Thanks

Thanks for all your prayers and positive thoughts. My family really appreciates it.

I am so thankful to report that my niece Becky is out of critical care and in a regular room. For those of you who aren't aware, Becky is a kidney transplant recipient who contracted a virulent strain of pneumonia. This has happened before and it's always a dangerous situation. Luckily a pulmonologist read her xrays and set up an aggressive treatment plan. She's feeling 1,000 percent better and is looking forward to being released from the hospital in a day or two.

My mother was in the same ER on the day Becky was admitted. My sister was going back and forth from room to room and I was driving the 1 hour trip to take over responsibility for our mom while she focused on her daughter.

Let's just say that my mom's recent medical journey was a very wild ride. A month ago she was dealing with mild dementia including some short term memory loss. Her neurologist prescribed the drug *Aricept*, which was developed to help memory issues.

My warning is this - if a doctor prescribes this for your loved one, be very, VERY cautious about agreeing to this treatment. There are cases where it works miracles for people but those who cannot tolerate, or have allergic reactions to this drug, go through hell, literally and figuratively.

In a two week period our mom went from having some low level memory issues to being so incapacitated that we were consulting with a social worker to have her moved to the assisted living floor in her building. On this drug she had nightmares so terrifying that she was forcing herself to not fall asleep. She quit eating and called me in a panic, begging for permission to stop taking the pills. After online research I discovered similar experiences of side effects not mentioned on the drug companies website, or mentioned by her doctor.

After she stopped taking the pills the real hell began. Let's just say "major drug detox". She was in the ER three times in 6 days, hallucinating, losing bodily functions and bizarre personality changes. Her primary care physician was so alarmed he ordered an MRI of her brain to be sure she didn't have a brain tumor or bleed that was causing these bizarre symptoms. But no, it was simply the effects of this drug.

I do not care whether a scientist would categorize this experience as "anecdotal". It was not an anecdote to us and certainly not to my mother, who at 82 had to endure this special hell.

I'm going to be busy the next week or so, going back and forth to ensure my mom is recovering well. I'll also be starting my new job! More about that later. I told the Farmer that I'm just going to keep getting jobs until one sticks!!

Have a wonderful Sunday everyone. And again, my entire family thanks you for your healing prayers. I'll be checking in with you to make sure you're behaving yourselves.

Was Grandma Happy?

While digging through some computer files this evening, I came across something I'd written in answer to a young woman whose grandmother had just passed away. She had wondered if her grandmother had been happy during her life, seeing as how she was raised in a time when women's options were so limited.



I thought you might be interested to read my response.

Feminism brought with it a world of opportunities but remember what you learned in science class, with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. What that means is that we exchange one set of problems for another.

I was a kid growing up in the 1950's, and my mom was your grandmother in a sense. Yes, these women were isolated in ways you cannot imagine. Families only had one car which meant there was no loading the kids up and going to the store, to the park, or anywhere else for that matter. Chores were harder. There was no permapress or microwaves. But it's a mistake to believe that women were sitting around thinking how they were "forced" to stay at home with their children. That's just the way it was, there weren't alot of other options so basically they didn't worry about what options they were missing in life. I'm kind of laughing thinking about the vision of my mom sitting around "pining to be a lawyer".

It was a different time and hard to realize from your perspective. They did have other women in the same situation to whom they could open up and they did share. They were probably on more initimate terms than your contemporaries. They shared in the old school way, low tech, face-to-face over the backyard fence!

I have alot to say about the women's movement and feminism in general and they're not all positive. Yes, they pushed and forged necessary changes but there was alot of carnage along the way, and today's young women are sometimes left with weighty expectations. I guess my answer is YES!!! Your Grandma was happy, not all the time, but are you happy all the time?

Your grandmother;s day was a less complicated time with simpler problems and simple pleasures. I think it is important that we have these conversations because as you have pointed out it's not always clear how things were and how sweeping the changes have been. Feminist issues are not now, nor ever have been black and white. Remember, to every action.......

May your grandmother rest in peace.


I suppose the point I was trying to make is that it's a mistake to look at the past through a present-day lens.

29th Annual Tax Day Event!

Yep, it's an annual event here at the big farmhouse. And what an event it is.

