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Months ago, I had an epiphany: I didn’t need to “good job” my way out of Texas. I stopped putting undue stress on myself with the weekly job hunt rat race. My current job was portable. All I had to do was make a plan to leave.
Once I returned home, I resisted most attempts by other people to pull me into extracurricular activities since I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for much. I’d packed up and relocated 14 years of my life and unloaded all of it in one bedroom in my parents’ house. That in and of itself was a great source of stress, time and expense.
Being back home was the financial restart that I needed. Plus, I, along with my sister and her son, were able to do the literal heavy lifting my parents needed to organize their things through storage, recycling or throwing it away.
A new financial picture started to form after a few weeks. Although I had the thin illusion of disposable income, I was highly aware that my life was subsidized by my parents for the first time in over 30 years. On the one hand, I was fortunate to still have this option. On the other hand, I needed a new mojo.
I’d joined a CBD company as an ambassador about 9 months prior to the pandemic. My heart had never really been into recruiting others nor selling although I loved the products. I’d dedicated my efforts on the other things I was juggling. Few of them were money-making ventures.
As a matter of fact, my attitude toward making money had ranged between, “if I do good work, the money will come,” and “if I’m organized enough, the money will come.” At this point, I know better. The facile belief that the quality of my work would govern how much money I earn is so far removed from most of my experience.
After reassessing my financial situation, I revisited the CBD company and researched investing in a different pathway to success. Something that’s more tailored to what I’m actually willing to do. After all, writing a business plan that one doesn’t put into action isn’t actually a business plan. It’s a fiction. So far, none of my fictions have motivated me to quit my day job.
With my newfound parental subsidy, I now can feasibly and comfortably invest in setting up myself in business with a virtual warehouse. The biggest appeal is that my customers will be able to place an order with me, then the company packages it up and ships the package to the customer.
I felt energized coming up with this plan. Not only is it a new endeavor, but if successful, the additional income will allow me to quit my day job and have control over my own schedule…AGAIN.
I didn’t grow up celebrating Juneteenth, but I learned more about its origins and celebration, thanks to living in Austin, TX for 14 years. One of the aspects of the celebration is consuming red libations. The color red has symbolic meanings from blood to spiritual renewal.
One particular red food that caught my eye was Red Velvet Cake. When I discovered that Red Velvet was actually a chocolate cake with red food coloring, of course I asked that oft repeated question: why not just have a chocolate cake without the food coloring?
The answer may lie in the symbolic meaning of red, but regardless of whether I ever figure out a definitive answer, I found an online recipe that used a natural way to color the cake, which intrigued me more than anything else.
The Ingredients
The most obscure ingredient turned out being the chocolate powder. The vast majority of chocolate that we buy is Dutch processed, meaning that it’s processed with alkali, so the cocoa is neutral rather than acidic. I was about to buy the cocoa powder online until I saw that shipping cost as much as the chocolate. So, I checked my local upscale grocery store.
Chopped Beets
That grocery store had the chocolate I needed, but in solid, not powder form. Since I no longer have the patience to drive around town to buy ingredients, I bought everything I needed at that pricey place. The way I saw it, since I don’t buy the weekly groceries in my parents’ home, I could afford to spend about what I used to on a week’s worth of groceries prior to the pandemic.
Gloves and Covered Cutting Board
Two precautions I took were to wear disposable gloves and to wrap the cutting board with plastic before chopping up the beet–the source of the beautiful red coloring. As a matter of fact, the author of the recipe that I found online had included their narrative trial and error with beets as part of the recipe.
Fresh Lemon Juice
Originally, they had cooked the beet puree, which caused the redness color to fade to brown once baked. So, they recommended raw beet puree. Additionally, the batter had to be acidic to help preserve beet’s color. Hence, the use of non Dutch processed chocolate, buttermilk, creme fraiche, and fresh lemon juice.
Mixing the Batter
Since I used chocolate chunks, I mixed them into part of the batter that I processed in the blender. The butter and sugar were creamed in the mixer, while the flour and other dry ingredients were stirred in a large bowl. At one point, I switched off pouring the beet and flour mixture into the mixing bowl.
Beautiful Batter
This was one of the few recipes where the batter was attractive. Of course I had to sample it. Absolutely delicious! No earthy nor acidic taste, thanks to two cups of sugar.
