Category: Just Jot It January

Taking down Christmas

Today, we observe Epiphany, which celebrates the arrival of the magi. It’s also a family tradition to take down our Christmas tree today. Often, B does most of that work, although I think T and I will help today. It’s always a bit sad to take down the tree, although this is longest time we have ever had a tree up as we got it early in order to have it to celebrate St. Nicholas Day in advance of E and ABC’s holiday trip to London. I was afraid the tree would not last all these weeks, but it has held up well, only shedding a few needles. LEDs help to keep the needles from drying out, as they sometimes did with the old incandescent light strings.

Our tree this year wound up being decorated with mostly non-breakable ornaments. There are a few fragile ones in the top third, safely out of ABC’s reach. She was very interested in the ornaments as they were put up, carrying them around and sometimes taking them back off the tree, but once it was all decorated, she (mostly) left them up.

It is probably just as well that she is still in the UK. When she comes back mid-month, the living room will be back to normal, except with a few new toys and books to strew across the braided rug.
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Join us for Just Jot It January. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/06/jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-6th/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

SoCS: sap

I have lived in the Northeast United States for my whole life and soon my thoughts will turn to sap.

Maple trees are plentiful here and are often used for maple syrup production. The sap flows in the spring and is tapped, usually now with lines rather than with spigots and covered buckets as it was done traditionally.

At least, it used to be done in spring when I was a child. What you need for a good flow of sap is days above freezing and nights below freezing. This used to be early spring weather, but now, with climate change and increased volatility of weather, those conditions sometimes happen as early as February.

February is not spring.

Some years, the sap starts to flow in February, but then it gets colder again and stops. If we are lucky, it stops before the trees actually start to bud as the cold weather can then damage the buds and affect the tree for the year.

When I was a child, we used to go to a local sugarhouse during sugaring off and watch as they evaporated the water out of the sap to leave maple syrup. I always liked the lighter, more delicate syrup. The sugarhouse had an attached dining room where you could order great pancakes and waffles, which were served with fresh syrup. Then, my sisters and I would order sugar-on-snow for dessert. They would bring us cake tins full of snow and a pitcher of warm maple syrup. We would drizzle it over the snow and it would instantly congeal into a candy which you could pick up with a fork. You could sometimes even twirl it around the fork like spaghetti. It was delicious, but super sweet, so they would serve it with homemade dill pickles, which were also really good.

It has been many years since I had sugar on snow, but I always keep a supply of real maple syrup at home. I refuse to eat “pancake syrup” which is usually just corn syrup with some maple flavoring thrown in.

In my area now, I usually buy maple syrup from a farmers’ market rather than directly from a sugar house. When I go back to Massachusetts or Vermont, I will sometimes buy syrup there to bring home. Right now, I have a gallon that was made in B’s hometown and about twelve miles from my hometown.

It’s all good.

I do worry, though, about the future of our sugar maples. They are stressed by climate change and the range of the trees is moving north. In the coming decades, we may need to import our maple syrup from Canada. I’m sure it would be as delicious, but probably in short supply, which would be very sad.

I’ll savor my maple syrup all the more now.
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Join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday and/or Just Jot It January! This week’s prompt was sap/sep/sip/sop/sup. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/04/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-5th/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

Household reorganization

One of the promised catch-up posts…

Over these last months of spending additional time dealing with Nana and Paco’s needs, I have been spending less and less time taking care of things at home.

Happily, spouse B and daughters E and T have stepped up to deal with the bulk of the shopping, planning, cooking, and cleaning so I don’t have to worry about it.

A bonus has been that E and T have been trying new recipes and expanding their kitchen expertise, which will be good preparation for the time when they each will have to manage their own house or apartment again.

It was also nice that when E’s spouse L was able to be here for three weeks in August, E, L, and one-year-old ABC were able to get a taste of what it will be like when they are able to have a household of their own.

Just before L returned to London, he and E prepared tea for us, featuring finger sandwiches, homemade scones, Coronation chicken, and a Victoria sponge for dessert. Of course, there was also tea!

Maybe late next year, they will be together in London and B and I can visit them together and have tea there.
tea

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Join us for Just Jot It January. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/04/jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-4th/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

Why Top of JC’s Mind?

When I wrote about Just Jot It January on New Year’s Day, I said that I didn’t usually use the #JusJoJan prompts from Linda’s blog except for One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays, but I decided to set aside what I had planned to post today in favor of Linda’s prompt, which was to write about your blog.

What blogger would ignore the chance to write about their own blog?

I started blogging after several friends suggested that I should. At the time, I was writing a lot of comments on articles about fracking as part of the fight against fracking in my home state of New York, our neighbor Pennsylvania, and in the US and around the world. I also would post on Facebook about a range of other topics, including feminism, progressive politics, and (also progressive) Catholicism. I knew I couldn’t contain myself to write about just one topic, so I decided to be eclectic and name my blog Top of JC’s Mind. I set up on WordPress in September 2013.

I am not particularly tech-savvy and hadn’t really studied blogging, so I didn’t know what I was doing at first. I learned a lot from Opinionated Man and through him, connected with our beloved Linda. While never one to obsess about stats, for a while, I managed to spend a considerable amount of time on blogging – writing my own posts, reading other blogs, and writing comments. I was slowly but steadily gaining followers and enjoyed reading a number of blogs on a regular basis.

