Category Archives: Blogging

Yuletide

Yule starts with the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. For many of us it is time to gather for holiday celebrations. We just celebrated Hanukkah last week with part of the family. The best gatherings are with family and close friends. We might enjoy some eggnog or mulled wine and special meals like roast turkey. My daughter wants to make something different, paella. I look forward to being together with my daughter and my son and his family. Have a cold this week and grateful for online shopping. My little grandson is sick and had to go into the hospital yesterday. He is doing better and should be home soon. It has been a tough year for many people with all the hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and wild fires. I hope everyone can be with their families and friends and have Happy Holidays!

Wassail pronounced like waffle but with /s/ sound can mean drinking to your health, like a special holiday punch, or caroling ( singing Christmas songs). Here’s to all of our good health and Happy New Year!

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt words for today are you’ll, Yule, Yul. Featured image of ‘Snowing Snow Lantern Red Little Girl Winter’ via Max Pixel.

Contrasts

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Ganges Chasma in the Valles Marineris System of Mars Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Soft sand,

hard rock,

dark blue,

light gray,

solid and striped.

Hot, windy, Smokey, fire, water, wood, ash, climate change. Waiting for winter, cold, clear, and rain.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Prompt word and theme for today ‘contrast/contrasting things.’

Cliquey Klatch

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The Ladies Club coffee klatch was very cliquish. Their group was limited to those with similar sensible outlooks and tastes in coffee, (regular or decaf), with or without non-dairy creamer. This year they got in the holiday spirit and splurged on the Peppermint Mocha Coffee Mate.®

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Today’s prompt is the word part “liqu” Featured image of Ladies Home Journal page via Internet Archive Book on Flickr, ‘Cup of Coffee’ by stafichukanatoly on Pixabay.com

Wild Fires

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” When you’re evacuating from a wild fire it’s hard to decide what to take with you.”

My ability to write provides a path for expression about my life experiences. I am often moved to write when my feelings about a thing run high. Maybe a part of being a writer is the need to chronicle your life.

I thought we had been lucky and avoided the fire season in our section of Southern California. But as it often happens, the fires have their own secret plans. We were evacuated from our home a little over 10 years ago in the middle of the night so this time we decided not to wait until the evacuation order to get packed. Experiencing an evacuation does that to you. You know it can come suddenly, with little warning, and you must go. There had been no evacuation orders yet but we were busy gathering a few mementos and family photos, our wedding album, videos of our kids growing up and my son’s bar mitzvah, a small photo album of my son’s wedding, a few precious notes from my daughter, our kid’s baby shoes…It’s hard to decide and remember what to take with you. My son and daughter in law had to pack up all the equipment in their car for my little baby grandson, just in case. It’s not just the fires but the threat of power outages. Some medical equipment he needs requires electricity. We talked about them coming to our house or her parents depending on who loses power. If all of us lose power they may have to go into West LA to other family. We can see the smoke in the air and hope the Santa Ana winds die out soon.

This post is for One Liner Wednesday hosted by Linda G Hill and the monthly post for the Insecure Writers Support Group, #IWSG , Co-Hosts: Julie Flanders, Shannon Lawrence, Fundy Blue, and Heather Gardner!

Can’t Cramp Her Style

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The Giphy is taken from the film ‘All About Eve‘ with Bette Davis. It is about a forty-year old actress who is being sabotaged by a younger rival. This role did not cramp her style at all. Isn’t she gorgeous and not old or over the hill except maybe by Hollywood standards.

Anne Baxter (L) and Bette Davis (R) Young Marilyn Monroe lower center

“Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Prompt word for today ‘cramp.’ Giphy via Giphy.com. Image of Anne Baxter and Bette Davis from rogerebert.com

Mothers And Daughters

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“See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there’s a reason. There has to be”
― Joyce Carol Oates

My mother in law was married on November 24, 1948. She did not know that her first daughter in law was being born a little over a week later. We did not meet each other for another 26 years. My future husband had talked me into driving down to Los Angeles with him after we had a big fight. She did not like me at first. He was her first-born and she was definitely not ready to relinquish him. I was the wrong religion. I would marry her son 3 years later. My mother in law had 4 sons and was used to a house full of males. It was a nice change to have me at the dinner table because I was appreciative of her cooking. She was my mother in law for forty years. She taught me how to make chicken soup. She helped me shop for my wedding gown and plan my wedding. I was her first daughter in law and I gave birth to her first grandchild, my son Scott. She first learned about being a mother in law with me. It was not always an easy relationship. Especially after my son was born and 4 years later my daughter, Kate. She had very strong opinions about many things including child rearing. I had my own ideas. As the years passed she became less critical and I became less sensitive. I suspected it might have been her experience with the next two daughter in-laws had taught her to be more diplomatic. Through it all, the holiday dinners, kid’s birthday parties, graduations, and major illnesses, my in-laws were always there. Both of my parents were gone and my children had only one set of grandparents, one grandmother. In her later years she developed dementia and gradually became less talkative. I think she still recognized me. She had often said she thought of me as the daughter she never had. My mother in law, Mary Lynn, passed away in the first hour of Thanksgiving day with most of her family around her. For a large part of my life she was the mother I never had.