Baked Cake Layers
Most of my baked goods have tended to be over baked because my parents’ oven. As much time, energy and money I put into this cake, I put the lowest suggested baking time, 25 minutes, on the timer. I added 10 minutes when the cakes didn’t pass the toothpick test. If I ever make this recipe again, I’ll know that it needs to bake for 45 minutes in this particular oven.
Haphazardly Frosted
Although I’d started the baking process on Saturday morning, I didn’t frost the cake until nighttime since I’d seen “Wakanda Forever” in the afternoon AND I’d forgotten to buy cream cheese for the frosting. My sister, who I thought would arrive sooner, brought the cream cheese since she was picking me up anyway.
Beautiful Through and Through
I’d left the ingredients for the frosting out. Maybe they were too warm rather than room temperature. At that point, I didn’t care. I’d seemingly spent all day baking. The frosting was less viscous than I would have liked, but that didn’t stop me. Even the second thoughts of adding lemon zest to the frosting didn’t stop me from adding it. I’m glad I followed that suggestion because the bright taste of the lemon contrasted well with the cake.
The spirit doesn’t move me very often to bake/cook, but when it does, I’m so happy that things turn out as delicious as this.
Of all the things to teach the younger generations, perhaps this one was near the bottom of the list. So happy we got to it!
One of my nieces, who already makes Jello Shots, helped me with this twist on the alcoholic dessert. Since we didn’t have a handheld juicer, we first squeezed the oranges after cutting them in half. Then we used a tablespoon to remove the pulp although at one point, simply peeling the slices out of the orange was more effective. We saved the pulp so Nanna could use it in her smoothies.
Two challenges arose: we couldn’t squeeze the oranges too hard or the hull would tear. Then we had to leave some of the white stalk and peel in place where the navel was or else there was a hole. Both challenges meant Jello would ooze out of its “container.”
Jello-Filled Orange Hulls
We’d mixed strawberry and orange flavored Jello together with two cups of hot water, followed by two cups of alcohol. For this batch, we mixed a cup of Cointreau with a cup of Rum. My niece was initially concerned that one of the boxes of Jello had expired. None of us older adults were the least bit concerned about that. The way we saw it, the alcohol would cure anything that was “wrong” with expired Jello. Besides, the expiration date mostly meant that stores couldn’t sell it.
Jello Shot Slices
Apparently, we only needed one box of Jello to fill the number of hulls we had. The rest of the Jello mix I poured into a nonstick mini muffin tray. In retrospect, we should have simply drank the remaining Jello as a cocktail because those Jello shots didn’t pop out of the muffin tray intact. We still ate them in a bowl with a spoon.
Next time, I’ll have the proper equipment, and we’ll try using large limes. There is plenty of lime jello in the pantry, so I’m thinking margarita Jello shots. Besides, we can make an actual margarita by repurposing the lime pulp, which will help mitigate our delayed gratification of consuming Jello shots by drinking a homemade batch of margarita.
My sister invited me to participate in the Trunk or Treat activity at the church where we attend. I’d never heard of it before, but apparently it’s been going on for a while…to the extent that there are costumes to deck out one’s car that can be bought online. Of course. Halloween is my favorite holiday, but this past celebration was bittersweet because I’d donated all my costumes before relocating, so I couldn’t just throw something together for this event.
Plus, in my mind, I’m still in the process of getting settled. It’s more than simply unpacking my things. I’ve passed many a day stuck in rumination, so I hardly gave more than a passing thought about this activity. My sister and I even went shopping for some decorations a few weeks prior to the event, but nothing really clicked since I thought she was simply using my car to run her own Trunk or Treat activity.
As we got closer to the event, I’d brainstormed “Musical Pumpkins,” played like Musical Chairs except instead of walking around chairs as music played, kids would pass small pumpkins around in a circle until the music stopped.
In order to get a better idea of how we’d run our own Trunk or Treat, we visited another such activity at a school the week before.
Ever so popular Mario Brothers
The Haunted Cemetery
Or was it a portable haunted house?