Then, life happened and I wound up in maximum sandwich generation mode without much time or mind leftover for proper blogging etiquette.

While I have kept Top of JC’s Mind alive over these past many months, I haven’t been able to read or comment at anywhere near the rate that I used to. I am very grateful to the stalwarts who continue to visit Top of JC’s Mind, even though I only sporadically visit them.

Linda asked in her prompt for today if blogging had changed your life and I think it has. I have met and interacted with many people, both bloggers and commenters, that I would not have otherwise. It has also encouraged me to write more often and given me a platform for sharing poetry. I started blogging near the beginning of my re-engaging as a poet after not having written for decades, so the two writing disciplines have intertwined.

While I think that blogging has changed my life, my life has also changed my blogging. I didn’t think I would write so often about my family, but, because that is where a lot of my heart and time reside, I have written a lot about them here at Top of JC’s Mind and also in my poetry.

As the political and social divisions here in the United States have intensified over the last several years, I have tried to preserve my blog as a respectful place to exchange ideas. I don’t name-call or slam groups of people; I will, however, delete or edit comments that do because it is important to me to keep Top of JC’s Mind a civil space. I don’t delete comments if someone disagrees with me, but will dialogue in comments and use supporting links for backup, as needed, something I learned to do when I was writing commentary about fracking, renewable energy, and climate change. I admit that I get annoyed when people misunderstand science, misuse statistics, or deny facts and history, so I always try to be as accurate as possible with data and be clear when I am giving opinions.

See what happens when you invite a blogger to write about their blog? They go on and on…

Okay. Time to do categories and tags and hit publish before January 3rd turns into January 4th. Thanks, Linda, for the opportunity.
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Join us for Just Jot It January. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/02/jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-3rd/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

One-Liner Wednesday: fortune cookie

“Good work, good life, good love, good-bye oppression”
~~~from my fortune cookie
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Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays and Just Jot It January! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/02/jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-2nd-and-one-liner-wednesday/
More information on JusJoJan and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

 

Just Jot It January

Happy New Year!

Linda is once again spearheading Just Jot It January. Bloggers write a post or something every day (or as often as they can manage) and link back to her blog so we can connect with one another. There are usually prompts on Linda’s blog for those who want to use them, but I most often venture off on my own, other than Linda’s year-round One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays when I will go with the flow.

I have participated in Just Jot It January before, and have even managed to post every day some years. 2019 may not be my year to post every day, but I will try to post as often as I can. I hope to do some catch-up posts from 2018, as I was often too busy with my “sandwich generation” duties to get posts out.

Fingers crossed.

Stay tuned!
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Join us for Just Jot It January. Today’s pingback link is here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/01/01/jusjojan-2019-daily-prompt-jan-1st/
More information and prompts here: https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/31/what-is-just-jot-it-january-2019-rules/

One-Liner Wednesday: creativity

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
~~~Albert Einstein
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Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays every week and/or Just Jot It January, last chance for 2018 today! Find out how here:
https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/31/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-31st-2018/

 

#JusJoJan

As I hope you have noticed by now, I have been participating in Linda G. Hill’s Just Jot It January, which encourages us to post daily with a pingback to Linda’s blog so we can read each other’s work and discover or revisit other blogs in the community.

I have been using it as an incentive to post every day – at a time when my blogging practice remains less than optimal with most of my time and energy going toward posting and almost none toward reading and commenting. I have managed to post every day, but have only occasionally read and commented on other posts. I have been happy to find a few new blogs to follow, but I know there are others that I could have discovered if I had more time.

Linda offers a prompt every day, most suggested by other bloggers who are given a shout-out for the day. They aren’t obligatory, but most people choose to follow them. Other than Linda’s continuing series,  One-Liner Wednesdays and Stream of Consciousness Saturdays, I have chosen not to follow the prompts. My blog’s tagline is “eclectic, like me” so I have been writing what was on the top of my mind as I usually do.

I want to thank Linda for offering Just Jot It January to the blogging community. It’s been a boost to me in the midst of a difficult month.

See you next January – or I hope even sooner…
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There is still time to jump on board with Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here:
https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/30/jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-30th-2018/

 

One of those days…

As much as I try and/or want to, I just can’t master being in two places at the same time.
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This jot brought to you by Linda’s Just Jot It January. Find out more here:
https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/29/jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-29th-2018/

 

another surgery

My family is having a surgery a week lately. Last week, daughter E had a stubbornly swollen lymph node removed. Although screening tests seemed to suggest that it was benign, I decided not to mention it until the pathology came back. We now have confirmation, which was a relief.

It is a bit tricky with the recovery, in that E is not supposed to do heavy lifting. While ABC is not huge for a seven-month-old, she is definitely over the ten pound lifting limit, so B, T, and I have been trying to do most of the ABC lifting, especially getting her out of her crib and giving her baths.

Healing is underway and soon E will be back to full strength, although B, T, and I don’t need an excuse to help take care of ABC!
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here:
https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/28/jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-28th-2018/