Great Genes After Another Year

Mom turned 101 yrs old last week. I went to visit, but we didn't celebrate with a big party, as we did last year. I made chocolate cupcakes, so the leftovers could be frozen and frosted and parceled out over time. She said she was glad to see me, and asked how long I was staying, then declined to talk to me again for the remainder of my visit.

Since last year, my aunt, who had been in the independent living "tower" of her retirement community, has been moved into the care home there, because she can no longer stand and walk. All her furniture and most of her possessions beyond clothing have been put into storage. She has some books, some pictures, a rosary, and a few blankets. The home provides a television and a roommate, and Brother provided a cell phone.

My comments from last year still apply.

Great Genes!

Aunt Etta lived to the ripe old age of 101. Her niece, my Mom, has reached 100. In some ways, I'm proud of this remarkable achievement. Mom is strong, tenacious, and righteous. And ornery. She has a loyal circle of friends, who admittedly come around less often, now that she is bedridden and sleeps more. On the other hand, she is definitely dependent, and her care is expensive.

It's sobering to see how my family is aging. Cousins in my dad's generation are becoming frail and dependent. I'm sure every child generation eventually comes to this place, where the realities of aging land like a ton of cement as the aches, pains and stiffnesses begin to affect their own mobility and quality of life.

No one wants to be a burden; but in my case, the retirement age and the age at which I can begin to collect Social Security keep getting raised - I may actually need to work till I'm 90, as I have joked for years. In my youth, the retirement age was 55. Now it's approaching 70. I suppose that means I'll have a longer time to accumulate retirement savings, downsize the dwelling, and prepare for assisted living, but I feel like I'm chasing a rainbow.

Fledgling

Daughter has fledged. She'd been talking all summer about moving out by September, and by golly, she did! I am proud of her initiative and all the work she put into finding a roommate, finding an apartment, discussing budgets, and considering proximity to public transportation.

Seeing all her boxes staged in our dining room, and then being trucked out the door was sad, and this place seems bigger and emptier and lonelier now, even though she didn't spend a whole lot of time at home before the move.

Now, we'll see whether she puts the same effort into maintaining a good relationship with her roommate, who earns more than she does, and to turning her part-time job into a full-time one. I'm going to wait a month before officially considering myself an empty-nester.

A Little Night Music

I WAS planning to go to sleep, but as I turned out the lights and settled into bed, I heard a great chirping and whistling in the trees outside! I have no idea what kinds of birds sing in the dark. I know there are owls, but this jubilation sounds like songbirds at dawn. Perhaps they are singing souls home.

Marty's dad passed away tonight in Cleveland, from complications after a couple of bad falls. Marty flew up there this morning to visit with him and Ginny. Neither thought the end would come so quickly. The recommendation of hospice care came just a few days ago from the doctor.

In fact, Marty didn't get to see his dad before he died; he arrived after dinner and was told Irish was already asleep. So he and Ginny went to dinner, and very shortly after that, the hospital called. By the time they got to the hospital, he was already gone.

It must feel strange to lose the last parent; like being set adrift, and facing the fact that your generation is next.

Rain Makes Me Feel Crafty

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I got home after a wet and rainy walk from school to find that my mom had made some hot chocolate and bought me the McCall's Christmas Make-It Ideas magazine. OMG! I pored over all the exquisite things people had made: decorations, gifts, wrappings, food ... Ever since that afternoon, the onset of rainy weather has triggered an urge to make stuff.

Speaking of which, it's been raining steadily for the last few days. The rain is pinging in my chimney and sounding like temple bell wind chimes. It's a macaroni-and-cheese, hot chocolate kind of day. So it's just as well I'm about halfway through this year's Bernat Mystery Afghan Crochet-Along! I'm about 1 week behind, but I will make that up this weekend if it continues raining. I think it's going to be lovely!

First Find!

Geocaching is a sport that has been around for quite some time. Someone hides a container with a logbook and a trinket or two inside, publishes the latitude/longitude coordinates on the geocaching web site and waits for someone to find and log the discovery. 

I discovered geocaching a couple years ago and made some tentative - and unsuccessful - attempts to find nearby caches. It was humiliating to learn that there is a cache less than .2 mile from my front door, and even after several attempts, not be able to locate it! But TODAY, because of a last-minute change of plans, I decided to try once more. Today, the find was so ridiculously easy, I'm embarrassed to admit it took me three tries before succeeding. 