More Mario Brothers
Skeletal Remains
Pumpkin Patch
Candyland
Spiderwebs & Pumpkins
The Nightmare Before Christmas
We didn’t participate in a single game and as far as getting candy. My highbrow self didn’t care for any of that cheap stuff. If I was going to challenge my prediabetic status, it might as well been with the good candy. In the end, I accepted a fun size pack of peanut M & Ms. Peanuts are nutritional. Besides, there were only five or six pieces. Nothing too bad to make my left eye throb…my internal monitor that there’s too much sugar in my blood.
Musical Pumpkin Patch
My sister bit off far too much. I knew that she was in charge of the event, but I hadn’t realized how much she’d signed off to do rather than delegating the work. In addition to decorating my trunk for Musical Pumpkins, she decorated two other trunks; had chopped onions in two different styles for the hamburgers and hot dogs; provided games for other people; had made a game out of styrofoam and a cardboard box; and circulated around the event, which was held in the church parking lot. In other words, I was left alone to run my activity.
Pumpkin Ghost Game
My sister had put a lot of effort into making the Pumpkin Ghost game, but turned out that no one needed it. I took it off her hands. The objective was simple: manipulate the box to place the three balls, which were painted to look like Jack ‘O Lanterns, into the three indentations, which were the ghost’s mouth and eyes. The dexterity needed to place all three balls into the indentations eluded most of the little kids, who wildly jerked the box around. The preteens to teenagers got it although I had to reset the balls in the middle of the styrofoam because they’d get stuck along the edges.
Dad playing Pumpkin Ghost
As hokey as Pumpkin Ghost was, I found that I became too invested while watching the kids manipulate the box. Without thinking, I’d be all up in the box myself before recovering and taking a few steps back. Even parents complimented me for such a simplistic, yet engaging game.
For some of the little kids, I encouraged them to try for at least one ball, so I could reward them with a piece of candy. The older kids walked away with at least two or three pieces of candy.
Nighttime View
I could have easily left long before the sun went down, but darkness brought out the beauty of the lights. I believe next time, Trunk or Treat will be held earlier in the day. If asked to participate, I will order a car decoration and have a matching costume!
Once again, I found myself using up something in the refrigerator that my parents, this time Dad, had opened, but hadn’t finished. Specifically, a bottle of peach wine and a bottle of a dessert wine. Both bottles had about a glass of wine left in them. Lord only knows when that would’ve been poured, since much to Dad’s delight, eggnog season had come early. Even Mom had temporarily switched from her evening nip of Triple Sec* to eggnog.
*If you’re wondering, “Isn’t Triple Sec usually used to make such drinks as a margarita?” You’d be absolutely correct. For years, Mom loved sipping peach schnapps or peach brandy at night, occasionally adding a splash of OJ to make a Fuzzy Navel. Then, one day, she tasted Triple Sec and that became her nightcap.
I came across those two nearly empty bottles while hunting for something else. Since the shelf where they resided was prime territory, I brainstormed how to use them up. I certainly wasn’t going to drink them as they were since I prefer dry, full-bodied reds. So, I fell back on my old favorite white wine concoction: sangria.
I’d used a pint-sized mason jar to handshake other cocktails in the past, which seemed like the perfect serving size for the four of us. Since Mom and Dad are both in their 80s, they only took a “taste,” whereas my sister and I essentially had double portions.
I chopped up two limes, a peach and an orange, placing them in the jar. Then I poured in the two wines and topped it off with Cointreau. Everyone else had sat around the kitchen table, watching me put the sangria together. I announced that we’d drink it with tomorrow’s dinner.
So, of course, Dad sampled it before the appointed time because “it looked so pretty.”
We all got a healthy share of the fruit with our drink. Since Dad had already taken his taste, I only served him the alcohol-infused fruit. The peaches were the best and the limes were best to add to a glass of water.
Since Dad only had a glass of fruit, he let me know every time he had to deal with a lime, complaining that I’d put in too many and some slices were cut too thick. I think he was more bitter than a lime because he wasn’t served more sangria, but out of all of us, he’s the one who really should drink the least.
I realize that it’s a fool’s mission to “clear out” my parents’ refrigerator, one cocktail at a time, since they have all day to go out and buy even more stuff. I just like to consume things so they don’t go to waste. It’s a win-win when something delicious can be made in the process.
Can’t believe I waited so long to do this. After all, I’ve written a variety of other things, but for some reason, I never thought about writing my own bible for storytelling purposes. It’s not a coincidence that all the details of a TV series, summed up in one convenient place, has been referred to as a “bible” versus an “encyclopedia” since The Bible is a collection of parables, which details the Christian faith. The same is true for TV bibles for the shows they represent.
