24 Years, 364 days

Tomorrow is our 25th wedding anniversary.  TWENTY-FIVE years.  Twenty FIVE years.  However I say it, it sounds like a long time, and yet it went by in a blink.

I've been thinking about what 25 years ago today was like.  The day before the wedding.  My usual calm exterior belies my inner turmoil, today as well as then.  I don't exactly stress about things, but I do get very wrapped up in details.

The rellies were all arriving that day, and the next morning.  Making sure that everyone got to their appropriate quarters was important.  Trying to iron my wedding dress without leaving any water spots.....  painting my nails to perfection.....  going over (once again) the details with the florist, the caterer, the lady who made the wedding cake, the hall where the reception was to be held, counting bottles of champagne...... 

Just when I thought I had everything down just right,  I sliced one of my fingernails (which I had been carefully nurturing to 10 perfect nails) with a big kitchen knife.  OF COURSE it was the nail on my wedding-ring finger!!  So I got my first professional manicure, and the lady tried to repair the damage.  You can see this odd acrylic bulge in my nail in that lovely quaint photo of our two be-ringed hands after the wedding.  :-)

My beloved uncle was going to play the wedding march for me on his violin-zither.  I don't know if this instrument is peculiar to Holland?  It has violin strings on the right side, which you play with a bow, and the strings of zither on the left, which you pluck with a kind of pick (I think it's called a plectrum?)  (I should google that.).  Anyway, it makes for a lovely, soft, chamber-music kind of feel and was a beautiful addition to the ceremony. 

It occurred to me more than once that day that it was my last day as a single woman.  My soon-to-be father-in-law had made it plain already that he did not want his son to marry me.  That concerned me.  That quality of forever I was signing up for was pretty intimidating.  The desire to have everything go off without mistake was a worry.   I was even worried about the priest who was going to perform the ceremony.  That kind man had a very strong French-Canadian accent and I worried whether my darling would be able to understand him.

To balance my worry wart, detail-oriented side were the things I was sure of.  I knew that I loved this man, and that he was a man of honor and integrity and tenderness.  I knew that my family supported us 100%, even if his didn't.  And I knew myself well enough to know that I was a good judge of character and had the tools I needed to be a good wife.  I had my Grandma's sage advice to fall back on, and the example of my parent's successful loving marriage.  I had faith in my man and in myself and our love.

The day of the wedding dawned cold and dreary.  I got up early and went to the beauty salon.  Maybe I shouldn't have.  My hair was naturally a medium ash-blonde, and the stylist colored it a "warmer" color to go with my "warm" skin and champagne gown.  It came out a flat brown, which she then curled up so tight that it would take a mule team to pull a brush through it.  Good thing I had a veil to wear. 

The room for the ceremony was lovely.  Candelabras graced the aisle and flanked both sides of the alter.  Sonia roses and peach gladiolas were lovely against the backdrop, and the backdrop was lovely against the elk antlers which pointed skyward from behind the arch.  (God was trying to tell me something by that, but I was too nervous to get the message.)

My dear Uncle Henk played the wedding march and my dad, handsome in a warm brown tuxedo, held out his arm to escort me down the aisle.  My sister, the maid of honor, walked ahead of me, beautiful as she always is, and the smiling faces of all our loved ones greeted me from the seats on either side.  My Mom smiled at me and my Grandma squeezed up both her eyes in a gesture that we both knew meant, "I love you."

And there he was.  My dearest.  He was so trim and handsome, as he still is.  I looked into his cool blue eyes when I finally reached his side.  He was at least as nervous as I was, but he was my rock that day and every other day after.

I'm still not sure if he knew what the priest said that day, but he got the vows right and sounded like he meant them.  And for the last 25 years (and the next 50 years, I hope!) he has been acting like he meant those powerful words of love and commitment.

The wedding and reception came off without a single mistake.  There was just enough misbehavior at the reception to give us something to laugh about, and just enough family drama to make us normal.  My strong, handsome husband carried me across the snow that had fallen and we went away on a fun honeymoon.  All in all, it was a lovely start to a life of joy and blessings. 

