music man

just now the husband was listening to 'cat's in the cradle' by harry chapin. i thought chapin was so great and was really sad when he was killed in a car accident. his songs really resonated for me, both their messages and their fun, and the singing was excellent. especially that guy who sang soprano on that one song. the husband and i got to see him in concert once, or was it twice. once anyhow, and it was so beyond cool -- omaha, 197x. i wonder what he'd be singing now if he hadn't died.

glenn miller and benny goodman and tommy dorsey .....

do you sit and think about the old days? do you ever yearn to go back to the simple life? if you decide you want to wash your clothes by hand, think about putting together this neat idea of a spinner. it may help you do the job, and then, of course, hanging everything up to dry is the finishing touch.

i really do wish i had a clothesline so i could hang stuff up outside. if our yard was bigger, maybe .... but no, the seagulls would just poop on the clean clothes. oh well, when we move to new mexico .....

cat toys

there's a lot of crap on the internet and then there's funny stuff.  this little clip reminds me so much of the cat we used to have, DabTac, hiding and sticking his paw out and feeling around ....

how could i have forgotten?

this is a great article on an old passion. it's just not too neat to be on the receiving end.

oldies but goodies

a friend sent an e-mail the other day. one of those 'do this and pass it on' kind of things. but it was a good one for the way-back machine, so i decided to include some of it here.

the following is a list of some shows which were on in the 50s and 60s, and most of them were ones i liked.

flash gordon, the prisoner, sugarfoot, i married joan, superman (steve reeves), hopalong cassidy, what's my line, queen for a day, gunsmoke, have gun will travel, howdy doody, the lone ranger, american bandstand, gene autry, wagon train, sing along with mitch, roy rogers, perry mason, my favorite martian, jackie gleason, red skeleton, mr. peepers, batman, leave it to beaver, 77 sunset strip, dobie gillis, i love lucy, sky king, mighty mouse, the steve allen show, the loretta young show, private secretary, the millionaire, rawhide, the little rascals, dragnet, flipper, my three sons, the ed sullivan show, captain kangaroo.

ahhh, the memories .....

do this, don't do that, let them do what they want

i think my unhappiness with things nowadays has a direct and very strong tie with my age. i've seen strictness in america (police in the 50's), i've seen dissent (abby hoffman, the weather underground, the black panthers), i've lived the cold war (gary powers, community and basement bomb shelters), seen two presidents shot (kennedy and reagan), seen deadly spy efforts (georgi markov), and seen rules and regulations you wouldn't believe (girls can't wear pants to school, if you missed a deadline there were no second chances, complete statistics about people who lived in a town were available in city directories -- their jobs, salaries, family members and ages, address, phone number, and more).

i don't miss that stuff, but i do have a problem with namby-pamby laws which let criminals off easy, parents who let their kids run amok in stores and restaurants, people who are rude, and the whole litany of political correctness since it's usually waaaaaaaay overdone.

can't we strike a pleasant and reasonable balance?

good grief

you know the old pyrex dishes you used when you were growing up? they seemed to last pretty well and survive bumpings, droppings, etc.

now i find out that corning, who originally made borosilicate glass dishes, sold the technology to a company which switched to using tempered soda-lime glass, a much less durable material.

i've noticed, over the years, that some pyrex things don't hold up and i've wondered why. and now i feel validated -- it wasn't my imagination or faulty memory of how good things used to be.

it's disgusting, really. you take an excellent technology, weaken it to make a bigger buck, and foist it off onto an unsuspecting public. tacky, tacky, tacky. and undoubtedly a republican's idea.

generally speaking you want to trust your instincts, friends. and, for your edification, read the article.

passages

today is my mother's birthday. she was born in august 1926 and died in january 1988. i am five months older than she was when she died.

i have things i need to talk with her about. still.

quick pix

oh yes, you have to go check this out!

i thought it was neat even if the commenters didn't. lots of imagination to put it together, and lots of work, too. very neat!

be sure to read the foreward (paragraph above the vid).

oh no --- goodbye

one of this little towns historic traditions, goff's clothing store, is closing. i tried to find out how long they've been open, but the only number i found was 1953 and that cannot be correct. regardless, it will be missed.

they have nice clothes, jewelry, material, and patterns. the family deserves a rest and this little town probably doesn't do a very good job of supporting them, but i hate to see them go.

god save us from having a third dollar store move in.

i'm blessed

remember when you were a kid and it was summer time and you were just lazing around doing nothing and a soft breeze was coming in through the open windows making the curtains drift slowly around, folding and unfolding, with an occasional car going by and somewhere off in the distance kids were laughing?

that's what i have right now. my chimes are sweetly ringing in the breeze while the gauzy curtains waft to and fro, the train calls out its passing, a dog parks down the street, and the wild roses outside my window float their fragrance gently past my nose.

i live in heaven.

back when i was a boy, we had to ....

i have a friend who lives in grand forks, north dakota. recently there was some really bad flooding in that state. some of the damage is shown here -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2-Ccybv5fo&feature=related .

i found this video of a blizzard which was either right before or right after the flooding. give this a look -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNnxE4JqCbU .

the husband and i wax nostalgic at times because we used to live in nebraska and he lived in the black hills of south dakota when he was in high school. we had some really great vacations up there with the boys when they were little. we wonder if we'd like to live back there again.

and then we see a video like those. uhh ... no. probably not.