For over a month, I’ve been reading through a variety of TV bibles for different genres of shows. By and large, my favorite ones combine the overall feel of the show in pitch fashion rather than a dry collection of facts. Since episode dialogue can be added to a bible as an example of an exchange or to show characterization, the overall gist of the story arcs can be discussed in broad sweeps without getting into the weeds.
TV bibles can take many forms as long as the form enhances the storytelling rather than distracts from it. Some of the detractors I’ve found so far are pictures that don’t reproduce well when photocopied; fonts that are too small and once enlarged, margins too wide to see the complete sentences without scrolling from side to side; and fonts that are smudgy to give it an old typewriter feel.
The best part is that I can quickly jot down several ideas about a show to get them on paper, figuring out plot twists ahead of time prior to writing episodes and committing to all the characters.
Another thing I’d not considered: selling the show. At best, I’m an emerging entrepreneur. At worst, I suck at it. I joke about monetizing certain skills that I have, which I do nothing about because the capitalistic way forward eludes me. Whenever I do make an effort, I’m amazed at how I STILL don’t make money.
Even though I want to have an episode ready in case someone is interested in the show, I’m not clear as what the industry. In other words, the example episode doesn’t necessarily have to be the pilot although that seems counterintuitive to me. I don’t know if the rest of the series would make any sense without the opening pilot. Then again, what do I know?
I took a Friday off to travel with my parents to visit my father’s side of the family. On a rare occasion, we left exactly on time. Of course we left with the usual bickering between my parents, which is more of a sign of a longtime couple who’ve been married for 61 years. I sat in the back with my laptop and cell phone, not feeling the least bit weird of being an adult child relegated to the same position as much younger counterparts.
Our travels went blessedly uneventful until we reached our destination: Langley Air Force Base. Since Dad is retired from the military, we were able to stay in guest quarters on base for one-third of the cost of a commercial hotel. Instead of driving directly to the inn, Mom was absolutely convinced that she had to check in at the gas station across the street from the inn.
I knew that made no logical sense. I figured, “What the hell, I’d taken the day off. Entertain me!” I wasn’t disappointed as Mom asked the first random guy with a long ponytail about checking in at the gas station for accommodations at the inn. I normally use Mom as my example of a person in her 80s who still functions independently, but this was the moment I thought perhaps eight decades on this rock and increasingly taking on more responsibility as Dad’s caregiver may have finally triggered her breaking point.
Ponytail Guy confessed to being a civilian mechanic contractor for only a short time and stated he wasn’t too sure how things worked on base. I thought that was a sweet way of telling Mom she was crazy.
At this point, Mom called the inn, confirmed she’d misunderstood the original directive and drove across the street to check in at the inn. Once checked in, Mom drove us to a second location of the inn, which was about three minutes away, but with a much nicer view.
Of course there had to be another hitch once we arrived at our suite…or rather the door to our suite. The key card didn’t work. This time, it wasn’t Mom being goofy. She called the front desk at the other location and the receptionist sent a maintenance guy to let us into the room with other keys.
I knew I wasn’t going to eat at Golden Corral.
We were so hungry after such a long drive. Even so, when Mom suggested eating at her old favorite, which we frequent many a Sunday, I protested and looked up nearby restaurants. Thank goodness it was open at that time of day. I risked ordering a brisket sandwich. It was far better than the brisket I’d eaten in NC, but still not as good as in TX.
Afterwards, we made a quick trip over to one of my aunt’s house, which served as a central meeting place for all of Dad’s extended family.
Mom and Dad with his two sisters.
One enviable thing about retired people was their flexible schedule. No one cared too much that our arrival ended up being several hours after we thought we’d be there. This was a case of late being better than never. Dad hadn’t seen them in a while, but I hadn’t been to that house since my paternal grandmother had passed.
My uncles, who’d bravely married into the family.
The ultimate plan was for all the retirees to go to the local casino while I hung out with a first cousin who lived nearby. Even though I’d seen him a few months ago in Austin, I’m not a gambler and I’d recently started collaborating with him on a digital animation series, which was loosely based on his life.