So what was I worried about?

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Favorite Things

One of my favorite bloggers occasionally posts about her favorite things in a particular category.  So I'm stealing her idea and sharing some of my faves.  Please note that none of these companies give a rat's patootie that they make a favorite thing for me.  Don't think of it as some kind of ad....just sharing. :-)

You already know about my love affair with my Kitchenaid mixer.  My old love is a clean, white little powerhouse.  The one you see here was a gift from the sweet hubs, for me to take to our mountain cabin.  Is that man the best or WHAT???








I really like this product from Olay.  Takes off the mascara quickly and cleans deeply without making my skin dry or irritated. 

Hatch, in New Mexico, grows amazing green chilis.  One of my favorite things is the smell of these roasting on the barbie.  Yeah, baby!

What was my life before the Magic Eraser?  Takes hard water spots off like nobody's business.  And trust me, we have HaAaArddd water!

I admit I'm a pickles and olives kind of girl.  I'll choose a Marzetti's Garlic Stuffed Olive Marinated in California Chardonnay over a chocolate truffle ANYTIME.  They also make the best marinated artichoke hearts and  pickled cauliflower and pickled brussel sprouts and.....   :D

Quite simply, the best foundation I have ever found.  True color, light coverage, no zits.  Cover Girl Mineral foundation. 

So, I like salty and sour foods and sweet wine.  Is that a little odd?  I don't know.  But I do know that this chillable Cabernet is a wonderful choice for a sweet wine lover.  Bright and cheerful inside as it is on the bottle.

Ah.  Salt and Pepper Calamari from PF Changs.  No further explanation required.

My favorite "fast food".  The Italian Special from Cousin's subs.  We have limited fast food choices in my small town.  This sub (I prefer it on Parmesan Asiago bread) is better than any burger-and-fry combo out there.  Go Cousins!!








What is YOUR favorite?

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Simplicity at its Finest

I live a very simple life in many ways.  It's rather more complicated than I'd like it to be, but compared to many people, my life is simple.  I have a continental heritage that was tempered with a rural upbringing.  Mom taught me how to cook, bake, sew, mend, clean, set a table, mother, discipline and (to some degree) educate.  Dad taught me how to pray, shoot, pluck, gut, shovel and split kindling.  The sweet hubs taught me how to hunt, fish, um....  love!, cuss and stack firewood, which I still do not do to his satisfaction LOL.  My various jobs have taught me about customer service, how to cook eggs, plumbing, insurance, prioritizing and technology.  My children taught me about love, laughter, patience, wonder and frustration.  My Holland Grandma taught me about perseverance, wisdom, resiliency, joy and oliebollen.  My favorite Auntie taught me about true Christian charity, putting on a brave face and unconditional support.

I drive a fun, fast, small, efficient car and live in a rather small house.  I've only been married one time, to a guy I intend to stay married to.  If he keeps me.  I usually shop at just one grocery store, and when I go there, I buy almost no convenience food.  If you find a box of hamburger helper in the pantry, you're not in my house.  I don't go to the day spa, I paint my own nails and I usually cut my own hair (I can hear you gasping in horror.) and the sweet hubs' hair, too.   I make some of my own clothes, some of my own pasta, some of my own bread, all of my own gravy.  I do my own cleaning.  If I hired someone to clean my house would surely look better, but it's my own mess.

I went to Starbucks once and I didn't like it.  (I'm sorry, Holly.  Please still be my friend?)  I don't like horror movies;  who needs those pictures in their head?  I read the same books over and over.... and over.  I guess I'm as predictable as the sunrise.  Is that a good thing?  I'm not sure. 

It's a simple life.  I drink my home-perked coffee the same way every day, I try to pry my sleepy teen out of his odd-teenage-funk-smelling bed with the same words and I leave for work at the same time. 

I think I need to change it up.

A New Year

Another New Year has arrived. 