Little Cisco is looking a bit worried. But that's just because this is his first year living at the big farmhouse during tax season. I gave him a dog biscuit and assured him it would be OK. Tommorrow things will return to normal.



You can't see me because I'm just off camera working hard to contain the disaster. It was necessary for me to break out the Big Nikon and wide angle lens just to capture the scope of the event.



We start the day with a festive Ticker Tape Parade. In place of the traditional ticker tape we use a years worth of unopened junk mail and otherwise obsolete paperwork.



Then the main event begins as the oak credenza in the office explodes, spilling it's guts as far away as the kitchen. This blast contains old tax returns, vet bills, credit card statements and various other ephemera.



The major debris from the blast rains down on the family room where all attempts at "decor" have been nullified. The oriental inspired lantern threatens to start a blaze. I briefly thought about entering the pictures in HGTV's Rate My Space website as a joke but I've been told some of the "raters" take their job seriously and I'm a fragile state right now (as you can imagine).



Pancho has been through this before and he provides emotional support to the Farmer. The Farmer has mellowed over these 29 years, finally trusting that the missing document will be found in the nick of time.



At the Eleventh Hour.....just as we thought all was lost.....and in the tradition of the day......the missing document is found. All is well. God is in his heaven and the check is in the mail.

The entire day is a cathartic process and we all feel better after dragging bags of shredded paper down to the curbside. The recycling guy has other thoughts on the subject.

There are a couple of things to take note of:

- All images of the documents have been "blurrified" in Photoshop, so don't even think about stealing my identity. I can assure you that on days like this you don't want to be me.

- Don't worry about the clean up. I've been in training since January and 28 years of past experience have made me an expert. Got a messy parade? Call me.

- Vee talks about keeping it real. I have no choice. This is my life. And anyway the real story is always more interesting, just ask Lucy Ricardo.

Don't forget to snag your free Tax Day donut at Dunkin Donuts. Just order a regular coffee and the donut is free.

An Optimist with Sahara Sand Luggage

When we arrived at the airport on the first leg of our cruise vacation last year our neighbor Ted looked at us like we had three heads. Ted was a seasoned world traveler, circling the globe many times over in his career as an electronics engineer.

"Who buys beige luggage???" he asked.

I for one was lost for words. All I could muster up was, "An optimist".

It seemed like a good idea when we were standing in Target. Maybe they were using trick lights in the store. I see now they're referring to it as "Olive Green".....trust me, it's beige.



The old black Wal-Mart set had given out and we felt we were moving-on-up in the world of luggage.

Two hours later in the Fort Lauderdale airport we retrieved our matched set of "Sahara Sand", which now looked more like "Back-Forty-Pasture". I avoided Ted's gaze as he chuckled knowingly under his breath....."Heh, heh, heh..."

After the cruise I grabbed a scrub brush and some wonder-spray-product sold on late-night TV. I sprayed, I scrubbed and soon the cases were looking fresh and renewed. The unfortunate truth is that each time we travel I'm slave to the luggage again.

So here we are again. The Farmer had returned from a week in South Carolina to find that the airlines had lost his luggage. Jimmy the taxi driver impatiently drove around the airport while the Farmer filled out the necessary paperwork. He was upset. I, on the other hand was thrilled!! Lost luggage! No scrubbing. Compensation for imaginary Armani suits! Hey, this could be a sign of good things to come. We could count on the airlines to lose that Sahara Sand matched set....one piece at a time! And we could get a new wardrobe.

And then this.....



The prodigal case found it's way off flight 121 and found itself summarily dumped in our kitchen. Curses, foiled again.

This scene is much, much worse than it looks. It's a domestic environmental disaster waiting to happen. Think about it for a moment. A week's worth of your husband's dirty laundry, locked in a confined space for FIVE DAYS!! My mind raced....how could I avoid opening this thing? What could I find in the garage that would allow me to unpack the contents from a safe distance? Barbecue tongs?



No, I'd have to throw them in the trash afterwards. It was at this point that the solution came to me. It was Tuesday night. I was leaving early Wednesday morning. I would simply "forget" about the case and return on Thursday evening to find that the disaster had been dealt with. Why? Because The Other Mother would never miss an opportunity to do laundry. Moms are just like that. The Mother would do the same in this situation.

