Day 2 Day radishes

February 28/ Sunlight plus

We have had spring weather and it puts a spring in my motivation. The crocus are out. After saying I have given up gardening, enter one good nursery and I am hooked. Maybe it is the spending money part of a nursery that is so appealing. I am in a cooking funk. Even the newspaper food sections have, pork, pork and more pork. I guess you can call pork seasonal.

I have not been down in my lower hill garden for seven months. And I have not worked in it since I broke my ankle two summers ago. But several days ago, I was sitting at my computer and I thought, mmmm, I feel good enough to garden. And I actually did. The day before I had been in a wonderful nursery to buy a trowel and I ran into some women that I know. One woman insisted that I buy a particular David Austen rose, Brother Cadfael. I tried to beg out of it saying that I had very bad soil. "Oh I grow everything in pots. Feed it, feed it." This woman was so positive that I thought perhaps this is really an angel trying to speak to me. So then I bought a second one.

As if buying new roses was not enough to lift the spirits, sun light made me say mmmm, I think I will clean our closet. I have a huge improvement here.

February 26/ at the gym

Yesterday while at the gym, there by the hot tube,I saw the the back of a woman who had a very tidy lean body. I said to myself, she could have been at the Academy Awards. Later I go from the pool to dress and I see by the mirrors the back of the same woman putting a stocking on her hair. I know that she is putting on wig, but most of the people I know who wear wigs are going through Chemotherapy; this woman had hair. I continued dressing, but I had to know what she looked like, especially the wig. By this time she was bent over sorting through her makeup. Then suddenly she straightened up, checked her makeup and she turned around with her reddish cast wig, and there was Tilda Swinton. She was ready right there to go to work, and supervise Michel Crayton. Right there! At my own gym!

February 25/ Oscars

Against my husband’s grunts and righteous sniffs, I watched the Academy Awards. It was reported that it was going to be the most boring Academy Awards ever, and that is just the way I like it. Just give me the facts and dresses. I grew up on Bob Hope, and after that I was done with jokes.

The dresses were beautiful. The wildest dress was worn by Diablo Cody, who wrote JUNO. I was happy to see what she looked like. I was wondering if her mammoth tattoo was permanent. It did go well with her dress. I was happy to see Javier Bardem , the son of Satan, kiss his mother. And she welcomed the kiss. I felt like my mother, Tilda Swinton should have worn lipstick. I wanted to cut off her sleeve. “This darling would look much better.” She did have an elegant haircut.

I do not know if there was a casting award, I tried valiantly to find it, but I give it to JUNO. That was the perfect cast.

I am not much into political speeches at the Academy Awards, but I liked Marketa Irglova’s speech. I felt she knew about which she spoke: art and suppression. She was charming, and out of her league in the glam department, but she carried on. Had she been given her time at the proper time, the speech might not have been important. But you knew that she fought back stage to say what she had to say. In this particular case, I appreciated it.

February 24/ mainly family dogs

Saturday I went with Margaret’s family, Mr. Radish and another grandson to look at Margaret’s new dog. The day started wonderful because there was sunshine. Sunshine, all by itself, is a mood elevator. Driving to the kennels we traveled through fields that are a few short weeks from being plowed. I could see that branches were days away from leafing. Snow was still on the mountains.

Getting a new dog is an occasion. When our daughters got new dogs they were some recognizable breed of which I had heard. But Saturday we went to a kennel that breeds mixes. This is new to me. A labrodoodle? Sounds like a cookie. I forget what the new puppy breed is called, a St. Charles smashon? I am kidding, but I still do not know what it is called.

There is something about a small puppy that says to me, I need one. There is something about hope. Seeing a baby puppy, the future looks bright. I am not even sure I like dogs. What I like is >my dog. All puppies become teenagers. All vets are expensive. A dog says to me, “I want to sit on your furniture”, and I say, “Well wipe your feet.” I can not discipline a dog. Mainly I had trouble keeping them in the yard. "Come", was not understood by any of my dogs.  And when they got mad at me, such as  when a daughter came home from college, or a baby granddaughter showed up, the dog would drop a pipe in the middle of my living room. When a dog is totally spoiled, I lose interest. I could discipline daughters, but dogs got the best of me. But  at that kennel Saturday, I thought, yes I could do another dog. <>

Here are pictures from a perfect day.

February 24/ mainly family dogs

Saturday I went with Margaret’s family, Mr. Radish and another grandson to look at Margaret’s new dog. The day started wonderful because there was sunshine. Sunshine, all by itself, is a mood elevator. Driving to the kennels we traveled through fields that are a few short weeks from being plowed. I could see that branches were days away from leafing. Snow was still on the mountains.

Getting a new dog is an occasion. When our daughters got new dogs they were some recognizable breed of which I had heard. But Saturday we went to a kennel that breeds mixes. This is new to me. A labrodoodle? Sounds like a cookie. I forget what the new puppy breed is called, a St. Charles smashon? I am kidding, but I still do not know what it is called.

There is something about a small puppy that says to me, I need one. There is something about hope. Seeing a baby puppy, the future looks bright. I am not even sure I like dogs. What I like is my dog. All puppies become teenagers. All vets are expensive. A dog says to me, “I want to sit on your furniture”, and I say, “Well wipe your feet.” I can not discipline a dog. Mainly I had trouble keeping them in the yard. "Come", was not understood by any of my dogs.  And when they got mad at me, such as  when a daughter came home from college, or a baby granddaughter showed up, the dog would drop a pipe in the middle of my living room. When a dog is totally spoiled, I lose interest. I could discipline daughters, but dogs got the best of me. But  at that kennel Saturday, I thought, yes I could do another dog.

Here are pictures from a perfect day.