Next, I want to find the cache that is hidden outside the Central Library. I updated the geocaching app on my phone, and it's pretty good at showing me nearby caches and the most direct route to them. But once I'm there, solving the puzzle of locating the actual cache is the whole point of the exercise. The library cache has been found by others recently, so I know it's findable. I didn't see it on my first pass, but I'm going to keep looking.

My goal, in addition to the fun of exploring, is to learn enough about the activity to be able to hide one inside the library.  I've got the container already, plus the log and pencil. What I need to do next is write a description containing clues, and get the cataloger to create a label. We have no shortage of giveaway items, so the trick will be the creative hiding place. This should be a fun activity we can capitalize on to generate goodwill.

Nine Days To Christmas

At first I thought a Sunday Christmas was a good thing. now, I'm not so sure. I grew complacent, thinking we had LOTS of time, Now, it's nine days to Christmas, and we have yet to:

• Get our tree,
• Write the annual Christmas letter,
• Bake cookies and more cranberry bread,
• Mail cards.

Instead, I've been playing DragonVale and obsessing over breeding a Reindeer dragon, a Blue Fire dragon, and a Crystal dragon.

That means I have today, tomorrow, next Friday and Saturday to make Christmas cheery and bright in this house, because I'm working right up to next weekend! I do have gifts, still hidden in odd spots about the house and not yet wrapped, so I won't need to do the whole last-minute-shopping thing, thank goodness. 

Tomorrow, we will drive to Davis Ranch to get our tree. We'll need to decorate it right away, so that means clearing stuff away in the living room, vacuuming and excavating the tree stand before we hit the road. We also need to replace our tree topper, because the old one broke last year.  Once the tree is up, I'll feel a lot better, and can go to work on Sunday with a clear conscience.

I'm planning to do a bit of baking this year for gifts. Will have to get that done ASAP, if I decide to mail away some of it. I guess they don't call it a Christmas rush for nothing!

I Am Liking These Mom- 'n' Dad-Only Evenings!

It's been a few years since I've needed to monitor homework assignments, attend Back to School Night, solicit co-workers for school fund-raisers. Now that Daughter spends most of her time with friends and eats at home only occasionally, we've had to adjust the portions we cook, as well.

You'd think I'd be at a loose end or have an immaculate house, but actually, I'm enjoying a new opportunity to work on crafts, bake, and play Scrabble and DragonVale. So while Husband snoozes in the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV, the house remains comfortably cluttered as I work on my various projects.

 Christmas will be a scaled-back holiday for us, as we don't have a lot of discretionary cash this year. We're looking at other ways to provide gifts and let people know we're thinking of them. I've discovered a quick pattern for crocheted fingerless gloves, and they've been in demand from those who saw the pair I made for Daughter last winter. I made three additional pairs in the last three months, and last week, I bought yarn for a fifth pair. I won't be making anything as ambitious as the Afghan I  made last year, but will be aiming instead for smaller items in volume.

Cranberries are plentiful this year, and my freezer is full of them. I intend to bake several loaves of Cranberry Bread, and also Cranberry Cordial. Daughter is lobbying for cookies; I'd like to do another gingerbread house!

Cranberry chutney

I've been asked for this recipe three times in the last 24 hours, so I'm publishing it here. Once you try it, you may never be completely happy with ordinary cranberry sauce again! I got the recipe from my mother; although there are many cranberry chutney recipes on the web, none that I found even came close to this one.

Note: Since cranberries seem to come in 12 oz. bags now, instead of 1 lb. bags, you will need to do a little math.

The recipe:

1 lb. whole fresh or frozen cranberries
1 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Brown sugar, packed
1/2 c. Golden raisins (black ones work, too)
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. Ground ginger
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1 c. Water

Combine all in large pot. (I use a Dutch oven.) Simmer, uncovered, over medium heat, stirring, 15 minutes.

Add:
1 c. Chopped onion
1 c. Baking apples, peeled, cored and chopped. (I don't bother to peel them.)
1/2 c. Chopped celery

Stir to combine with cranberry mixture and simmer an additional 15 minutes. Cool and serve or refrigerate.

Happy holidays!

Big Easy is Not So Easy!

Spent the last week of June in New Orleans attending the American Library Association's annual conference. My hotel, the Intercontinental, was about a mile from the Morial convention center. The convention center is just over a mile long. I did a LOT of walking! I blogged my conference sessions at Annot8tions. This post is about the other things I did on the trip.

