Sweetness.

I've spent an hour or so tonight updating this blog, removing old links, cleaning up posts and changing the template and style a little bit. Insomnia really helps one get meaningless tasks done.

I haven't blogged regularly in more than five years, mostly using my blog as a photo hosting site for various projects. Lately I've been feeling a desire to journal or write my thoughts down somewhere; I've looked at journals to buy and wondered if I was ready to actually write again. Coming here to my blog to get it ready for this year's Journal Your Christmas entries, it seems obvious that this is the place to do that once again.

The past three years have had a great many pains for me and for some of the people that I love. I've been wondering if this is the middle-aged turning point, where your friends begin to get ill, where you start going to more funerals, where your body makes creaks and pains it didn't before, where change seems to happen far more quickly than you're prepared for. I turned 46 a month ago. I was 34 when I started this blog. I've become a different person in many ways, sanded down at the edges, softer and more loving, and a little more hopeless sometimes, too.

I'm hoping that the thoughts will begin to flow again and that I can start capturing more moments that I want to remember. I have lost a lot to forgetfulness in the past couple of years and I can't afford to do that.

We spent Thanksgiving in Ohio with Todd's family, and did our Christmas celebrating at the same time. My niece Gianna mentioned that  she had never baked and decorated cutout sugar cookies before (despite being an eager baker), so we gave that a try on Friday night.

I didn't have my tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe with me; it only exists in a printout in my recipe binder, nowhere online. So we used a well-rated recipe from Allrecipes, which I can't find or I would link it. It was pretty good. We rolled the cookies out using powdered sugar instead of flour, since the dough was not very sweet. I think that helped the taste. Gianna made a big batch of royal icing, which I had never used before, and we made a bunch of colors and squeezed them out of ziploc bags. The icing was hard to control, but the end effect was pretty amazing. (I usually use a powdered sugar + milk frosting which doesn't give the polished look of royal icing.)

Gianna and Evelyn mastered it almost immediately and made really creative cookies, using toothpicks to create feathered and swirled effects. Anna, who is a bit of a perfectionist, got frustrated early on and went to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie with Grammy. I just love baking with these girls and seeing how their skills grow. When we were together for the Fourth of July we made our traditional Flag Cake, and I hardly had to help them at all--a far cry from the first year we did it, when they were young grade-schoolers, and I was running ragged trying to divide up the tasks evenly and help them each step of the way! That was in 2009. Gianna told me this weekend that Flag Cake is one of her great childhood memories (at the ripe old age of 15) and that made me happy.

Here's my tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe:

Eva's Sugar Cookies

2 cups unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
6 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, vanilla and almond extract until light and fluffy. In another bowl, combine flour and baking soda and add gradually to butter and sugar mixture until combined, Bake in preheated 350-degree oven on parchment-lined sheets for 8-10 minutes until light brown at the edges.

This makes 12 dozen cookies, a ridiculous amount, so I usually halve the recipe. I use one extra-large egg as "half" of the three eggs. And I put a few drops of almond extract in the icing, too.

Hope everybody had a fun Thanksgiving! We weren't up for doing any major traveling this year, so we just made a run up to Washington D.C. and cruised through a few museums, and then ate Thanksgiving dinner at Old Country Buffet (we managed to get there right before the stuffing pan got cleaned out, so, whew! Crisis averted! It wouldn't have been pretty if I'd had to eat Thanksgiving dinner with no stuffing.)

My sister and I were talking on the phone today and realized that we both have high expectations of holidays, which often leads us to feel sad or let down. I was feeling sad on Wednesday hearing people talk about what they were going to cook, who was coming to their house, etc., knowing I'd be eating dinner in a restaurant. But most years it's just not feasible or desirable to sit in a car or on a plane for hours for every single major holiday. So Todd and I have spent more holidays alone than I would like.

My theory is that since my sister and I grew up with lots of extended family around, it just doesn't seem like a holiday to us unless there are a lot of people crammed into a house all talking at the same time and drinking coffee and playing games and teasing each other. When it's just you and your husband staring at each other across the table (or in my sister's case this year, her and her husband staring at each other while the kids played games on their phones) something feels wrong.

On the other hand, when you see people sitting and eating their restaurant turkey dinner absolutely alone--and she and I both saw people who were all alone--then you realize how much you have to be grateful for, even when things don't turn out exactly the way you pictured they would when you were a kid and thought every holiday would always be the same forever and ever.

Speaking of family, I ran across something today that took me back across the decades in a flash. April Winchell runs a site called Regretsy, which spotlights some of the worst arts and crafts from the crafters' sales site Etsy. She and her readers regularly make me snort or choke on whatever I'm drinking...they are seriously funny people.