What will the new year hold?  My horoscope for weeks and weeks has been telling me that a drastic change is coming.  If I believed in horoscopes, I'd hope that means that I'll finish my book and someone will want to publish it...and you'll see it in the Barnes and Noble, where you'll have to put your name on a waiting list to buy it because it will be so popular!  Yeah, I know.  Dream BIG!

I like my small life in my small town!  I don't want any drastic changes.  Change is a scary word sometimes.  There are changes we expect and can plan for.  I can handle those.  NOT crazy about the surprise changes, unless they mean falling into money in some happy way.  Lottery people?  Are you listening??

We have a few things planned:  our baby turns 18 and graduates from high school this spring.  Our 25th anniversary is next month.  Strange.  I don't feel any different, but time has other ideas.  It is entirely possible that we will be empty-nesters before this year is out.  Just me and him, alone again.  After we get done running around the house naked, what will we do?  Take up golf?  What???  Oh, I know:  we'll get to know each other all over again.  (see "running around the house naked")

That won't be such a big change, except for the naked part, because our son is such a social creature.  He's out a lot anyway.  He works at a sandwich shop, so he is seldom home for dinner, which I seldom cook now.  Our grocery bill is tiny compared to what it was just a few years ago.  Our car insurance, on the other hand.....

Ah, yes.  A new year.  New experiences.  New lessons to learn.  New hopes, new dreams, new problems and new solutions.

On your mark!  Get set!  GO!!!

I might be a redneck.

I don't know if this is evidence that I've been brainwashed, or this is actually as a cool as I think it is.

The sweet hubs is a finder.  He finds things.  Anywhere, anytime, all sorts of things.  It adds a dimension of surprise to our lives.  One thing he finds a lot of are shed antlers.  For you city folks, antlered animals drop their antlers (late winter to early spring in our area), and grow a new set every year.  It's pretty amazing.  People like my sweet hubs go out into the places where the elk are in that season, and look for the shed antlers. 

And sometimes, if your sweet hubs is creative.... you build your Christmas tree out of them.  The picture does not do it justice, I promise.

Merry Christmas!

A BIG Deal

Something happened to a friend last week that I've been wanting to write about.  It's a big deal.  I mean a BIG FREAKIN DEAL!

My dear friend Tina (the artist I wrote about previously) sold her first painting.  Maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal, but I think it is.

Your friends and family can tell you a bazillion times how great you're doing.  You can love the work yourself, and feel good about it.  But then....someone wants to BUY it.  It isn't about the money (even though money is mighty nice). 

It's a whole new level of affirmation for anyone who works at something subjective.  It's a little like the difference between your friend telling you that your new 'do looks great, and having a perfect stranger ask you for the name and number of your hair stylist.  Do you ever really know if your friends are protecting your feelings, or if they really like the new look?

Take that times about a million, and you have the feeling of someone thinking enough of your art (whatever form of art you do) to pay for it.

There's another side to it that I think maybe applies most specifically to artists who work on decorative art.  Not so much for musicians and writers because the people who commit to purchasing their work don't necessarily show that off.  But if you buy a painting, you hang it up in your house for other people to see.  You are supporting that artist in a public kind of way.  If you love polkas and buy the latest CD by Hans Frickenschmacker and the Lederhosen, you probably listen to it alone, and shove the cd cover behind your collection of Hoobastank and Twisted Sister.  Hang a painting on your wall and you tell the world, "Look!  I love this!  Share it with me!"

All kinds of art touch each of us in some way.  My friend found a way to capture something on canvas that touches people.  You look at her work and you see the light of the African savannah.  Look into the eyes of the mountain lion she brought to life....a deep, primal chord is struck.  What do you feel?  A mesmerizing intrigue, tinged with an ancient, buried fear?  What else does that, except art?  It reaches into your atavistic self and shows you all that you are.  If you look.

I think when you buy someone's work of art, you are telling them in a profound way that you looked.  And you saw.

Where Have You Been?

Isn't it amazing how quickly your life can become a runaway train?

My final project for my class is done and posted.  The final exam is tomorrow and I should be studying.  But I'm not, am I?  Truly, I don't need the grade, I'm not trying to become a bachelor of anything.  I was after the knowledge so the grade shouldn't matter.  But dammit, I still want that "A"!  Funny thing about knowledge:  the more you learn, the more you discover how much more there is to learn.  God probably had it planned that way, so we wouldn't wither on the vine as we age?

