icy stare

There's a young guy at work, CP, whose words often come out a little harsh-sounding. I don't think he means for them to or that he even notices it. He's a pretty nice guy actually. Keeps bags of chocolate candy on his desk. When I got a new dining room set I gave him my old one. One day I was standing by the fax machine just biding my time until I received confirmation....just looking around. He said "Why are you giving me that icy stare?"

Today I took in a container of chocolate cookies with milk chocolate chips, dried cranberries and pecans that I had made over the weekend. I sat them on the kitchen counter in the morning but never sent out an email annoucing them. CP and I happened to be in the kitchen at the same time a little later making tea. He wondered what kind of cookies were in the container. I said" "I can tell you because I made them" and proceeded to tell him. He said "Well, they look a little dry but I supposed they will taste okay". He took a bite and said "Oh, you used real butter. They're good. My mom always uses the fake stuff." So I guess I can forgive him for the first comment. But another remark like that and he'll get the icy stare.

presentation

Everything tastes so much better when it's served in a pretty dish....like homemade vanilla ice cream with fruit and stars

do you suppose

Do you suppose you can die from boredom? I sat at work today and wondered as I worked on the same things I had been working on for the past ten years. Can your brain just atrophy and dry up? And by the same token can you die from excitement? Nerve endings going haywire until they sizzle out?

Or how about about love? I've heard you can die from a broken heart....so to speak...but what about a heart so filled with love that it bursts? Maybe first it develops leaks and love trickles out the little fissures and isn't that the way it should be? What good is a heart filled with love if a little can't leak out?

thoughts of the day

Today I went out to be around people. First to Amvets. This wall is always heartbreaking. Bits and pieces of people's discarded lives.

I post way too much on Facebook. I know I do. Each day I tell myself that today will be the day that I don't post on Facebook. People will get tired of me. They don't want to know everything about my day. I don't want them to know everything about me. And then I post something. And then I post again. I know this is because I need contact. I crave it. I like to hear about them and what is going on in their lives. I need to know that I'm sort of normal....because I don't know anymore. At work everyone is quiet....shhh...quiet. There could 25 people in the office and everything is quiet. I come home to an empty house. Smudge is happy to see me. He listens to me talk but he is quiet. Sometimes I ask him questions and he responds "yeow". B and I talk a little at dinnertime if I am home. A couple evenings a week I'm at the BAC. When we are home together I am on my computer or reading. He is on his computer or watching TV. We watch movies together some evenings.



the wreath that never got made...the skeleton head planter that was funny for a day or two...time ran out to make those Easter bunny basket favors....hard enough to just get the sweet potatoes peeled and the ham in the oven



The New Year's Eve party that never happened....what year do you think they wanted to ring in?



Can you imagine how proud she was when she finished this cross-stitch picture? And when she chose that mat that set it off perfectly?



decorating dreams fall by the wayside



This I almost bought. This 20s Art Deco furniture has great appeal to me. Not so much the stereo cabinet next to it.



I'm crazy about clothes and fashion. There I said it. I feel superficial saying it but somewhere here my interests lie. I've always known it. Why didn't I ever do something about it? So here are my clothing purchases. A sweet black embroidered sweater with three quarter sleeves trimmed with ruffles. A pink with black embroidered crinkled fabric Sunny Leigh ruffly blouse. A gray Old Navy tee shot through with metallic lines. A white cotton summery blouse that could easily
be embellished. I also bought a velveteen skirt....not to wear but because I buy all the velveteen skirts I see in hopes of someday having the time to make a quilt from
them all. Someday if you go to Goodwill you might see twenty or so velveteen skirts all lined up on the rack. Discarded dreams. I also bought some books and three CDs one of which was Taylor Hicks. Whatever possessed me? and a nice Pyrex mixing bowl.




So then on to the mall to spend my gift card. First I stopped at Payless where I found these navy flats that I can wear to work and these piano striped flats that were very well made for a Payless shoe....but also more expensive than most Payless shoes. Then I stopped at the SPCA adoption site where I saw so many kitties I wanted to adopt. I especially liked Saffron and Mellow Yellow...a pair of 1 and half year old bonded males. Their sign said that they needed to be adopted together because they were two peas looking for a pod. Then to DSW where I found a pair of silver shoes to replace my favorite nearly worn out silver shoes, and I couldn't resist these straw Sperry Topsiders that were on the clearance rack.



On to my real destination...Anthropolgie. I found this skirt on the sale rack. B and I are going to a Eastman School of Music scholarship fundraiser in Rochester next weekend and I think I'll wear this skirt with a silvery gray tank and siver flip flops.