The first day, I walked to the convention center to register, and then strolled through the Riverwalk shopping mall. On a whim, I bought a ticket for the Battlefield Cruise on the Creole Queen stern-wheeler. Best idea of the day! We cruised 8 miles downriver to the Chalmette Battlefield, where the Battle of New Orleans took place in 1815. The operator identified historic buildings and sites along the way, and there was a little breeze to take the edge off the sweltering heat. We disembarked, crossed over the levee, and got a blow-by-blow from Howard, the park ranger. On the way back, just before we docked, ominous black clouds piled up across the river and treated us to a lightning show.

The next day, I participated in ALA's Libraries Build Communities program. It started with an offer 5 years ago to help New Orleans libraries recover from damage caused by Katrina, and proved to be very successful. Now the program has broadened to include restoration work on homes still needing rehabilitation. My group of nine librarians put in about 5 hours of work on Kevin's house - still uninhabitable after 5 years. His application finally rose to the top of the list in the St. Bernard Project, and we were the first step in beginning the rebuilding process. We cleared many trash bags of stuff from the inside, borrowed a weed-whacker from a neighbor and knocked down the overgrown front lawn, and removed 5 years worth of jungly brush from the back yard. We also painted the front of the house. Shortly before we quit for the day, Kevin and his son stopped by to thank us. I can't describe the feelings that ran through our ranks as we listened to him tell how his family has been coping for the last 5 years, and his dream of finally being able to return to his home.

The rest of the week was basically conference stuff.  I stayed two days after the conference ended to do some personal research about my mom's great grandfather, Noel Crosswell, but didn't find anything in the two libraries I visited.  I'll just have to go back for another visit, I guess.

Fighting with Photos

It should be easy. But it's not.

All I want to do is add a photo to the library's online calendar listing announcing a digital photography class I'm facilitating. The calendar's image handling ability is frustrating! I can't upload to the directory where the calendar resides, as directed; nor can the calendar apparently pull a photo from Picasa or Flickr. So now I'm placing the photo here, and trying again.  If this doesn't work, the listing is going up sans photo.

Update: Nope. This didn't work, either.
Update #2: Now it works! I think I didn't capture the entire URL the first time around. I'm happy now!

May Party in Kailua

On Saturday, May 21, all the Hawaii cousins and those visiting from California and Texas came for lunch at Mom's house in Kailua. Here's a slide show of photos that Jojo took of that occasion, and also some photos I took on the Arizona Memorial tour.



These photos are also posted on Shutterfly, which offers a few more options.

The Kid Will Be Away For a Week

Daughter is chaperoning Kennedy High School's Marine Corps JROTC class on a field trip to Twentynine Palms next week. Although she's almost never here anyway, that means Husband and I will temporarily be empty-nesters from Sunday through Friday with no one to worry about except ourselves. I anticipate peace and quiet and a lot fewer dishes in the sink!

I'll also be using this week to tidy up financial loose ends, now that the tax returns have been sent in. I might actually read those annuity statements and file those mutual fund annual reports.

And since the weather is finally warming up, I plan to spend tomorrow and Monday working outside, raking up the pine needles that have fallen in the ornamental strawberries in our back "yard" and setting out slug bait for the ti-leaf munchers.


At work, we're just winding up National Library Week, and the Library Director and her top managers "flash-mobbed" every one of our 28 branches on National Library Workers Day! The unannounced visits generated quite a buzz among staff and public, needless to say.

Spring Heating Benchmark Missed

I missed my Fall heating benchmark last November: it got cold early, and we had to turn the heat on before Thanksgiving. I missed my Spring benchmark this month: it is remaining cold, and I wasn't able to turn the heat off on Valentine's Day. Anything blooming outside will get creamed this weekend!

How cold is it? It's so cold, the National Weather Service has issued a Severe Weather - Hard Freeze watch through Sunday morning, and we are expecting lows in the mid-20s for the next couple of days, and highs in the 40s. There's even talk about snow in the Central Valley! Normals for this time of year are 40s and 60s. I'm going to have to bring in the Plumeria and cover the Meyer lemon.

We've already had an unrelated 5-hour power outage, which could affect the temperature in the apartment if it happens again. We've got lots of food and blankets, and the water pipe outside is insulated. I have a knitting project underway. I guess we're good for the weekend.

Pestilence and Wannabes

It's my turn this month to host our book discussion group, which has no name. We are reading Geraldine Brooks's "The Year of Wonders: a novel of the plague."