The company Christmas parties are all done, and the Christmas shopping has not yet begun.  (That was a short poem.)

I made one batch of holiday cookies, because the sweet hubs is watching his triglycerides and our only child at home is more of a pretzel guy than a cookie guy.  I'm glad he inherited SOMETHING from me!

I usually do a little family newsletter at Christmas, but so far this year I haven't had time.  Hopefully everyone will forgive me. 

Ah...if only I could take my present desire to learn and work ethic, and give them to the teenager with the quick brain that I used to be.  Is that possible?

My darling soldier boy is safely at his new post in Texas, which is an easy drive from home.  Maybe we'll get to see him more often now?

I'm going to sit on my butt for a while tonight, for the first time since..............I don't know when!

Bad Moods and All

It's an interesting phenomena...the way one person's bad mood can snowball into an entire group feeling edgy and irritable and cranky as a teething baby in a soggy diaper.

So, I'm going to focus my mind on all the good, cheerful, upbeat things I can think of.

• There's a bottle of Moscato chilling in my fridge right this VERY second.
• Soldier boy is home for a few days, on his way to a new duty station that is much closer than his previous assignment. 
• There's a bottle of ...  wait... did I say that already?
• It feels like real autumn out there and I love that.
• I have about 3 more meals to make out of the left over turkey, and then I can move on.  This always feels like a feat accomplished to me--when we finally run out of turkey.
• It's the end of the day.  A long day.  Goodnight. 

Adventures in Cooking

If you ever eat at my house, I would prefer you stop reading this blog right now.  You'd be too scared to ever eat my cooking again.  I mean it!  Stop reading!

Dammit.  I knew you wouldn't listen.

So, I'm really a pretty good cook.  I mean, I haven't actually killed anyone with my cooking yet, if you don't count the ones who had to be resuscitated by the paramedics.  But I have had a few notable failures, or at least unexpected results, and I feel like sharing.  Or shaming myself.  Or something.

The first one started when I invited my mother-in-law to dinner just a couple of months after I married her son.  I have since figured out that there should be a law that a newlywed is forbidden from feeding her in-laws until, say, 20 years have passed.  Just to take the pressure off, you know?  Congress?  Are you listening?  Well, anywho.  I don't remember what the dinner I served was, but I'll never forget the dessert.  I was going to make blueberry shortcake.  Susie Homemaker that I was, I used baking soda instead of the baking powder that the shortcake recipe called for, which I had run out of. 

My lovely little shortcakes, when topped with blueberries and whipped cream, had a metallic taste identical  to Arm and Hammer toothpaste.  I didn't know they made that toothpaste with butter, vanilla and baking soda, but now I know.  Blech.  It was horrible.  Mother-in-law was a good sport about it.  Or at least, she had steeled her nerves with enough whiskey that she didn't notice.  I'm not sure which.  I plan to steel MY nerves with whiskey before my first dinner with my son's wife.  If my sons ever get married.  But that's another question.

And then one day a dear friend and neighbor had given me a recipe for Tamale Casserole.  It had a cornbread topping and used a lot of ground meat, which made it a great recipe for me....  if you've ever had an elk or two in the freezer, you'll understand.  It's staggering how many packages of hamburger come from one elk.

So I grabbed a package of ground elk meat and browned it.  Not really thinking about the fact that this was an animal that we'd added some beef fat to the grinding, since elk is SO lean.  Yes, I'm trying to tell you without really admitting it that I didn't drain the browned meat.  I mixed in the rest of the casserole ingredients and went to make the cornbread topping. 

I only had 1/4 cup of yellow cornmeal.  But I had a whole bag of blue cornmeal.  So I mixed them.  My high school art and first-grade science classes eluded for a moment and I forgot my color wheel.  When I took this magnificent creation out of the oven, the greasy meat had boiled up through the tomatoes in the casserole, and mixed with cornbread batter on top. 