One Liner Wednesday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Featured image is of the ‘Barbara Bush Rose’ via wikimedia.

Pen and Ink

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Do you remember fountain pens with the screw in ink cartridges? We used to have those when I was in grade school. We also had traditional fountain pens with the siphoning mechanism to suck up the ink out of an ink bottle. In older times there were ink wells in the student desks. Of course we had ball point pens too. But fountain pens seemed like more fun to use. Only sometimes they would leak and make ink stains on my middle finger. You could pick out the color of the ink, blue, blue-black, turquoise blue. Writing by hand with pen and paper is a lost art and my penmanship is not a good as it used to be. I do have a nice Montblanc fountain pen with a bottle of blue-black ink. You need to twist the barrel to siphon the ink into the pen. I’d like to start writing letters again.

Fountain pen ink cartridges (assorted) via wikimedia

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt word for today is “ink.” Featured image of ‘Fountain Pen’ by WolfBlur on Pixabay.com Fountain pen ink cartridges, ( assorted brands) by Pavel.satrapa on wikimedia.

Quality Food For All

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Trader Joe’s is a well-known and popular market in California and other parts of the US. Doug Rauch retired from Trader Joe’s after 33 years, 14 of them as president. He might have decided to enjoy his leisure time but he says he “failed at retirement.” It is good news for a poor area of Boston that he failed because he has succeeded in bringing quality foods to low-income people with his market the Daily Table.

“Since it opened two years ago, Daily Table has been a pioneer in its approach to food waste, food deserts, hunger, and obesity. It’s a nonprofit grocery store, selling healthy food at bargain prices.”-Christian Science Monitor

According to their website, Daily Table works to bring quality foods to people by working with “a large network of growers, supermarkets, manufacturers, and other suppliers who donate their excess, healthy food to us, or provide us with special buying opportunities.” Learn more about Daily Table here.

We Are The World Blogfest #WATWB is a monthly blog hop where we share the good news stories from around the world. The co-hosts this month are: Shilpa Garg, Inderpreet Uppal, Sylvia Stein, Susan Scott, Andrea Michaels and Damyanti Biswas . You can check out We Are The World Blogfest site to see the rules for participation.

Information and quotes on my post are from The Christian Science Monitor article by Kathy Shiels Tully “A former exec at Trader Joe’s grows another kind of grocery store,” and from dailytable.org. Featured image from the Daily Table website.

Thanksgiving Dinner

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“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”
― Erma Bombeck

In prior years I have prepared an entire traditional American Thanksgiving dinner by myself. In more recent times it is a team effort of my husband, daughter and me. Our son is married and usually does not get involved in our preparations. This year we will be preparing the stuffed turkey and fresh cranberry sauce to take over to my daughter-in-laws parent’s house. My husband is happy as long I am making the turkey and the stuffing. The quote about Thanksgiving dinners rings true to me. I can remember cooking all day having my senses overloaded with all the aromas, then we would sit down and gobble up everything in minutes. I would think to myself All that work and it is over so fast!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

One Liner Wednesday is hosted by Linda G Hill. Featured image of vintage Thanksgiving card via publicdomainpictures.net

Psst There’s A Squirrel In The Pyracantha

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Our Pyracantha tree and Heavenly Bamboo are filling up with berries. I can tell the berries are ripe when the birds and squirrels start eating them. It’s a bountiful crop this year. I spotted a squirrel munching on the Pyracantha berries and caught a photo before he/she scampered off. (Click on photos to enlarge). I can tell when the squirrels are in the tree, even before I see them, because the branches start shaking. They have been known to perform acrobatic stunts, like hanging by their feet upside down while eating. They are able to clean all the berries off the tree in a couple of weeks or less with the help of the birds. Psst, I think I see a branch shaking.

Large clusters of pyracantha berries

Squirrel munching on berries

Heavenly bamboo berries

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda G Hill. The worst for today is an attention getting sound and/or “psst.” Featured imaged ‘Gray Squirrel’ via wikimedia.