As a matter of fact, thanks to this project, I learned that I actually can write screenplays. I think I was too stressed with other things in my life when I took my one and only screenwriting course. Secondly, I started researching TV bibles in order to write one for this series. Why has it taken this long to discover this storytelling pitching tool? Again, better late than never.
Morning view from my room.
Those retirees gambled into the night much longer than I would have originally thought they would have. Casinos must have perfected the fountain of youth atmosphere while people are gambling. Nonetheless, I slept well and woke up early enough to do morning stretches and writing before meeting my sister and her family and a cousin for breakfast…well, lunch by the time everything was said and done.
Our long awaited table.
All I can say is that I’m so happy I ate a banana prior to going to the restaurant. Not eating wouldn’t have “saved” my appetite. My sister and her family joined us in Hampton from their VA beach vacation. Our cousin merely had to escape his bed because he lived in Hampton. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even have to endure the nearly hour’s wait for a large table.
Post lunch group picture.
Again, I appreciated the fluidity of everyone’s schedule. My parents, sister, brother-in-law and I continued to the same aunt’s house after lunch. Part of the appeal was that my paternal grandmother had lived there in the last years of her life. The warmth of the memories made it feel like the “home house,” as we say.
Dad’s only living brother.
At 84, Dad is not only the oldest living brother, but the only one who’s reached that age. His older sibling passed at a younger age. Compared to Dad, that uncle seemed as if he was taken away from us too soon. All the fresh laughter from his antics are no longer with us. Even Dad’s younger twin brothers passed due more to life in the fast lane than age.
The four living siblings out of seven.
In a way, this trip was a mini family reunion. Hurricane Ian had delayed our visit by a week, but in the big scheme of things, that delay was worth our safety.
First attempt to get just the aunts.
I grew up thinking that Dad’s side of the family wasn’t too close, compared to Mom’s. After what I know now about the struggle being real, even after umpteen years of Emancipation, Civil Rights and every other movement in this country to bring us to the full expression of first class citizenship in our own country, I now think that so much energy was instead invested in survival.
Finally, a picture of just my aunts.
Now that this generation has retired, they can stop and smell the roses and enjoy a better life. They’ve definitely earned it. The closest permutation of me retiring will be working from home like I’m doing right now.
Of course Mom had to get in the mix.
I may not be the first generation who didn’t do better or as well as their parents, but the game has changed. I don’t want to blame that all on Nixon taking the dollar off the gold standard to pay for Vietnam, but that didn’t help.
The other spouses join in.
What also didn’t help was my passion lie in doing creative things such as teaching, writing, painting…pretty much everything which guarantee that it’ll be a long shot, even in good times, to make much money. Too bad I can’t monetize “rich in personality.”
Mother/son picture.
At the same time, now that I’m middle aged, I’m saving for whatever retirement is going to look like. Some days at work, I consider myself semi-retired when I have less work to do for the same pay. That’s the direction I’d love to move into. The biggest jump will be working for myself like I did in the before times. I had a good run with that while it lasted. At the end of the day, I’m not an entrepreneur. That’s not a good thing in a country known for such strong capitalistic ways.
Cousins and Aunt
I may not be able to control my work schedule, but I’ve already planted the seed to work reduced full time, Monday through Thursday. Oh, all the wonderfully creative things I plan to do, besides running errands and doing chores! It’s so tantalizing. I find it unbelievable that when other people retire, they feel lost because they were their jobs. As for me, I cannot usually find enough time in the day to do everything I want to do unless it’s on the weekends. Having an extra weekend day would just boost that.
Mom and my sister jump in.
At this point, I have conceded that I’ll never be in the position to retire. The best I can do is stop and smell the roses along the way. This weekend was just a taste of the possibilities of a three-day weekend.
Playmate cousin when growing up.
I’d heard more stories about my father’s side of the family than ever before. Not only am I old enough to ask the questions, I’m mature enough to listen and appreciate the answers. And for things that happened when I was alive, I marvel at which parts of the shared memory we’d all tucked away inside of us, only to bring those pieces out when we get together to see what the big picture would be.
The James River Bridge.
This sight always reminded me of the beginning and the end of visiting my Hampton relatives. Since Mom can’t swim, but does most of the driving, she makes record time across it. Her (ir)rationale was she wanted to minimize her time on the bridge just in case it collapsed and put her at risk of having to swim. I’ve never bothered asking her how she’d survive the collapse long enough to hit the water. Happy to report, just like all the other times, there was no collapsed bridge.