The plan worked. Well, almost.

For some bizarre reason the farmer had neatly folded his dirty clothes and placed them in the suitcase. For some equally bizarre reason The Other Mother believed that these neatly folded clothes were clean. And so they were hanging in his closet this morning! The dead giveaway was.....THE SMELL.

But all is well. I stayed away from home, "just long enough". Sometimes I live a very charmed life.

I don't however, feel lucky enough to open his underwear drawer!

Quote of the day:
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, "I used everything you gave me." - Erma Bombeck

Battle of the Sponge, Bob

Fourteen years ago when we made the decision to combine households and live multi-generationally with The Other Mother it quickly became apparent that there were going to be some differences in the way we did things.

You see, it's very difficult, if not impossible for two women to share a kitchen. This is something I learned many years ago when I lived with a roommate. I'm sure there's a PhD in Women's Studies somewhere that has produced sufficient scientific evidence to support that statement. All their work was for nothing though because it doesn't need to be proven.....it's just one of those laws of nature. If you look at cave drawings closely you'll see one woman booting another one out of her kitchen!

The first disagreement was over the type of dishwashing tool we would use. I loved the sponge, which allows you to wipe off the dish or quickly turn it over to the scratchy side to remove any stubborn food. The Other Mother (and The Mother too for that matter) are of a shared generation which prefer the old fashioned cotton dishcloth. This presented a problem to me because you'd need to reach down and dig around for the silvery metal scrubber if you encountered any dried on food. See how my logic is supporting the use of the sponge? Well never mind because old habits die hard and in the case of The Mother and The Other Mother on the subject of dishcloths they don't die at all!!

And so, after a short period I simply threw in the sponge. I learned from raising kids about how to pick my battles and secretly told myself, "Ah, the sponge battle is lost, but not the war! The pantry shall be MINE!"

I adopted up the dishcloth, although I still wasn't liking the idea, especially since they were those skimpy store bought versions. And then it occurred to me, if I'm going to use a dishcloth it's going to be a nice thick cotton one.

I bought some crochet cotton and a hook and went to work churning out nice, substantial versions of the dishcloth. All was well in the Kingdom of the Kitchen.

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LET'S RUN A POOL

I know you're missing being in the basketball bracket pool now that March Madness is over. (Sorry Memphis, I was rooting for you!) And so I thought it would be fun to set up a little pool of our own called.....(drum roll please)



What's that you ask? It's a pool that celebrates the fact that men are well ........ just men. You see, last week when the farmer was away on business I got my new glasses. See? Anne Klein's, aren't they swell?



Anyway, the farmer got home on Friday night and.........(feel free to finish the statement) THAT'S RIGHT SISTER.....he didn't notice. And still hasn't. We're 6 days into the Anne Klein's, so don't bother to put in for days 1-6, just start with 7. The bill for the glasses comes in at about 30 days so you might not want to go beyond that number.

Choose a number and make a comment on this post letting me know when you think he might see the light. I will keep track of the pool. Don't worry, if more than one person enters a number I'll put the names in hat.

What's the prize you ask? Well, a set of THREE of my Battle of the Sponge, Bob Dishcloths of course - white, yellow and tomato red.



If you don't win, don't fret. Along with the name of the winner I'm going to post the pattern for dishcloth so you can create some for yourself.

And for those women who are making themselves miserable over the fact that your husband is not noticing your new haircut or new shoes, just put on your big girl panties and deal with it. Men DO appreciate the overall effect but they're not hard-wired to drill down to the particulars. Just revel in the fact that your girlfriend notices when you so much as change a SHADE of lipstick!

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
Not every woman in old slippers can manage to look like Cinderella. - Don Marquis

BLOG OF THE DAY: (You simply MUST see this)
Nectar and Light

NOTE: I won't be here tomorrow. I'm driving out to visit The Mother and The Sister. We're going to do some thrifting and pretend we're the ladies who lunch. We're going to have a pajama party too! So, I'll see you all on Friday. Be good.

The Holy Grail

No, not that Holy Grail, the other Holy Grail - the search for the perfect piece of pie. That's my quest and I"m stickin' to it!