The thing looked like some kind of greenish, purplish dog puke.  (We have a very pukey dog, so I know about dog puke.)  It smelled good, and probably tasted alright, but none of us had the guts to try it.  So the pukey dog got it and we had Lucky Charms for dinner.  I have strong suspicion that when my pukey dog threw that casserole up, it was pretty nearly unchanged.

But my favorite....all-time favorite...was a sort of a camping fiasco.  The dear hubs and a good buddy were going way out to the middle of nowhere to camp and hunt.  I'm such a sweet wife, I really am.  I made a batch of Chicken Chili Verde for them to eat in camp.  It's good camping food, because you can heat it up quickly when the hunting day is over, which is late because of course you have to hunt until dark. It keeps well, and is very satisfying with the beer you are required to drink around the campfire. 

This was a real country food too, because we raised the chickens I threw in the pot, and grew the onions and garlic.  While the chicken simmered, I went to the garden and picked the green chilis.  Poured myself a nice little glass of wine, fired up the barbecue and roasted the chilis.

What I didn't do was taste the green chilis after they were roasted.  I skinned them and diced them and threw them in the pot with my lovely chicken meat and onions and garlic and all that good stuff.

The Sweet Hubs came home from that camping trip and said that the next time he brought meals from home to eat in camp, he was going to make sure to bring a bucket.  A bucket?

Yeah, he said he would bring a bucket and fill it with water.... to poop in because he was afraid that pooping in a hole in the ground the woods........ was going to start a forest fire.

I guess the chilis were a little hot.

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Forgive My Ranting

Pardon me, but I just have to rant a while.

I am sick to pieces of hearing about Jon and Kate.  Pardon me for thinking they were colossal idiots to put their lives and marriage on television and think everything would be fine.  A marriage without privacy is no marriage at all.  I don't care about Paris, Lindsey, Brittney or Nicole.  I don't care about the balloon boy's parents.  I think we need to just let Michael rest.  In peace.  Forever.  I don't give a rat's patootie about who in Hollywood is dating whom.  I don't even care who in my town is dating whom, unless it's my husband dating someone.  Then I'd care.

You better duck, folks, 'cuz here it comes....

This is all OUR fault.  Every time we click on a story about these pathetic human beings, a little hit counter somewhere tells the powers that be, "they want to read about this".  Stop clicking, dammit!   We buy those stupid celebrity rags, we bid on their chewed up gum on Ebay and we tear our clothes and cry when they walk through the airport.  To borrow a saying I read recently, sweet fancy Moses!  What is wrong with us?

Those stupid balloon parents are just the latest in a long line of publicity whores and I'm sick of it.  Can't we do something about this?  What if we all commit to STOP CLICKING on this crap, would it go away?  What if every one of us only clicked on a story that was of some actual significance, would it improve the national news?  If we only clicked on news stories that either mattered or uplifted, would we do away with the trash?

Close your eyes and think about it for a minute.  If bad behavior didn't earn the stars, starlets and wannabes any sort of recognition, but making a positive contribution to society did earn them recognition...what would happen?  Gasp!  Could it be?  Might that encourage them to do something good with their notoriety?  I admit it's unlikely, but what if?

What if playing your six-year-old as a pawn in your bid for spurious fame landed you quickly in jail, with no news coverage at all, and no one ever talked about you again?  Would people continue to try those stunts?

Did you ever read Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear?  The protagonist of the story is cursed with death at the end of the story.  She doesn't really die, but she is dead as far as her clan is concerned.  They stop talking to her, stop paying attention to her, stop "seeing" her.  It was a horrible sentence.  Think about it.  We are social creatures, even we shy ones.  What if your whole world pretended you didn't exist?

That sort of punishment is part of the root idea of solitary confinement, banishment, shunning, exile, ostracism and every other painful way that societies have of making us behave.  I'm starting to think that shunning might just be the perfect answer.  Celebrities who misbehave, people who endanger others in their cry for media attention and all the rest of the "look at me" crowd...shunning might put a quick stop to all of that nonsense..