I bought this tea towel because I love it and will use it as a hand towel in the bathroom. I also bought several other things that may be b-day gifts so no revealing here. When I got home I made star cut out cookies and remade the chocolate cookies that I had screwed up the day before. I listened to Tom Stahl while baking. He sings a song called I Want to Ignorant that I really like.

I wanna go back again, when kids believed in superman and AIDS was just a diet plan oh life was so much simpler then. I wanna be ignorant, I wanna love my government , I wanna know what Jesus meant when he said love your fellow man, I wanna be ignorant

I remember when my mom used to buy AIDS. They were an oily caramel candy. I would sneak them all the time. I loved them. I'm sure they were a scam. How could they control your appetite? I could have eaten a whole box.

delights and disasters

This is a long four day weekend. My office was closed on Friday, but nevermind, I'm off on Fridays anyway. Monday is the 4th of July. I don't have to go back to work until Tuesday. I had made up my mind to treat this long weekend as a holiday and only do things that I really liked to do. It could be work as long as it is work I like to do. No dusting or vacuuming. Friday morning as I was leaving for my final physical therapy session B told me that he had forgotten to take in his car to the dealer the night before. There had been a recall to fix something. We had settled in on Thursday evening and watched The Rite. Any scary movie that turnes out to be half way decent is a delight to me. I love scary movies but find it harder and harder to be scared by them as I get older. The devil is always someone who can shake me up a little.
So I followed B to West Herr and dropped him off again at home causing me to be a half hour late for my appointment. But they are pretty lax over there about appointment times and that's a delight. I graduated from PT and that is also a delight. I'm fixed! Stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and a vanilla bean scone and enjoyed it outside while sitting in the sun on a perfect day. Another delight. I followed this up with grocery shopping which is a task that I enjoy.

I told B that I would like to go on a bike ride with him if he had plans to go. He did have plans so he took my bike from the hook where it hangs in the garage and pumped up my tires for me. I felt a bit wary, leary of having my feet clipped in again. Every year on my first few rides I have to get used to this feeling. On more than one occasion I've stopped my bike, forgotten to unclip and fell right over. Also the heavy traffic on the way to the bike path makes me a bit nervous. But once on the path I become one with my bike. It has always fit me perfectly and together we are a well oiled machine. Our ride takes us from the house to the UB bike path through Ellicott Creek Park, along Tonawanda Creek Road



and into downtown Tonawanda

to the Erie Canal where I stopped to eat an apple and B saw someone who works at the college. He called to her and she looked at him with a confused expression on her face. He said you're Sandy and she said yes but clearly still did not register any recognition of him. He said I'm B from the college. Still confusion clouded her face. He finally told her his last name and she said oh my yes! She is used to seeing a serious looking man dressed in a suit. Not a man dressed in Spandex bike shorts and a colorful Tour de France bike jersey with a smile on his face placed there by performing his favorite activity. I didn't fall over, I rode fast and didn't feel worn out (only invigorated) by our 25 or so mile bike ride. Also at one point along the path a young buck (deer) pranced alongside me not to mention all the other young bucks I saw on the path. So my bike ride was a delight. We ended our day watching the movie The Mechanic. I didn't think I was going to like this movie so the fact that it wasn't bad at all was also a delight. The temps were in the low seventies all day without a cloud in the sky.



Saturday....another beautiful day. Just a little warmer, still cloudless. I decided not to go to the BAC like I usually do on Saturday morn. A delight not to go. I made delicious waffles for B and I. Then I took my book out on the patio and vowed to finish it before I did another thing. The thing is...I have always loved to read...but I have read less and less over the past few years because it seems there are always other things that need doing and when I sit down to read I fall asleep. This has made me a slower reader. Seems you need to practice your speed reading skills often to remain a speed reader. So now I seem to hear the words in my head when I read. It distresses me that I read like this. This is a disaster. I'm making an effort to improve. I've read three books in the past few weeks. So I'm reading and reading and time is passing and I should be done but I'm not. Lunchtime comes and I'm still not done with my book. I have some lunch and finally finish at about 1:30. The delight in this was sitting on my patio in my beautiful yard on a beautiful day and seeing this delightful baby bunny who posed for me so nicely.



This post is taking me a long time and I am starting to feel anxious. I know there are other things I should be doing. Other things I want to be doing. But I like doing this also so I breathe deeply. I listen to the words of my wise sister who says that nothing is more important than what you are doing at this moment. No task is more important than any other and I should live in the moment. So I continue on even though I wonder why I am doing this. Who am I doing it for? I am doing it for me I guess. Because I want to.

This above photo points out both delights and disasters. The most obvious disasters are the mess and chaos. The metallic speckled white Formica countertops with the metal trim. The Margarita is a delight and a disaster. It tastes so good and it makes me happy. I love to drink it out of that beautiful glass. But I also worry that it has a lot of empty calories that I don't need and there is a lingering worry that maybe I've been drinking a little too much and deriving a little too much pleasure out of it these past few years.