While interviewing one of my cousins for the latest episode of “Strange Family Folklore: Where the Paper Trail Meets the Genetic Trail,” she kept referring to “Anne Swanson.” Nearly a week prior to our interview, I’d discovered a report that detailed Anne Swanson’s extended family, who were my maternal grandfather’s mother’s side of the family.
We came across the report when my sister and I organized the pantry part of our parents’ front closet. As I looked at the family trees contained in the report, I found several different Annes. Not only that, but Anne Swanson had a daughter whose middle name was also “Anne,” which she chose to go by rather than her first name.
Throughout the report, last names were dropped from family trees and people were referred to by their nicknames in some places and their Christian names in others. That alone motivated me to update the report.
As I studied the family trees, I came across a branch I knew the most about: my maternal grandfather and his children, including Mom. To my horror, my aunt who’d died in childhood, was not listed as one of the children. I knew that once I finished the post production of the latest SFF episode, I’d start updating the report.
My usual approach to any project, is to work a little at a time. Before diving into the update, I researched how to create a family tree with the Word doc tools. Next, I researched how to select some pages to appear landscape style while others are portrait.
I read how to do those things for two reasons. First, to know that the program had the capability, and secondly, I wanted to jump into recreating those family trees.
Apparently the Anne who’d put the report together also placed a high priority on the family trees. She’d used graphing paper to neatly organize each family tree and had oriented the paper landscape style to provide more room.
There have been many innovations since 1978 when the report was completed. Once I have retyped and updated what already exists in the report, then I will begin filling out who people were beyond the one-sentence descriptions as found in several places.
This isn’t a criticism of Anne’s work. I appreciate her laying the foundation. According to her own description, she was a very accomplished person who may not have had the time or help to flesh out every family member’s entry.
I’m going to do my best to advance what she put in motion.
Just as my life was settling down and starting to feel too routine, my sister invited me to volunteer with her and my nephew for an outdoor activity. I’d been to this outdoor family-oriented area previously when I’d searched for a leave a book/take a book kiosk.
Apparently, this organization had hosted the Ninja obstacle course activities for several years running. There were three levels, that roughly corresponded to age groups: treehouse for the the youngest participants, intermediate for older children and elite for adults–although some older children and teenagers attempted the elite course and some adults ran the intermediate course.
We rolled up just in time to meet the morning volunteers, have a boxed lunch with them, then listen to a brief orientation. Several women knew my sister from previous volunteer events.
Treehouse course
Although my volunteer assignment was at the participant registration desk, I hardly did a thing because three other women, who’d worked the event several times in the past, ran the table. Before I could greet families and individuals who approached the table, one of those women would yell out their names as they approached and helped them. As they processed people who registered with far more forms than my Virgo sensibilities thought was necessary, I caught on to the rhythm of how things should be done.
(For the record, two forms could have been combined on the same piece of paper with people only filling out the liability part if they weren’t going to run an obstacle course and another section if they were, then signing an attendance sheet to keep a running total of who was there that particular day since the event was held over multiple days.)
Intermediate Course
I managed to help perhaps two groups to register, but with one of the other women double checking my work, which I didn’t mind since they weren’t treating me as if I was incompetent.
Elite Course
During a lull, I walked around the grounds to take in the activities since registration was a ways away from the action. The treehouse course wasn’t actually being run by volunteers, so parents had to supervise their own children rather than watch them as an audience member. Only the intermediate and elite courses were being ran and timed as recorded events.
In the brief time I watched the elite course, two guys dropped at the same time, with one guy landing practically on top of the other, injuring him. The medic on duty was an impressive linebacker-built Black man. I immediately thought that if I had an emergency, that was the person I’d want to come to my aid.
The other people in line for the elite course didn’t seem the least bit phased by that injury and once the injured guy was helped and escorted out of the pool of water to audience applause, two more guys started the course. The faster of the two was working his way across the peg ladder when one of his pegs broke in half. He reported that he heard it cracking just before he fell into the pool. I didn’t blame him for feeling robbed.