January 22/ Crazed

Knitting socks as a rage had just started when I took my four year hiatus from knitting. So when I picked up knitting my socks again, a lot had come down the road. Both in ways of knitting socks, good ideas how to improve sock, and the biggie, yarn has gone through a real transformation. It is very hard these days to knit a plain colored sock yarn. Yarn is dyed to form faux fair isle, stripes, and all over muted blendings. But perhaps the biggest trend, has been self dyed yarns with unsweetened Kool-aid. No wonder my mother did not let us drink the stuff.

I can not wait to do this myself. You take little packages of Kool-aid, blend the colors you want, to try and achieve a color you like. Then you take a ball of yarn and make a hank out of it. Then you dip or soak the yarn in a bowl or jar in a desire dye, and wait for the color to soak into the yarn. Or you make several colors and you paint then on the hanks of yarn with big blotches or little blotches so the yarn will knit into either stripes or perhaps a pattern. Then you wrap the colored yarn up in saran wrap, and either steam it on top of your stove, or microwave it. I have even read that you could put it in your crock-pot. Should any of you want to try this great fun, there are many sites on the Internet which explain the process.

I have only once gone through a yarn dyeing crazy. It was short lived, but it is fabulous cooking without calories. I knit a sweater out of my idigo dyed yarn and I wore that sweater until it was three sized too small.

Happy Birthday George.  Thanks for crossing the Deleware.  Give a hug to Martha. 

February 21/ Get ready for Geo

I am telling you today. Do what you have to do, in order to have your cherry pie for tomorrow on George Washington's birthday.  Buy a pie, buy a crust, buy a can of cherry pie filling. Or some stores have frozen cherries in the frozen fruit section. 

Last week somewhere, perhaps AOL, had a survey that asked, if you could bring back any Amercan president to be president today< for whom would you vote?

Results:

First tied Kennedy and Regan.  Third Bill Clinton.  Think what you will. But do have cherry pie tomorrow. 

February 21 / Bones

Four weeks ago little Teddy broke his arm and it was cast a week later in blue. About 9 days ago Teddy fell over a ball and hurt his foot. He cried a long time, but got over it and walked seemingly normal. About six days later my daughter took him to the doctor to have his foot checked because his walking was maybe slightly off. But he ran and did everything he was used to doing. This last family doctor said, after an X-Ray, that Teddy's foot was broken. Teddy should go to the pediatric ortopedist again. When looking at the X-ray one could see it The foot bone instead of a straight line looked crooked like a couple of steps on stairs. Tuesday I went down to my daughter’s for moral support. I thought that if the toddler had a regular cast that I could help her for the first few days while he was getting around again by crawling. She was glad that I came and we did little things like clean out kids dresser drawers while we waited for the doctor’s appointment.

A seasoned pediatric orthopedist, different from the arm orthopedist, looked at Teddy’s foot and wiggled it, and poked it, and then had Teddy walk to a basket of toys across the room. “Well”, he said, “He is fine.

“Wait a minute,” we said, “His foot is broken. Even we can see this.”

“Well he is walking straight and without pain. He is obviously one tough guy. The bone knows what to do. It is amazing but, in the bones memory bank, the bone knows that it needs to make itself straight. It will take matter from one place and add it to another, always shifting, and so eventually it will be straight. In one year you will not be able to see that this bone has ever been broken.”

“And. . . by the way, would you like me to take his arm cast off.”

The photos are in reverse order.

February 17/ Valentine's Day

We had a wonderful Valentine’s Day. We had a dinner party for six. With the dispensation we gave ourselves on Valentine’s for Lent, it was a good party: wine, pork stew (titled Cheap and Tasty Pork Stew), carrots, wine, wine, salad, wine and bitter lemon pie. I laughed all evening.

But equally important was the rest of the day. We went out to breakfast, Mr. Radish took me to a knitting store, and Costco. What more could a woman ask? I bought myself red roses at Costco, not knowing he was going to buy me flowers, but if he did, these were cheaper. I finished his socks about one hour before I gave them to him. Just before the party started Mr. Radish gave me a home made DVD of old romantic songs of Frankie, Ella, and Tony Bennett from recently his recently negotiated ITunes. Drinking music, dancing music. He had even printed the a label on the DVD “Valentine‘s Day 2008,” by that I mean printed on the disk itself. I was impressed, and he was pleased. He said that he was surprised how many songs you could record on a DVD disk. He went to put the DVD in the player, and he stopped just short of the CD player, and said, “Oh I forgot, we don’t have a DVD player”.

Such is an senior Valentine’s Day. Now we have a great DVD for road trips in the car.

January 15/

The other day I was Googling and I Googled myself. First my own real name, and that had some comments I had put in book reviews on Amazon.com. Then I Googled grandmere.typepad.com and Day 2 Day Radishes. I was interested in how easy the blog was to find. I think it was the grandmere.typepad.com that had about six entries the first of which was my real blog. At least one of the six entries had a heading that was in some Arabic. I chose one of those listed, and it turned out to be the big “P“ word (like Jane Fonda uses the big “C“ word. Yikes. I use “P” word instead of the actual word because some people Google for a word, and I do not want any more trouble. I am baffled and horrified.

Yesterday I was listening to two young women talk on the Laura Ingraham show, about producing, what I think was, a t.v. show. The theme of the show was going to be about young women without the glitz, drugs, sex, designer clothing, and about their real problems. I got in on the middle of the interview so missed their bios, but one woman in particular talked about young women’s problems in our culture with sleeping around. She said the name of a hormone that was released in a woman’s body only in childbirth, nursing, and orgasm. This chemical created bonding with the other being. Babies and lovers. A guy does not have this chemical, and what is over, is over. But the girl is left with the bond. The moral of this story is that for young girls, sexual freedom is bonding, not freeing.