Category: musings

SoCS: dough

Today, E and I took ABC to her first theater experience, a performance of Sesame Street Live. The theme was magic, but a lot of the story revolved around things that turned out to be science. One of those things was making cookie dough out of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar and adding heat to make it into cookies.

My other dough experience of the week was making pie dough for a birthday pie for Paco who turned 94 on Tuesday. I wanted to make him a prune-apricot pie. Unfortunately, it had been a loooong time since I had baked a pie from dried fruit. And I was super tired because I had been up at night with ABC and then had trouble getting back to sleep. I realized too late that I had forgotten the salt in the crust. D’oh! I also didn’t put as much water in the fruit when I stewed it as I should have, so the apricots didn’t soften as much as I would have liked and I didn’t have very much juice to thicken. Still, it all worked out okay as Paco enjoyed it very much.

I thought that doing an unsweetened pie might also appeal to Nana, who hasn’t had much appetite lately, but it didn’t sound good to her. She is still eating breakfast, but usually not much for lunch and supper and she doesn’t like things that are too sweet. One of the hospice rules is that she can eat whatever she wants and we are following that. We have gotten some coffee ice cream to keep on hand because it was always one of her favorites, the bitterness of the coffee cutting the sugar. We’ll see if she wants to try some someday soon.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “dough/d’oh”. Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/29/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-30-19/

One-Liner Wednesday: change

The key to the passage of time is change.
– Abyssbrain of mathemagicalsite.wordpress.com

(This has been sitting in my drafts folder for a loooooong time. The site has since been deleted.)

Come join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday!  Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/27/one-liner-wednesday-spring-is-sprung/

Lent in my church

Many Catholic churches use bare branches instead of flowers during Lent. In recent years, my church has used small trees instead of branches. This Lent, the church environment committee went one step further.

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It’s the first time I can recall seeing the corpus removed from the cross.

I find it very striking. It reminds me of some of the Lenten hymns that speak of Jesus being hung on or nailed to “a tree.”

Some people may find this too unusual a presentation.

Feel free to share your comments below.

beverage of choice

I have been (perhaps inordinately) happy with my choice of milk lately.

Because the other adults in the house are all lactose intolerant, they drink Fairlife ultrafiltered milk, which has a good taste, unlike milks with lactase added, which I find too sweet.

However, when my doctor recommended that I increase my calcium intake, I decided that I would save the Fairlife for others in the house and choose a less expensive option for me. The problem is, though, that I don’t like to drink milk from the standard plastic jugs that are most common here in the US. It tends to taste a bit plastic-y to me, so I thought I could buy milk in cartons.

This was easier said than done.

It turns out that few milk producers use cartons anymore, but, at our local Wegman’s, I found another solution.
milk bottle

It is so much fun to have milk in a glass bottle, as it was usually distributed before they went to paper cartons. This dairy also vat pasteurizes their milk and even offers non-homogenized milk so that a layer of cream rises to the top of the bottle.

I have chosen to drink 2% milk, as a compromise between those who think one shouldn’t have dairy fat and those who think dairy fat is helpful to your diet.

A bonus is that the dairy is relatively closeby, about 120 miles from where I live, which is close enough to qualify as local in locavore terms.

Another bonus is that the bottles are returned and reused, cutting down on the waste stream or the processing needed to recycle.

The milk is delicious! It somehow seems colder when it is poured fresh from the fridge. Research shows that that is all in my head – or perhaps in my fingers as the difference in conductivity of a thick glass bottle versus a paper or plastic container is going to make the glass bottle feel colder. Glass is also good because it doesn’t transfer flavors into the milk as some plastics can.

I am drinking more milk than I was, which is helping my calcium intake go up. I am also taking supplemental vitamin D, knowing that light can degrade it, although, once I get the milk home, it is in the dark most of the time.

Unless that little light is not going off when the refrigerator door closes…

SoCS: floods

Our news here in the US is filled with coverage of the historic floods in the Plains and Midwest. Floodwaters have breached levees and overflowed banks, causing flooding for several miles on either side of multiple rivers. Many roads and bridges have been washed out. Much of the affected land is farmland and many farmers have lost livestock and crops, as well as equipment and buildings.

I live near the Susquehanna River near the NY/PA border. We are lucky this year that we haven’t had much snow, so we will probably be spared the spring snowmelt plus storm flooding. However, we are not immune to floods, having suffered two record floods in recent years. With the changes in weather patterns brought about by our changing climate, we will certainly have another record flood or very severe flood in the future. We just don’t know when.

For many years, we have carried flood insurance on our home. We are not immediately near the Susquehanna, but live near a creek that feeds into it. There is a floodwall behind our house because when the Susquehanna floods, the water back up into the creek. In the 2011 flood, the water came within inches of overtopping the flood wall.

We are lucky that we have never had to collect on our flood insurance. If the worst happens, we may have to either sell out our property or raise our home above flood level.