April linked to her list of horrible holiday mp3s the other day and I just discovered a little gem on the list called "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" by a guy named Yogi Yorgesson, who was the alter ego of a comedian and radio personality named Harry Stewart in the 1940s and 50s.

When I was a kid, my grandpa Martin would make 8-track tapes for me and my siblings. Sometimes he would tape records for us, but other times I think he'd just tape whatever he found on the radio. I can't remember much of what was on the tapes, except for "I Yust Go Nuts" and some Italian song that I actually heard at an Italian restaurant a few months ago--the first time I'd heard it in 30+ years.

"I Yust Go Nuts" is like a brain worm, or it was for a kid who memorized a lot of random things, which I did whether I wanted to or not, because my brain just latched onto stuff. To this day, every now and then I'll think "And just at that moment someone slugs Uncle Ben" or "I step on a skate and fall over a tricycle."

If you listen to the song--and why wouldn't you want to listen to such a gem?--at the bit where he sings about stepping outside for a cold glass of beer, that's where Grandpa faded the song out and skipped over the part where the guy drinks eleven "Tom and Yerrys." So in my memory, the song goes "I think I'll step out for a cold glahh uhh bbb..." and then picks up again when the kids are jumping on his belly. I guess Grandpa didn't want us little kids to hear about some Swedish guy getting hammered on Christmas Eve, although he didn't have any problem with us hearing about the ensuing hangover on Christmas morning. What a funny little memory. Thanks for letting me hear the whole song, April!

Memories of Grandma.

As I did after the passing of my grandpa and my Grandma Clark last year, I've jotted down some thoughts and memories about my sweet Grandma, Martha Martin.

My grandma was born on her mother's birthday in May 1920 in rural Mahoning County, Ohio. She was the youngest of four children. She told me once that her mother suffered from poor health for the rest of her life after Grandma's birth, and that she always felt responsible for that. Grandma's aunt Mary lived with the family and helped out with the children and the chores to take some of the burden off Great-Grandma, who passed away when Grandma was 18 years old.

Grandma grew up on a farm, and her father sold produce and milk to help support the family. She liked to read her father's old McGuffey readers, and one of her favorite teachers gave her a book of Bible stories and a copy of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. She loved to read and play house in the corncrib when it was empty in the spring.

Grandma attended a country school until eighth grade, and wanted to go to high school very much. She loved school, especially spelling and history, and couldn't understand why all her friends moaned about school starting every fall. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school, and she was the class valedictorian.

She married my grandpa when she was twenty-two, and they moved into a house right up the road from the house Grandma grew up in. She lived in that house for the next 65 years (and lived on the same road all her life!) Over the next 17 years, from 1943 to 1960, she gave birth to three sons and five daughters.

Grandma took care of children all her life--first her own kids, and then all the grandkids who ran in and out of her house over the years. My family lived in Missouri till I was six, and I remember coming to Ohio on visits and staying at Grandma's house. She made me pancakes in the mornings, and I played in her vegetable garden. I remember running in and out of the staked pea plants that towered over my head.

Grandma was a devoted gardener--out of necessity for many years, of course, when the family depended on everything they could grow and can and freeze themselves. But even into her eighties, she was still putting in a garden in the spring and putting up the produce all summer long. The apricot jam she made from the trees in their orchard was my very favorite.

She quilted and sewed all her life, both for her family and for the church relief organizations. Her stitches were in quilts and comforters that warmed her own family, and that were sent all over the world to warm others in need. She made most of her own clothes for many years.

I remember her making me handkerchief babies in church when I was little, which I'm sure was something she did for her own children, and probably something her mother did for her. She always had a flowered hanky in her purse. She would roll the hanky on one side and then on the other and turn it around somehow and then there were two tiny babies in a hammock.

She wrote poetry--some serious, thoughtful verses about her faith and family, and some quietly funny poems about dead dogs, prowling skunks, old age, and other quirky topics. She had a self-deprecating sense of humor, always quick to laugh at her own idiosyncrasies. She was frugal from years of pinching pennies, and she knew how to live on just what she needed and no more.

Grandma was a truly good person through and through. She had limitless patience. (At least, in the years I knew her...as a young mother her patience may have been in shorter supply!) I never heard her say a bad word about another person. She always seemed to look for the good in people. She cared about doing the right thing and making the right choices. She had empathy for others and treated others according to the Golden Rule. I have often thought to myself over the years that if my conscience had a voice, it would be Grandma's voice.