Coincidental with my reading of this uncomfortably graphic account of a year in a 17th century English village plagued with the Plague, was the introduction into our household of a nasty, vicious rhinovirus which has progressively felled us, one by one. First, Daughter got the fever, blahs and cough two weekends ago. Last weekend, Husband came down with it: fever, blahs and debilitating coughing. Two days ago, it was my turn: fever, blahs, and coughing. So on Superbowl Sunday, our domicile sounds like a pest-house, with three people coughing, blowing, retching, and throat-clearing.

Contrast this with the weather outside: sunny, 70s, and glorious! Little white daisies are blooming in the park; young people are strolling by in pairs or are riding their bikes through the green belt.

I went out for a few minutes today and sat in the sun. Felt good. Hope we get better soon.

Mystery Afghan - Solved!

I finished the Bernat Mystery Afghan I began in September in time to send it to Father-in-Law for Christmas. The beginning of my project doesn't give any clues as to the finished afghan AT ALL! And, like all the other crocheters, I had a problem with the corner squares - because they didn't work up square. Bernat invited us to submit photos of our completed projects, and you can see mine here and the other participants' afghans in Bernat's crochet-along Flickr set.

What I learned:

• When divided into weekly tasks, the finished project was easily achievable; having a goal of completion before Christmas helped, too.
• Even do-it-yourself afghans are not cheap.
• I really enjoyed working on this, and re-discovered my love of crochet after several years of knitting smaller projects.
• I now know how to work at the required gauge in order to make the squares the same size.
• One of the colors in my project yarns was much skinnier than the others, even though they were all Bernat's "Softee Chunky" - something to be aware of, if I use several colors of yarn in a future project.
• The other participants' comments were helpful in answering some of my questions. Their friendly and encouraging responses each week helped keep me on track. This is a great way to keep the momentum going when working on a big project.

Department Store Windows

When I was about 3 or 4 years old, my Gramma would take me "Downtown Honolulu" on the bus, and we would walk up and down the sidewalk looking at the animated Christmas displays in the store windows. It was so amazing to me to see Santa waving, elves ice-skating, reindeer noses blinking, Mrs. Santa baking cookies and Christmas tree lights twinkling.

This year, in Sacramento, some antique animated figures were reconditioned and are on display at 10th and K. They don't look much like the ones I remember, but the magic is still moving!

How Am I Thankful? Let Me Count the Ways.

We are employed at work we love, and we have enough to eat.

We have a comfortable place to live.

Our family is healthy. Mostly.

Our extended families still talk to us.

Next month, the car is paid for.

The hummingbirds like the sugar-water we provide.

We have thoughtful and supportive friends.

We live in the United States.

The weather is cold enough to warrant a crackling fire and fleece booties.

I have a husband and kids who love me and whom I love.

I am thankful for all this.

The Blustery Day

Toward the end of our stay in Copenhagen, the wind came up. Sometimes, it rained. While waiting for the airport shuttle, I saw this banner blowing about, and used the Fuji Finepix to capture a few seconds of the action.

I'm so glad I bought that coat in London! It was perfect for the weather!

Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

Copenhagen in October is dicey. The first two days were overcast and breezy. Daytime highs: upper 40s; nights: upper 30s. But today, it is beautiful! Blue skies, white clouds, and sunshine - lots of sunshine!

On my first day here, I took the Metro (light rail) to Kongens Nytorv station in the city of Copenhagen, and did the canal tour. Our guide pointed out the different islands, the important buildings, and included a brief history. That gave me some ideas about what to do the next day.

Just before catching the Metro back to the hotel, I decided to visit the House of Amber, a small shop with upscale amber jewelry and an amber museum on two floors upstairs. I knew amber is a resin, but had no idea how many different forms amber can take, nor how it is processed into jewelry! After visiting the free exhibit, I purchased a pair of earrings.

Yesterday, I took the Metro back to town and walked to the Amalienborg palace to watch the changing of the guard. There was also an exhibit there honoring Queen Ingrid, so I bought a ticket and walked through the museum. Stopped for lunch at the Els Restaurant, where I had a deliciously hearty potato soup with bacon, pesto and croutons, and a plate with bread, herring, and salmon plus some greens.

The waitress very helpfully gave me directions to my next stop: the Royal Library, also known as the Black Diamond. I was a little skeptical about the directions, but they were accurate, and I found not only the library with its peaceful garden, but also a medieval fair, where I bought a warbling bird whistle to bring home as a souvenir.

By that time, it was getting on 4 p.m., and I'd been on my feet, hobbling over cobblestones, for about 5 hours. I was really ready to head back to the hotel for dinner, a hot shower, and a soft featherbed.