I loved my father alot but the truth was that my stepfather and I were simply terrific "compadres". Intellectual sparring was a favorite hobby of his and he had a wicked sense of humor. He also loved a good smart aleck and I qualified in his book. I am grateful he was was such a good grandpa to my children since my own father lived 1,000 miles away.

I can still seem him standing in my kitchen cooking his famous chicken and dumplings while a tornado raged outside. Patio furniture was flying past the kitchen window and I was frantically trying to herd the kids and grandpa into the basement. This proved to be more difficult that you'd imagine. My son was standing in front of the patio door screaming at the sight of airborne furniture and grandpa was hobbling/hopping as fast as he could. You see, grandpa only had one leg! When he was 12 years old he'd slipped and fell into a thresher during harvest on the farm. I simply cannot imagine the terror his mother felt when a farm hand ran into the house with news of the accident. I was feeling my own terror at the thought of losing him to a tornado!



For a grandpa a wooden leg could be an endless source of amazement for children and trickery for him. He'd tell the kids, "Knock on my knee." The first time they'd knock their eye would get as big as saucers, and let's not even talk about taking off the entire leg! He felt that qualified as entertainment for young 'ens.

Grandpa Bill qualified as a "character" and anyone that knows me knows that I love & collect characters. Traveling with him could be trying at times because he insisted on stopping every few hours. Once in mid-morning for coffee and pie, then for lunch & more pie. Midafternoon there was a pit stop for ..... you guessed it, coffee & MORE PIE!! His avowed mission in life was to find the perfect piece of pie.

I agreed that it was a pretty important mission in life, and when Grandpa Bill died I took up the torch. Yep....that's now my mission....to find the perfect piece of pie! Of course opinions on this are heated and subjective. I, for example, am not a lover of berry pies except for the fantabulous delicacy known as Blackberry Pie not to be confused with Blackbird Pie.

There are a few that have come close to perfection and I've got them at the top of my list. This cute person is Paula Haney, otherwise known as "Hoosier Mama" and she's the pastry chef/owner of Hoosier Mama Pie Company.(I hope she doesn't mind me referring to her as "cute" but she WAS cute and friendly and enthusiastic. And anyway, someone who thinks up such a terrific name as "Hoosier Mama" has got to be cute!)



I encountered her at the Chicago Fancy Food show a couple years back. WOW...her pecan pie was the best I've ever tasted (she uses some maple syrup). Best in Show for Pecan Pie...that's my award for her. She doesn't have a storefront, she bakes and sells to restaurants in the Chicago area, or you can also order online and pick one up. Be sure to click on all the links there's some interesting stuff in there.

Number two in the list of contenders is the Sawdust Pie at Patti's 1880's Settlement in Kentucky. It's just delicious, a take-off on pecan pie. Hmmmm, do we see a pattern emerging?

Here's the recipe for Patti's Sawdust Pie. This blog entry is very long or I would post picture of the entire process, but that's not really necessary since you're big girls and can figure it out.




Fortunately I'm not alone in my quest. My former publisher told me there's someone at the New York Times who has taken up the torch and retired couple Bill & Barbara Windsor who traveled 29,000 miles, eaten 181 slices and produce the Pie Report.

So, don't go thinking we're done with this subject. We're going to be revisiting pies again and again.

FEATURED BLOG OF THE DAY:

Warm Pie, Happy Home

DON'T FORGET - Tomorrow we take another ride on the Way Back Machine.

Voices from the Past

My brother and his wife hosted Easter dinner at their house which provided my mother a chance to engage in her new-found activity, dispensing a lifetime of stuff.

My mom will be 80 this July and she's following in the footsteps of my grandmother and my Auntie Em, who towards the end of their lives began parceling out bits and piece of their lives. We're not talking the family silver or engagement diamonds, we're talking photos, letters, ticket stubs and little remembrances of a lifetime.

My Auntie Em returned all the photo of my children that I'd sent her over the years. She knew I would love to have them and would mean nothing to her future descendants. My grandmother parceled out some of her precious cherubs. Yesterday my mom brought some interesting items along to find new homes. There was my grandmother's diploma from practical nursing school. In her late 50's she volunteered for the Peace Corps and was scheduled to head for Borneo until health issues prevented her departure.

Included in her cache were photos and a letter to my mom from and old friend and neighbor of my grandmothers - Martha Z.