In the past few years, Grandma slowly slipped away, a little at a time. She had a couple of bad falls and used first a walker and then a wheelchair. Her memory started to fade--she still knew her children, but the names of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren became more elusive. It broke my heart a little bit the first time I visited her and had to remind her who I was. But the sweetness of her personality never faded at all. She never complained, never put up a fuss about the difficulties of life in a nursing home.

Grandma loved God with all her heart and soul and mind. She prayed for everyone in her family all her life. She read her Bible every night before bed. She was sitting in her chair reading her Bible when she passed away, as appropriate a death for Grandma as any of us could have imagined.

My cousin Pam and I were talking at Grandma's grave, about how challenging it will be to live up to the example Grandma set for us. I have a very different personality from Grandma...I have always been a cranky, cynical person and I probably always will be. But she and I were both deep thinkers. We both loved to write and read. I inherited her empathic nature, which she passed to my mother, who passed it to me. I inherited her wonder about the ways of God and the spiritual world. I can only hope to be as truly good and truly loving as she was all her life.

Home again.

Oh, what a sad and tiring weekend it was. I don't think I knew before just how tired grief can make a person feel.

As I was flying home on Friday morning, my childhood friend Eric Wenger passed away. My family has been friends with his family for many years--our grandmothers were good friends, in fact. We went to the same church and for several years attended the same school and were in the same class. He was a year older than I.

Eric had a challenging life. A brain tumor and surgery in childhood left him slightly--but only slightly--delayed. He had the sweetest, most joyful spirit. Even after a stroke in his early thirties, which left him wheelchair-bound and unable to speak clearly, he always gave me a huge smile whenever I saw him. A final stroke two weeks ago sent him home to his parents' house to wait for the end, and he went to Heaven on Friday.

It's hard for me to articulate here how remarkable he was and how I felt about him...the feelings run a little too deeply to be easily shared. It was a very sad weekend.

We had a beautiful funeral for Grandma on one of the beautiful cool early-fall mornings that Ohio specializes in. A wonderful breeze blew during the graveside service, and it was good to stand there and feel it on my face. If the measure of a life is how much one was loved, then Grandma had a tremendous life indeed. Which she did.

Rediscovering the library.

I was so disappointed when we moved to southern Virginia seven years ago and I got a good look at the library systems here, first the county system where we first lived, and then the city system where we live now.

I moved here from Columbus, Ohio, a city and a state which both devoted a lot of attention and money toward their libraries. (Granted, this was in the prosperous 1990's--things may be different now in Ohio.) I worked for a while at one of the branch libraries in the Columbus system, a brand-new building with a vast "new books" section, gorgeous wooden bookshelves, high spacious ceilings, a fireplace and cozy seating area--and of course, access to all the books in all the other Columbus branches--millions of books just a day or two away, once requested. And since I worked there, picking up my requested books was simply part of my routine.

We had two libraries close by our home--one was also part of the Columbus system, and was extensively renovated while we lived there, and the other closest library was part of a village system, but a wealthy village with lots of money to throw at its library. That particular library has been renovated twice in the past fifteen years--it's basically a mall with books at this point.

It upset me probably more than it should have, moving to a place where libraries seem more like an afterthought than a prominent community feature. I've mentioned my current library before--a small, squat, dark place whose most interesting feature is that it's named after astronaut Gus Grissom.

Not that I'm opposed to small libraries, necessarily...while I was in college in Marietta, Ohio, I was a regular user of the Washington County public library on Fifth Street. It was a small, old building that smelled like dusty paper. I'd walk there from campus to get my required dose of murder mysteries and other non-college related reading material. Because it was old, it had that hushed, sacred, echoing quality that modern libraries can't quite achieve.

We also had a small old library in Columbiana, Ohio, which was my beloved childhood library, tucked behind the high school on a bumpy brick-paved street. The steps down to the children's section in the basement were blood-red linoleum, narrow, slippery, steep, dark. (Obviously pre-Americans with Disabilities Act.) Every two weeks I would drag a bulging bookbag up the steps and out to the car. My mom would make me write a list of all my books the minute I got home, to try to avoid the ordeal of lost books and fines, which could run into some serious money with a kid who brought home as many books as I did. (That library was torn down years ago, and there's a nice, safe [boring] one-story modern library in a different neighborhood now.)

But the Grissom library in Newport News is small and charmless. It was built out of cement in that decade of architectural shame known as the 1970s. The new books section is sad and sparse. The building doesn't smell of old paper but of damp plastic carpet. And the library workers can be on the surly side. I go there once a year or so, and then I go home, missing Ohio.