This is lemon sugar. I bought it several years ago because the container delighted me. I'm using it to sprinkle on sage cookies made with sage from my herb garden. The first batch I timed and they came out perfectly. The second batch I forgot about for a few minutes and they were browned just a tiny bit too bit. But this turned out to be a delight. They are crunchy like a cracker. Is it a cookie....is it a cracker? It's both and they are both delightful.

I started this post because I wanted to see if I had experienced more delights or more disasters these past couple days. I felt like they were maybe equal. But I'm seeing by writing this that the delights are far outweighing the disasters.



these are the sage cookies



Now these really are a disaster. These are my favorite cookies in the whole world. I make these often. They are made with special dark cocoa and a whole teaspoon of pepper. Something seemed wrong when I was cutting these cookies for baking. It didn't seem like it was making as many as it usually does and they looked so smooth.



Here they are baking....another disaster...my dirty oven



and here they are in the trash.....I forgot the sugar. The recipe calls for a cup of sugar. Cookies with dark cocoa and pepper don't taste so good when you forget the sugar.



This a dish from my lusterware collection. My lusterware collection never fails to delight me.



These are marbled eggs.....or they were supposed to be. After boiling them I cracked the shells and soaked them in strong Earl Grey tea. I don't know how anyone else does it but even though the shells were cracked the membrane underneath prevented the tea from getting in and marbling them properly. These are a disater if you compare them to how they are supposed to look but they still look kind of pretty.



This guy is always a delight.

For dinner I steamed clams for me (a delight), barbequed chicken for B. I made potato salad with fresh dill and parsley from my delightful herb garden. We followed this with the movie Devil. Another scary movie that turned out to be a little better than expected.

I should do this more often. My life seems a little more delightful than I expected.

graduation day

I graduated from physical therapy this morning. I told Dr. Laura last week that I thought my shoulder was all better. She measured me today and asked me lots of questions about does this hurt and does that hurt. Nothing hurt. I have 100% movement in my shoulder and 98% less pain.

But I will miss my broken and battered family that I acquired during all those early morning work-out sessions.

The 30 something military guy with the blond crew cut who did many of the same exercises I did. He always brought Dr Laura Starbucks coffee. We talked about our shoulder pain. He got mostly better before he was deployed back to one of the Bekistans a couple weeks ago. I hope he will be safe over there.

Handsome white-haired Bill who told me how pretty I was every time he saw me. His daughter always accompanied him carrying a spiral notebook that she jotted in frequently. It seemed her job was to take care of her dad and all his appointments. He had been a trucker and destroyed his back by lifting too heavy objects the wrong way for years and years. Bill had been in PT for two years and always told me that he had at least four more years to go. Bill was wired up to something that beeped periodically. He and his daughter seemed to have a great relationship except when she brought up news of her mother, Bill's ex-wife. I could tell Bill suffered a lot of pain but he always seemed upbeat.

There was Al who graduated last week after two years of PT. Al had had two knee replacements and both shoulders were shot. I think Al was a little younger than me. He was on his second wife, a nurse. Al said that she wanted to be married to him but she wasn't happy with the grown-up 25 year old son living with them. Al's son worked in the family construction business which had been the demise of Al's knees. According to Al, the son was a hard worker during the week but a much harder partyer on weekend. He totalled his car a couple weekends ago. So drunk that he didn't even slow down. Didn't even apply the brakes before smashing into another car. Al's wife wasn't happy about this. Al said he had been sleeping on the couch last week. I hope the son moves out soon because I think Al loves the wife. He talks a lot about her. Al spends his days polishing his boat and fishing.

There was Theresa who I recognized but couldn't place at first. A conversation revealed that she was one of the psychologists in the office where I used to work.

George....he hobbled in evry morning and headed for the treadmill. George had to be in his seventies but he hopped on the treadmill and started walking. Then he kicked it up and ran.....for a hour half. George impressed me and I told him so. Who would ever think he could do that? He looked like he should be in a wheelchair.

Then the lady whose name I never heard.....I think she had maybe had a stroke. She had a little obstacle course route that she walked over and over with her cane and look out if you were in her way.

Lou...the guy who looked like some old movie star. I never talked to him but while he laid on the table having his back massaged....if I looked up I would see him watching me.

Some others who came and went or I would see them once or twice. Young girl athletes with knee problems. Middle-aged guys with back and shoulder problems. Heavy set ladies with hip problems.

I hated getting up to be there at 7 am but once I got there I always felt at home with my little broken and battered family. I will kind of miss it.

Attendees from the Class of '71 at my high school class reunion on 6/11/11. I had a marvelous time and made a speech on top of it. I loved seeing all of these people.