I’m hoping it won’t come to that, but only time – and storms – will tell.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is to write about the subject of the last piece of (physical) mail we received. In my case, it was our flood insurance bill. To find out how to join in the fun, visit Linda’s site here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-23-19/ 

SoCS: scarred souls

I feel as if all our souls have been touched by the shootings at Christchurch, New Zealand. So many dead and wounded. And so many victims had fled violence in the countries where they were born, seeking refuge in what should have been a safe place for them – and even more of a sanctuary as they were in a house of worship.

The alleged shooter claims to be a white supremacist. He claims to be inspired by some in the United States, which makes it even more appalling because I hate the thought that my country is exporting terrorism, racism, Islamophobia, and white supremacist ideologies.

I don’t know how our souls will heal from this attack. Maybe they won’t. Maybe we will all bear a little scar from this horror and maybe that will strengthen us to do everything we can to combat hate.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “soul/sole”. Find out how to join in here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-16-19/

SoCS: Bingo Bash

One computer game that I like to play is Bingo Bash. I often play it on the weekends while watching TV.

Weekends are good because the game often has special features on weekends that give you extra chips. I am one of those players that only plays free games, so I save up the chips I get for logging in every day to use when there is a good weekend promotion.

Before I got my touchscreen computer and before our cable company finally fixed our connection, I sometimes wanted to bash my head against the wall when the game wouldn’t load or would lose contact halfway through. Now things run much more smoothly.

What mindless games do you play?
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “bash/a bash/abash”. Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/08/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-9-19/

hospice again

After posting every day in January, I haven’t been posting very much since. Unfortunately, my mom, known here as Nana, over the last few weeks has had increasing symptoms from her congestive heart failure. We have been able to ameliorate some of them, but she is sleeping more and eating less, having more trouble walking and getting short of breath more frequently.

Last week, Nana was approved to go back into hospice care. They will become part of her care team at the skilled nursing unit, so she won’t need to move again and so my dad can hop on his scooter and visit her whenever he likes. [Backstory is that Nana was under hospice care for fifteen months and then de-certified in October. She moved into skilled nursing at their continuing care community, as she could not stay at Mercy House, which is only for those in hospice care.]

We are hoping for as much pain-free and alert time as we can get in these coming weeks. Thank you for all the positive thoughts and prayers you have sent. They help us to stay grounded in this difficult time.

SoCS: Oscars

Because the Oscars, the film Academy awards, are this weekend, yesterday on the radio I heard two film critics discussing the nominees. It was also a call-in show, so there was a host and callers offering opinions, too.

I usually do watch the Oscars, but this year I have seen very few movies, so I don’t have any basis to have an opinion about who should win.

Some years, I have seen more of the films, although some films are never shown in my area. We aren’t a big metropolitan area and our only arthouse movie theater closed, so we don’t get the opportunity to see some of the more limited release movies.

One thing that was interesting was that there was very little that both critics and callers agreed on. I remember especially the discussion of Roma. Two callers and one of the critics found it very moving and meaningful and the other critic thought it was boring. Being a critic, he had watched it three times, trying to see if there was something he was missing, but he never found it.

If even critics, who watch movies for a living, can’t agree on a film, there is no way I can predict anything about the Oscars. I will likely still watch. If nothing else, I will get to hear performances of the nominated songs and see lots of spiffy clothes.

Do you watch the Oscars or have any predictions to give?
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “critic(al).” Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/02/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-23-19/

SoCS: the reason for yawns this week

I have been yawning more than usual this past week.

Last Saturday night, daughter E was lying beside granddaughter ABC, reading her a bedtime story. ABC was having a drink of water from her covered tumbler and, in her excitement, hit her mom in the eye with the bottom of the tumbler.

E called for me and I rang into the room. Her eye was already swelling, so I got her an ice pack and calmed ABC down and got her to sleep.

E had been hit hard enough to see stars and lose her vision in that eye for a moment, so we weren’t surprised when she had a headache the next day. And the next. But then, she started to feel dizzy a lot and get nauseous. I was afraid she had a concussion, so we went into the doctors’ office. It turns out that the symptoms of concussion are very similar to the symptoms of bleeding in the orbital socket, which has a lot of nerves that are very sensitive.

The treatment is also similar to concussion: rest, quiet, avoiding activity and eye strain and loud noises, taking pain relievers, not lifting heavy things.

None of which is inherently easy with a toddler in the house.

It turned into everyone else in the house taking over as much of ABC’s care as possible.

Which brings us to yawning. I have been taking over the nighttime care, sleeping on the couch on the first floor rather than in my room on the second floor. ABC is a pretty restless sleeper, so I would go into her several times a night to cover her or sing her a song or read her a book to get her back to sleep. When my husband B would come down between 5:00 and 6:00, I would sneak back upstairs for another couple hours of sleep, but I admit that I have been tired and, thus, yawning a fair amount during the day.

Last night, ABC didn’t wake up at all, so I got to sleep for a long stretch myself, which was nice and resulted in much less yawning today.

Let’s hope it is the beginning of a trend.

(By the way, E is improving, so there is some hope that she will be able to be more active soon.)
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to write about the first thing we thought of after reading the word “yawn.” Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/02/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-16-19/