Martha was one of those colorful eccentrics that filled my childhood. The word flamboyant could barely contain her personality. As you can see from her body language in the photo above she was as colorful and exciting as her boyfriend Leon was meek and mild. They were the original odd couple.

Martha studied fashion design and knew everything but everthing there was to know about fabric. She also studied millinery arts and was a well-known hat maker in the Chicago area. She studied Esperanto and flew down to Cuba to party with bullfighters. She earned a nursing degree and worked in that field and late in life became an expert in herbal gardens, curating the gardens at a local college. She was in a word .....a character. My goodness how I love characters!

The letter itself is a treasure and I'm glad my mom chose to share it with me. It will be safely tucked away at the bottom of my jewelry box.

The envelope contains the instruction, "Open here carefully".



It was written to my mom, who was hospitalized at the time.



Dear Polly,

Well you are making headlines again. Mother said you were in the hospital! So I said there is never a better time to get a surprise note from someone you think has forgotten you. I never hear the song Rose of San Antone that I don't think of you, even while I was in Mexico I heard it and told the girls how you could sing that song. Don't forget it - ever. It's like a trademark. I'm sure my singing is not what I am best remembered for. Ha Ha.

I never was at Gottleib (hospital) but I am sure they are lucky to have you with your ready wit and sense of humor. The girls must fight over who will take care of you. We don't get cheery patients very often.

I just bought this stationery and use it only for cherished, cultured, knowledgable friends who will enjoy the textural design and thought that went into the design. So you see that narrows it down to only a few!

Saturday I am hosting a party for Diane (her daughter) who is 28. She is going to California to seek her fortune with the airlines. Going to give up being a hairdresser. Oh well, I may get a ride - I sure never got my hair done!

Well little "Rose of San Antone" I will start some good thoughts by mental telepathy to work for your recovery and return to the rat race of human endeavor!

Best wishes and fond memories,

Martha

I'm laughing because her life never resembled a rat race.

Does anyone actually write letters anymore? I know I do, but I love the sensation of pen and ink to paper. Do you know any eccentric characters any more? I know a few but not of the magnificence of those from my childhood. Or perhaps my memory has transformed them into larger-than-life figures.

Tomorrow we're going to venture into the world of art cars. What's an art car you ask? Stay tuned.....

lucy, you've got some 'splaining to do....

Yesterday I promised to tell you the truth about the farmer.

He does dishes!!



Well, he did dishes after Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house. It was such a momentous occasion that everyone broke out their cameras. But that's not the truth I was thinking about.

He's lots of fun and has an adventurous spirit. Here he is in Central America. We were celebrating our 25th anniversary. We're married 29 years today.



But that's not the truth I was aiming for either. The real truth is....
He's not a farmer! He is the financial officer for one of the country's premier fresh herb producers and helps manage their herb farms but he doesn't operate anything larger than a snow blower or a lawn tractor.

So how does that make me a farmer's wife? Well, in reality I'm not. But here's how I became know far and wide as "The Farmer's Wife". Almost three years ago I discovered the blogosphere and decided that I'd like to jump in with photos of our community. For the past 15 years we've lived in a very rural farming area, surrounded by a million acres of corn and soybeans. I love the lifestyle and the people that make our community special. The main focus of The Farmer's Wife was to publish a photographic record of an area and lifestyle that was fast disappearing as developers moved in.

I need two or three words for a blog title that would embody the subject matter. The choice was between "Little Blog on the Prairie" and "The Farmer's Wife". My sister like "Little Blog.." but ultimately I chose "The Farmer's Wife." It turned out to be an unsettling decision for me because after awhile I felt it was disrespectful to people who truly lived the farming life, like Kelli and Matt at Sugar Creek Farm. But I was stuck. When I was out and about taking photos people who saw me with the cameras around my neck would come up and ask, "Are you the farmer's wife?" Salt in the wound for sure.

Eventually I made peace with my long-ago choice and decided that real farmer's would understand. I was extremely proud to accept Garfield Farm Museum's Agricultural Preservation Award. It came as a big surprise to me because it's not always apparent if you're making an impact with your blog. I'll tell you my family's reaction to that award some other time.

For now I'll just say Happy Anniversary to the "Farmer" who never was.

Tomorrow: Let's talk about hope.