Later in the day, the real work began. We tackled our parents’ front closet, which doubled as a pantry. Although the closet wasn’t as big as the garage we’d cleaned and organized, it was still full of stuff since we’d first moved into the house in ’79.
We moved out a portable rack full of coats and jackets, then cleared the floor and the bottom three shelves of canned/boxed/jarred food. After vacuuming mystery grain (that looked like corn meal, but Mom disagrees), wiping down and lining the shelves, my sister arranged the preserved food in the closet, which my nephew and I had grouped for convenience.
This process, which took much longer than we’d anticipated. Here are some things we discovered: 1) far too many boxes of Jello, especially lemon and orange, which will probably become Jello shots; 2) far too many boxes of vanilla instant pudding; 3) lots of stuff that should have been in the garage now that there was room; 4) a genealogy report my maternal grandfather had assembled.
That last nugget is the stuff of great discoveries are made of. The report was chock full of family history, most of which I didn’t know. Nonetheless, given the deteriorating condition of its flimsy construction paper cover, I knew I had to preserve it in sheet protectors. Once I removed the three brass brackets and placed the pages into protectors, I noticed the pages had no numbers.
I bought white blank labels, cut them into small squares and placed them on the lower hand side of the protected sheets. Then, using a scanning app on my phone, I took a picture of each page. Finally, I emailed the digital copy to my other sister and a cousin who has done deep research into our family history.
As I read the report, I noted that there were inconsistencies in the names. Within my mother’s part of the family tree, her older sister, Marguerite, who’d tragically died in a fire as a child, had been omitted.
Yes, the Virgo in me wants to update the report to clarify the confusing parts, correct the errors and expand upon the entries where the entirety of a person’s description is merely the son/daughter or spouse of someone. Plus, the index in the back should also be referenced with page numbers…now that they exist!
My birthday box from a friend arrived days before my actual birthday.
Last year, I gifted myself several self-care items for my 51st birthday. This friend rounded out last year’s effort with gifts to help spiritually. Among the packet of information included, detailing the incense, pyramid crystal, and amulet was a personal letter about his personal spiritual journey.
My parents gifted me money, reflecting my new age.
Since moving back home, my family has shown me that not all people have joined me in not carrying cash. Two weeks after being gifted cash, it came in handy when I applied to get my NC license plate. When the employee told me the amount for the service, I pulled out my credit card as she said, “At least $5 must be paid in cash.” Although I gave her a surprised, questioning look, I didn’t bother asking any of the obvious questions, considering we’d been living in the upside down for the past few years.
The makings of a White Russian.
Mom had made “us” a pineapple coconut cake for our birthdays. Not that she’d asked me what type of cake I wanted. Nonetheless, when she told me that I could use the leftover heavy whipping cream for some recipe, I knew that I’d make us a liquid dessert in the form of a White Russian. The next day, after work, I went to the liquor store, known collectively as ABC stores, to buy the other ingredients. As a nod to Austin, I chose Tito’s.
Crude but effective cocktail shaker.
I’d either given away or packed away my cocktail mixing set, so this mason jar served that purpose. Honestly, when it comes to mason jars, one’s only as limited as one’s imaginations. I certainly wasn’t going to buy another hand mixing set, given all the stuff my parents already had.
We celebrated Mom and my birthday at a seafood restaurant.
I’d never eaten at this restaurant before, but both the decor and the food were wonderful. As a matter of fact, the only thing that was a disappointment turned out to be the birthday cake that they’d gifted us.
Mom blew out her candle first.
Since Mom and I were sitting directly across one another, we didn’t bother with taking a group pic of the two birthday women, but I’m so happy that I captured her in the process of blowing out her birthday candle. I handed my camera to my nephew without first explaining to him that he was to take my picture. When I saw him start to point the camera at Mom, I started yelling at him to take my picture since I’d already taken Mom’s.
I blew mine out fussing at my nephew.
At least he managed to take a decent picture. Next time, I’ll talk to him first about what I want, then hand him my camera. I’ve been away so long that I didn’t really appreciate how much instruction he needs despite him being in his early 30s. He’s cognitively a teenager at best.
At one point, Dad became a little restless, so I got his walker and he and I started walking the length of the restaurant. I’m not sure what brought more of a smile out of other people as we walked by. I wondered if it was my tiara or the combination of Dad and I walking together, but apparently we were a happy sight.