But there must be some sort of belated homing instinct deep in my brain, like with swallows or pigeons, because about a month ago, I felt this deep desire to go to the library. For the past three years, I've been using Paperback Swap to fill my book needs (along with occasional trips to Borders) and although I love Paperback Swap passionately, there were books that I just wasn't able to find there, or that were so heavily wishlisted that it would be three more years before I'd work my way to the top of the list for them.

So I printed off a list of books I was looking for and spent some time clicking at the library card catalog computer and lo and behold--I found a lot of them. Not all by any means, but a lot. I brought home a stack, and went back a few days later to pick up another stack that I'd requested from the two or three other libraries in the city system.

I read through most of those (this all coincided with a 100-degree heat wave--good indoor reading weather) and went back two weeks later and brought home (and requested) two more big stacks. This time I also ventured into inter-library loan, which is not a service I've made much use of before, since I'm a person who tends to want books NOW.

I found that the library shelves and seating areas have been rearranged a bit, for a more open feel, which has greatly reduced the claustrophobic feeling. And I've found that early evening visits are the best--there are fewer people and more of a quiet bustle during that time, which is very soothing.

So far this has been the great satisfaction of my summer--bringing home big stacks of library books. The feeling reminds me so much of childhood summers, and that adds an extra layer of pleasure to it. All I would need to do is turn off the air conditioning and plop down on a blanket in front of a box fan with my newest read, and it would be like time traveling! (But I'm not turning off the a/c, not even to time travel!)

Obsolete.

Tonight I'm finally getting around to something I've been wanting to do for ages. I have several cassette tapes here with interviews I did with both of my grandmothers and my great-aunt Helen 10-12 years ago. Every so often I think about them and think that I've got to get them digitized and saved on my computer against the day when the tapes fall apart. Todd got me set up tonight and I'm playing them through and recording them right now.

I'm listening to an interview that I did with my grandma Clark over the phone in May 1998. It gives me a little lump in my throat to hear her voice with the Missouri twang in it. And I sound ridiculously young--I was 27.

You always wish you had done more, don't you? I have 45 minutes of Grandma Martin, about 90 minutes of Aunt Helen, maybe two hours of Grandma Clark. It's not enough.

I remember interviewing Grandma Martin, and some of the memories of her parents made her a little emotional, and I felt intrusive. So I didn't interview her again. Now I wish I had talked to her about her life as a young mother and about her kids and about how she managed to make ends meet. Grandma is still alive but at age 90, her memory is very patchy.

Remembering the face-to-face interview I did with Grandma Clark in 2001 never fails to make my blood boil--we talked for an entire side of a tape, she told me about meeting and marrying my grandpa--and at the end of the tape I took it out and it had not recorded any of it. I've never forgiven Radio Shack for their shoddy merchandise!

When I interviewed Aunt Helen, she sat in her rocking chair and rocked like a little girl, just as hard as she could. Six weeks later, she passed away. I was so glad I had gone to see her.

It is odd to fumble with cassette tapes and stick them in the little player. You realize how obsolete a technology is when you can't remember which way it goes into the player!

Now I'm sitting here thinking about all the other people I should get on tape while I can. I understood, logically, that my grandparents would not be around forever. Now they're gone into death and dementia and I'm looking around in surprise thinking "How did that happen?"

So if I give you a call and ask you to talk into my obsolete technology, you'll understand why, right?

Summerhouse.

In honor of my aunt Molly who has a big birthday today, here are some pictures of her latest creative triumph.

I mentioned last year how Molly had moved the old summerhouse, which stood next to my grandparent's' home for decades, to her own yard after their property was sold.

Here's what it looked like at Grandpa and Grandma's house:

Here's what it looked like when Molly first had it moved to her yard:

And here's what she's transformed it into:

I wish I had a really good shot of the exterior, but my memory card was brim-full and I had to snap selectively. This is my Aunt Molly, my Uncle John, and my nieces Kylie and Natalie. (I took these while I was at home a couple of weeks ago.)

Inside Molly has filled the little house with old things:

Kylie, Natalie and Marissa loved the little house and immediately started playing "Boxcar Children." And a few days later my aunt hostessed my mom, my sister and I for tea and scones in the summerhouse, which was just lovely.

But why save an old falling-down shed and move it at considerable expense and inconvenience? A quick glance through the family photo album will tell you why. The summerhouse lurks in the background of lots of photos. Here are my grandparents with my Uncle Lowell, my Aunt Naomi (Molly) and my mom is the baby--but not for long.:

Two more brothers, my uncles Larry and Ron, with my mom and Molly:

And then two little sisters, Kathy and Charlotte:

An almost-complete family...