simple beauty

don't you just love beautiful calendars? lang puts together some really nice calendars and i buy some every few years.

the one i have here at home is called the 2009 road home calendar. it has wonderful landscapes with homes. they are so beautiful they almost make me cry. the husband and i want to move into two of the houses.

the 2010 road home calendar has a couple of the same pictures, but overall more snow pictures than this year. go to that website then click on 'more images' to see the twelve months. i actually like 2009 better than 2010, but still -- they're very evocative. simpler times, younger times, happier times.

another style of calendar they have has recipes on each month. i get a kick out of those. check out the garden recipes -- they give the instructions in pictures!! is that cool, or what! ohmygod, they have holiday peppermint pound cake for december!!! okay, now i have to buy it! i just hope i don't forget!

rain boots

i decided i just couldn't do the ugly circles boot. i'm going to keep the bean boots that came in the mail the other day. they aren't perfect, but since they're 'wide' they feel comfortable. the nice thing about planet shoes is that they pay for shipping the stuff to you and if you don't keep it, they pay the shipping costs back. pretty good deal.

but back to sizes. i'm disgusted and dismayed at how clothing sizes have changed the past 20-30 years. jeans have gone from 29" to 33" or 36" long. good grief -- not all of us are amazons. i guess short grandmas aren't supposed to wear jeans.

i have some blouses, sweaters, and pants from long long ago. some are size 11 and some are mediums. they still fit. and i'm no longer an 11. how can it be that there's such a tremendous difference in sizes? it's not the cut since the old things i can still wear look fairly normal. i think manufacturers decided to cut down on material to save on their costs and increase profits. and slowly cut the sizes down, too.

to me, that is disgusting. it's dishonest and greedy. i blame it on all those mba people.

ugh.

milestones

my mother, Betty Rose, was born on this day eighty-two years ago. she died in january, 1988.

i still miss her.

oui, oui!

our front door is on the east side of the house and we have french doors on the south side. there's also a large patio outside the french doors and we finally decided to have convertible french doors installed outside the regular french doors. the convertible ones have full-screens which can be replaced with full-glass when it starts to get colder.

we are happy with the result. it looks nice and allows a nice air exchange.

we've toyed with putting in air conditioning, but two (both) of the people we've had give us an estimate have pushed hard for a heat pump. we rented a duplex in the 70's which had a heat pump and hated it! i've never heard anyone say they loved their heat pump, although they surely have changed for the better in the last 30 years. if our weather keeps being fairly nice, i'm really going to drag my feet about the a/c conundrum. maybe we'll get lucky and have to wait another year before we are again presented with hot, humid wx.

up with frenchy screeny doors. down (or at least level) with heat pumps. so sayeth the not-quite-informed.

old times

remember the bear and cat game? it's been forever since i played that ....

http://www.zeronews-fr.com/flash/bearandcat.php

the way-back machine

remember baby schlitzes? they were only 8 oz, but a lot of the time they were just the right size. the hubby and i actually lost weight on a baby schlitz and peanut butter diet.

really!

back to the community

i gave blood yesterday. the bloodmobile comes around every two months and people donate. it's something my father always did and i've occasionally thought about doing the same.

since i'm the one at work who posts the upcoming bloodmobile visit, it's pretty easy for me to know when it's happening. i haven't done it for awhile, so this time around i decided to try again.

try again? well, yes. since i had breast cancer 16 years ago, there was a long period of time when i couldn't donate. then, several years back, enough time had passed that i decided to donate when an urgent call went out. as soon as they started the draw, i came close to passing out. they laid the chair back, had me move my feet -- i felt like an idiot while they finished collecting and pacifying.

i didn't like that experience (i'm the oldest of four children, i should be an expert at everything), but thought surely i would be able to donate blood this time without problems. even though my veins are hard to find, roll around, collapse easily, i drink plenty of water and should be good to go.

so i went. there were mostly older people, like you'd expect, but while i was there a mid-20's gal came in and gave, and later a mid-20's guy did the same. i filled out the paperwork, waited for the chair (3 of them in this bloodmobile), climbed in and got comfortable, suffered through the VERY stinging stick, looked out the window and enjoyed the view while my blood drained away. after about 6 or 8 minutes, my body caught on to what i was doing and immediately called a halt. head got warm, body felt strange, vision starting going astral. i mentioned i didn't feel very good and they immediately arranged the chair position, told me to move my feet continuously, slapped two ice bags behind my neck, and gave me a small can of apple juice. i had actually lasted until they were finished drawing the blood (yay, me) and when i finished the apple juice and a cookie, i drank a small can of orange juice and ate another cookie. feeling better i drank a bottle of water and ate a third cookie before completely recovering.

they actually didn't invite me back, but i don't know if that was because they didn't want to push me into something i might not want to do, or if they really didn't want me to come back. i'm O-negative, so i'd think they'd just as soon i came back. maybe they just forgot.

i'd really like to be able to do this thing without the drama. i wonder if i just keep going every two months if my body will realize it's no big deal. sigh.

midwestern tradition

yesterday was sadie hawkin's day. did you remember to chase the boy of your choice? you only get one chance in four years to do that, you know.

i found a high school picture of a couple of my girlfriends and our boyfriends going to a sadie hawkin's dance. funny how i can't remember the girls' names, but i remember bing. he was my first love. and he had red hair.