some soup is left over for today, it was so good. January 1st is the only day I cook black-eyed peas and collards, not usually my favorite veggies.

I ordered a calendar from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Defend the Flock) way back in October and since it never came, I emailed them last week. Apparently, I checked the 2022 box (ugh). Happily it was been amended and they say it is "on the way". I'm keeping track with a little pocket calendar to be transcribed as soon as the real one comes.