...till my aunt Carol came along to make eight kids total.

Then there were grandkids (my brother, my cousin Krista, myself (the oldest) and my cousins Darrel and Dennis):

We all had fun at Grandpa and Grandma's house. (Grandpa, my cousins Michael and Alan.)

The younger ones didn't get to spend as many years there as we older ones did, but they'll remember it, too. (Grandma and my cousin Daniel.)

Before you know it, you've got a BIG family (and there were more grandkids, grandkids-in-law, and great-grandkids in the years to come.)

And then there was just the two of them again.

And then they had a big sale and a couple of the great-grandkids came to help. (My niece Kylie and my nephew Tanner.)

But this is the way it used to be in front of the summerhouse:

I'm happy this little slice of family history was saved.

Two Boys and a Tree.

My dad works at a school, and when I was a kid, he often brought home discards from the school library to help meet my insatiable book needs. At that time, the school was eliminating many of its reading textbooks from the 1940s and 50s, so I got to enjoy them at home, and ended up with a deep and long-lasting fondness for the artwork and stories of that era.

There was a reader that I really loved when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. I saved many of my childhood books, but somehow that one fell through the cracks and got lost. As an adult, all I could really remember about it was that a) it was a dark blue cloth-bound reader; b) it was about a tree; and c) it took place over the course of seasons and eventually, years. I didn't even remember the title, and all the other details were hazy at best. I just remembered loving it.

Every time I have gone into a used bookstore, antique mall, or flea market in the past 20 years, I have looked for that book, never really believing I would find it. But I think I found it today!


It was on a shelf under a row of gorgeous Cherry Ames books that I'd been salivating over. I saw the cover and a very tiny bell rang far off in the recesses of my brain.

I picked it up and paged through it. It's the story of Lee and Bill and an apple tree on the farm outside their town. The town is growing. The boys spend several bucolic seasons climbing the tree to look at birds' nests, eating apples, and sledding down the hill below the tree.


But progress is unstoppable. The farm is sold, a park and a zoo are built around the tree, and a whole city is constructed on what used to be the farm. Years later, Lee and Bill bring their own kids to visit the park and zoo, and to see the old apple tree.



It all sounds very familiar. It's been so many years that I can't swear for sure that this is the book I was looking for, and yet it seems impossible that it isn't. I was fascinated with stories that showed the passing of time--I was also a huge fan of The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, which showed a similar process happening around an old country house.

The book is in decent shape, but awfully musty-smelling--I think it sat in a very damp basement for a very long time--but it was cheap and it was so unexpected to find it! Sometimes when I look through used books, I have that book in my mind, but I wasn't even thinking about it today. That made the discovery all the more delightful!

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?

So all last week, Google had Sesame Street characters on their home page, in honor of the show's 40th anniversary, and it got me to thinking about my own Sesame Street-watching days.

I came to the show slightly late, in 1976 at age five-going-on-six, when we moved from Missouri to Ohio and could get a PBS station on our TV for the first time. I remember coming home from kindergarten and first grade and flopping down to watch SS with my brother and sister, who were toddlers.

My very favorite Sesame Street Muppets were Bert and Ernie. Or more specifically, Bert. He was slightly acerbic, slightly pessimistic. He enjoyed quiet pastimes like sorting his paper clips and watching pigeons. He was always foiled in these pursuits by goofy, gregarious Ernie. I loved them both, but I could relate to Bert. Watching classic clips on Youtube as a grown-up, I'm now aware of Jim Henson and Frank Oz workng behind the scenes, who brought so much to those characters and played off each other so well.

Love this one: Bert Feels Cold. And this one: Ernie Tries to Remember. And: What Time Is It?Ernie's Note. These are like two-minute sitcoms for kids.

My other favorite was Grover, or "lovable, furry old Grover," as he referred to himself. I loved it when he would spaz out with his pipe-cleaner arms flying around. Frank Oz was responsible for Grover, too--he sure did some wonderful stuff for us kids of the 70s and 80s, didn't he? Here Grover demonstrates Near and Far...here he is a waiter: (love the waiter skits!) The Big Hamburger and A Fly in My Soup.

That is just good stuff.

The animated segments were great, too:

12 Pinball
M for Magic
The Ladybugs' Picnic (try getting this song out of your head...I've been trying for 30+ years.)
Jazzy Spies (I didn't know what this was but I sure recognized it once I clicked!)
A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk and a Stick of Butter (I still recite this to myself at the grocery store sometimes.)

And do you remember The Mad Painter? I bet you do.

Thanks, Sesame Street! The memories are so much fun.